It is quite interesting to reflect on how central communication is to our culture, and indeed our species. We often take it for granted how important communication is; surprisingly so, when you look at it. It is all-prevalent and thus all powerful. If we take all forms of communication into account, it is incredibly important. This is probably why Lacan incorporated the symbolic in his tripartite – without the symbolic, the imaginary cannot access the real. Basically, your screwed.

Some examples may illustrate my point, but the problem is, where to begin – communication can be anything. For starters, I am of the opinion that academia can be boiled down to, and seen in terms of, one huge conversation: one person suggests an idea, which can be supported by or countered with other research, just as people in everyday life talk through ideas which may be argued or agreed with. Of course, there are differences in terns of content (what academic literature reviews a choice of breakfast cereal, and who talks about One loop phenomenology of type 2 string theory: intersecting D-branes and noncommunicativity over the garden fence?) but the point is they both employ the same structures. They both employ language, grammar, etc, the rules of posit and counter. They are, in the broadest sense, the same. They both are reducible to the ability to communicate. The same applies to virtually every situation, from parliament to the local pub. Hell, even this blog is a form of communication: at the moment, I am communicating my ideas on communication (not very well, admittedly). It also seems highly plausible to me, by the way, that it was the development of complex language that ensured human development over that of H. Neanderthalis. While I’m certain that odour nearest cousins had basic language, ours was more complex, paving the way, perhaps, for higher brain function (although it must be said that this gives rise to questions of the chicken and egg type). Either way,, language was quite central to human evolution. (go here for father reading)

It is thus obvious to me how important language and the ability to communicate is. I have written here before here about how, historically speaking, those without speech or other means to communicate have been written off as having severe learning difficulties, and, historically, institutionalised. If we juxtapose the centrality of communication in our species with the fact that access to the symbolic real is not universal, we can see why this happened.

This is why I believe the right to communicate should be inalienable. After all, what good is free speech without the ability to speak? This is why we need such things as the communication aids project, and 1Voice: in a species which seems to prise communication above all, all voices should be allowed to be heard.