Communication
We should first distinguish between specifically communicative signals and those
which may be unintentionally informative signals. Someone listening to you may
become informed about you through a number of signals that you have not intentionally
sent. Shemay note that you have a cold (you sneezed), that you aren’t at ease (you shifted
around in your seat), that you are disorganized (non-matching socks) and that you are
from somewhere else (you have a strange accent). However,when you use language to
tell this person, I’mone of the applicants for the vacant position of senior brain surgeon at
the hospital, you are normally considered to be intentionally communicating something.
Similarly, the blackbird is not normally taken to be communicating anything by
having black feathers, sitting on a branch and looking down at the ground, but is
considered to be sending a communicative signal with the loud squawking produced
when a cat appears on the scene. So, when we talk about distinctions between human
language and animal communication, we are considering both in terms of their
potential as a means of intentional communication.