Finding similarities
30 January 2007

When we were interviewing Gary Francione the other day for our podcast, he remarked that humans are unwilling to see similarities between themselves and other sentient beings. To most people, anthropomorphism is a bad thing – it is ascribing human characteristics where they do not belong. It's usually dismissed as an emotional response, so that those who anthropomorphize can be considered merely crazy animal lovers who imagine that these similarities exist (and we do so love to downgrade emotional responses in our society, since they are usually associated with women). Gary pointed out, however, that we can and should find similarities since we are all sentient, but the problem is that we have an epistemological limitation in being able to understand the world through their point of view.

Language is one of those areas where humans are quick to create a hierarchy to separate themselves from other beings and to justify categorizing other sentient beings as somehow inferior. Our manner of communication is quite impressive and interesting, I must admit, or I wouldn't have chosen to study it for a living. But, when we get down to it, it is just another example of a semiotic system, and I would argue, has more similarities with how other sentient beings communicate than we realize. (And no, I'm not just talking about gorillas who know sign language and birds who can talk.)

Everyone, whether they realize it or not, communicates semiotically; it's how we understand the world. Language is but one example of a semiotic system. In brief, semiotics is the study of signs: how we devise categories of meaning in our lives. A sign is made up of a signifier and a signified. The signified is what that sign represents, and the signifier is how we represent it. The two always go together (think of a sign as a piece of paper – you always have two sides, back and front, and cannot separate the two.) In English, we represent the idea of a chair (the signified) with the word chair (signifier). Other languages choose a different signifier: silla, chaise, stuhl to represent the same signified. Of course, this gets more complicated when you add layers of meaning to this understanding of the world (which I'm not going to discuss in too much detail here, for fear of turning into a semiotics lecture). We can add connotations to certain signifiers (such that a red rose doesn't just represent a flower, it also represents love). There are also different types of signs, and not all are represented with language. We can think of hand or body movements as signs (raised eyebrows = surprise or suspicion), colors, art, and music as signs, etc. It just so happens that we value language as one of the most important and useful semiotic systems for communication; technically, though, we make sense of the world through signs first, language second.

I would argue that other animals also use semiotic systems to communicate as well, giving another area of similarity between us and other sentient beings. I'm going to use the examples of dogs here, not because they are any better than any other animal, but because I spend a lot of time with my dogs and know them best. (I don't want to create a hierarchy among the animals which gives them special treatment. Many times in the news we hear reports about apes, dolphins, dogs, etc. doing things that are similar to humans or something we see as quite intelligent, meaning that we'll give that group special treatment while relegating other animals to an even lesser category, e.g. the ones that we'll eat, shoot, step on, etc. As Gary Francione has written in the New Scientist, this is counterproductive, since all sentient beings should be given consideration.)

Our dogs Mole and Emmy have certainly shown signs of communicating in a semiotic system. Anyone with dogs knows that they have different barks for different situations. When someone walks past our house, one of the dogs gives a series of barks and the other then joins in. When Emmy gets frustrated at one of her chew toys, she looks at it and gives a single, sharp bark. When Mole wants to get the attention of our neighbors (in the hopes that they'll give him biscuits), he'll do a kind of "hey, hey" double bark. It's obvious that both Emmy and Mole understand what the other's barks mean. Therefore, a bark is a sign. It has a certain signifier (double bark), and a signified (hey, come out and give me a biscuit!)

Mole and Emmy (as well as our cat Michi) are also good at using iconic signs – signs that point to something else. When we leave something interesting on the kitchen counter, like a loaf of bread, some tofu, etc., Mole will sit under the counter, look at the bread, look at us, and look at the counter again. It's obvious that he's trying to point to what he wants, and then point at us indicating that we should do something about the fact that he can't get to the bread. (From experience, I have also assigned the connotative meaning that Mole is saying, look, I'm being good by not jumping up on the counter and just taking the bread, so don't you want to give me some?) Whenever Michi can't get into the bedroom because the door is closed, he'll go find one of us, meow to get our attention, and then walk in the direction of the door, in a way, pointing at it. If this isn't successful, he'll do it several times, and each time the meows get a little louder. When Mole wants his kong filled with biscuits, he brings it over and drops it on one of our laps. There have even been studies on bees that show that they do a complicated dance (movement of their bodies) to tell other bees where to find a good patch of flowers or other important feature of the landscape. If this isn't semiotic communication, I don't know what is. (Although I'm sure some would argue that it is different, because we assign meaning to things in different ways. Fine – it's different, but it's still a semiotic system at its core.)

Animals also have other ways of signifying things without vocal or visual cues. Dogs communicate by smells. All the neighborhood dogs know where the others have been based on where they pee. Because that method of communication is so foreign to us, we give it little credence when thinking about the intelligence of dogs. Our language must be superior to dog communication, because they are but simple creatures who sniff each other's asses. But if you're a dog, sniffing asses is a most logical way of finding out about each other. They experience the world much more through smells, and to be a successful dog and exist in the dog world, you have to understand what the smells mean. If you were a dog and tried to communicate like humans do, you would be screwed in the dog world. If we tried to survive in the dog world with our limited sense of smell, we'd be screwed. One of the reasons that dogs and cats don't often get along is that the signifier of a tail wagging has a different signified to a dog than it does to a cat. To a dog, it is happiness or excitement, to a cat it is anger.

We as humans give primacy to language, and therefore put every other semiotic system on a lower rung in the hierarchy of communication. We like to think that our language is special because we have a history of beautiful prose and poetry, we are able to argue using logic, we analyze and write blog entries, and we can sing, shout, and clap. It is wonderful what we can do. But at the root of it all, language is just a semiotic system, and is more similar than we'd like to admit to the semiotic systems of other sentient beings because the unit of a semiotic system is a sign, not a word. When it gets down to it, we all share that commonality of having semiotics as the basis of way of understanding the world, and we should recognize that instead of creating yet another category where we are seen as superior.

  Posted by Jenna Torres    Permalink    Filed under: Opinion
Potentially Related Articles:
My piece for OpposingViews
16 November 2008

Should animals have the same rights?

Read more of My piece for OpposingViews »

Vegans More Affected by High Food Costs?
29 July 2008
Do vegans really pay more for their groceries than omnis when fuel prices rise and bad weather hits crops?
Read more of Vegans More Affected by High Food Costs? »

Wonky RSS
22 July 2008
Our RSS is freaky. But not good freaky. Bad freaky.
Read more of Wonky RSS »