The origin of the language according to Rousseau

What language meant to Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a French scholar of the 18th and 19th centuries. Century. He worked as a natural scientist and philosopher, as a writer and composer. He was an important factor in the French Revolution. Rousseau also dealt with language.

• For Rousseau, language means "being human". Human beings are defined by the language that sets them apart from animals.
• Rousseau assumes an innocent natural state of man, from which he slowly alienated himself. For him, private property, inequality, vanity and the formation of states are among the factors that evoke evil in people.

With these factors came language as a necessary means of communication. Rousseau describes the original motivations of people to develop a language in the "Essai sur l'origine des langues".

The natural state of man

Rousseau developed a conceptual construct about the so-called natural state of man. Man was in the natural state before he was transformed by the beginning civilization. He took the people of his time and reduced them to all aspects that he ascribed to civilization:

• According to Rousseau, man is a loner in a natural state who comes together with other people in order to reproduce.
• There was no property. There was no envy or greed. All people were thus equal, apart from natural physiological differences.
• There were neither states nor a binding law. Man lived according to the laws of nature.
• There were no binding morals. Everyone acted according to their own instinct for self-preservation and a natural capacity for compassion.

With his natural state, Rousseau designed a peaceful coexistence of people, although he does not rule out violence. Language had not yet been invented at this point; people communicated with gestures and animal sounds.

Rousseau's theory of the origin of language

If you follow Roussau's language of origin, you are assuming this natural state of man.

• According to Rousseau, non-verbal language is sufficient for people in a natural state, a language that functions through gestures and facial expressions. It is sufficient for all direct needs.
• If survival is ensured by sign, why developing a spoken language? According to Rousseau's theory, the origin of spoken language is the passions. Love, hate, and compassion bring people together and require deeper communication.
• According to the French scholar, the origin of the language was emotionally tinged sounds such as sighs or screams. These slowly differentiated into syllables and words. Language is emotional and uses metaphors; it is less logical and rational than communication via gestures and facial expressions. Rousseau describes the language of the first humans as a "language of poets". Precision, logic and grammar had been neglected for the sake of the harmony of the sounds.
• Rousseau assumes that the early stages of the language used many synonyms. Only later did the vocabulary unified and the language made more precise. The invention of writing was an important factor in this.
• The script changed the initially emotional and pictorial language drastically. She was supposed to hold onto the language, but made it change. The writing is factual, precise and logical. The spoken language adapted to this and adopted these properties.
• You are probably wondering how the different languages ​​came about after Rousseau. The scholar takes different climatic conditions as a factor. In the southern countries, the conditions made a less urgent need for people to come together because everyone could survive on their own. In social places such as watering holes or wells, people came together and developed a language shaped by passions.
• In the northern countries people used to form communities because of the harsh living conditions. They didn't have the time or capacity to develop a language. Later coexistence became more complex and the language found its way into the north. It was not shaped by passion and beauty, but sober, practical, rough and precisely articulated because it served different needs than the language in the south.

Rousseau saw language as a symptom of human development. It brought with it great things like the ability to poetry, to express compassion, and love. At the same time, the scholar saw the origin of language in a turning away from the pure, innocent natural state of man - two sides of the same coin.