Language is Politics

Abstract

Language is an intimate process that virtually all humans can understand, produce, and/or engage with cognitively. Consciously or unconsciously and for any reason, humans constantly use language, whether for connecting with others or managing inner thinking such as making plans, composing narratives of one’s experiences, creating art, or simply making sense of any phenomena, as well as using it as a tool to gain advantage. However, despite our constant and intimate engagement with it, language has always been an enigma, eluding our complete understanding. Nevertheless, given the close relationship between using language and being human, our quest to understand language is intrinsically tied to fundamental questions about humanity itself, which may lead to various misconceptions, such as the deeply ingrained perception that the complexity of human language separates our species from the rest of the natural world.