Language as an essential human feature

Society presupposes people interacting with each other, and it presupposes symbolic content. For what turns behaviour into interaction is that a meaning is assigned to it. A congregation of people on the town square is more than the accumulation of each participant's meaningless behaviour; it can be interpreted as a political demonstration, a religious ritual, a celebration, a congestion of shoppers, or the beginning of world revolution. What it means has to be negotiated by the people involved in the interaction. It is not the sociologist or the anthropologist who has the last word. This is what sets a society apart from a pack of dogs or a colony of ants. Their behaviour becomes an interaction only by the grace of the observer. Unlike dogs and ants, people can talk back to their observers. When linguists want to find out what a verbal utterance or any other interaction means, they have to ask the people. That meaning is constructed by the people, and not by those who observe them, is something linguists, sociologists and anthropologists tend to forget quite easily.

Verbal communication is a prerequisite of society. That does not mean we cannot survive in a social situation without speaking the other people's language. An anthropologist has good chances of surviving within a monolingual tribe somewhere in an uncharted valley of Papua New Guinea. Gesturing will go a long way.