communication. To supporters of the primates, who laud the ability of bonobos
to acquire vocabulary and use it in their interaction with human beings,
Chomskyans can always reply that the specific characteristics of human
language (in particular, the complexity of syntactic structures) are utterly
alien to bonobos, which never go beyond the pre-linguistic competence of a
two-year-old child (the age at which the innate programmes of the monad
are not yet operative).
The fact is undeniable, but not the conclusions that Chomsky draws from
it – i.e. naturalism, which makes language a mental organ, and innatism.
What these two terms betray is a philosophical choice – a philosophy of
language (rather than a self-evident scientific truth that is bound to strike
‘anybody who looks’). Chomsky is betrayed by his metaphors, for the phrase
‘mental organ’ is of course metaphorical. I know what a physical organ – e.g.
the organ of sight – is. It is called the eye and is the object of scientific study.
This study does not simply explain the mechanism of visual sensations; it
will also explain the role played by the brain in transforming these sensations
into perceptions. And everyone will acknowledge that flies, moles, raptors,
and human beings do not see in the same way. I note in passing that scientific
studies of sight do not (or do not any longer) feel the need to resort to the
philosophical concept of innatism. If Chomsky still has recourse to it, it is
because language – unlike sight – possesses no single organ. It uses bodily
organs like the ear and the larynx, but these are not specialist organs like the
eye: the ear does not only detect articulate sounds and things other than
words pass via the larynx.
What is more, the organs in question – the ear and the larynx – do not belong
to the same individual: if language is an ‘organ’, it is not the same kind of organ
as the eye or the arm – not because it is mental, but because it is social. In
other words, language is not an organ at all; it is an activity, a practice. Adding
the adjective ‘mental’ to the noun ‘organ’ only serves to render the noun
metaphorical – that is, to strip it of any recognisable meaning. And this
operation is neither innocent nor arbitrary; it is characteristic of ideology.
Once again, Chomsky effects a dual abstraction. The first abstracts from
linguistic activity, which is a relationship, an ontological metaphor – i.e. a
concept. (Thus we refer to language, rather than saying ‘linguistic practice’
each time; we distinguish between langue and langage; and Chomsky speaks
of ‘I-language’.) The second is a false concretisation which, by metonymy,
shifts responsibility from the metaphor (already on the road to fetishism,
Critique of Linguistics • 39