Differences between human language & animal communication
- One key difference between human language and animal communication is that humans have the ability to plan and discuss future events, examples of which are:
- Deciding where to go on holiday i.e. ‘Should we have a beachy type holiday or go for a more cultural city break?’
- Chatting with friends about the party you’re all going to on Saturday night
- Discussing which university course you would like to apply for with your tutor
- Future events are events which have not happened yet thus humans can project what a future event might consist of - something which animals (as far as we know) are unable to do
- The ability to communicate about events which are imaginary or exist only in the future is known as displacement
- Animals are only able to exist in the present and be alert to potential sources of threat, where to find food and water and mating opportunities
They may look like they understand each other but he can’t help her plan their next outing to the park.
- Human language is much more complex than animal communication:
- Human language uses grammatical structures
- New words are introduced into the lexicon
- Human language can be interpreted in many different ways (ambiguity)
- Whereas animals have no grammar, cannot produce new forms of communication and their signals must be unambiguous (if not, they could be eaten by a predator!)
- Human language offers humans the chance to ‘play’ with language:
- To be creative and to try out new sounds, new blends of words, different accents, and different forms (e.g. poetry, song, email, texting)
- Animals have to go through centuries of evolution for any change in their communication systems to take place
- Human language is prone to cultural transmission (i.e. language is learned and modified via a person’s culture and environment) whereas animals communicate innately, they are not affected by variables such as culture
Worked example
Here is an example of a question you might be asked on this topic - for AO1.
AO1: You need to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key concepts, ideas, theories and research.
AO2: You need to apply your knowledge and understanding, usually referring to the ‘stem’ in order to do so (the stem is the example given before the question)
AO3: You need to analyse and evaluate key concepts, ideas, theories and research.
After each featured question there is a ‘model’ answer i.e. one which would achieve top marks in the exam.
AO1
Question: Name two properties of human communication that are not present in animal communication and give an example of each property. [4 marks]
Model answer:
- Humans are creative in their use of language whereas animals are unable to create new meaning using their existing communication systems.
- For example, technology has produced a range of new words over the last 20 years e.g. ‘selfie’, ‘download’, ‘clickbait’.
- Another difference between human and animal communication is that humans can plan ahead and discuss future events whereas animals can exist and communicate only in the present.
- For example, a group of friends might get together to plan what they are going to wear for a non-uniform day at school whereas any future planning is not possible for animals.
