Marxism and Problems of Linguistics - From Marx to Mao

material. As you see, this is an entirely different subjectwhich I did not touch upon and could not have touched uponsince linguistics concerns itself with normal human beingspossessing the faculty of speech and not with anomalous deafmuteswho do not possess the faculty of speech.You have substituted for the subject under discussionanother subject that was not discussed.2. From Comrade Belkin’s letter it is evident that heplaces on a par the “language of words” (spoken language)and “gesture language” (“hand” language, according toN. Y. Marr). He seems to think that gesture language andthe language of words are of equal significance, that at onetime human society had no language of words, that “hand”language at that time played the part of the language ofwords which appeared later.But if Comrade Belkin really thinks so, he is committinga serious error. Spoken language or the language of wordshas always been the sole language of human society capableof serving as an adequate means of intercourse between people.History does not know of a single human society, be itthe most backward, that did not have its own spoken language.Ethnography does not know of a single backwardtribe, be it as primitive or even more primitive than, say, theAustralians or the Tierra del Fuegans of the last century,which did not have its own spoken language. In the historyof mankind, spoken language has been one of the forces whichhelped human beings to emerge from the animal world, uniteinto communities, develop their faculty of thinking, organizesocial production, wage a successful struggle against the forcesof nature and attain the stage of progress we have to-day.In this respect, the significance of the so-called gesture language,in view of its extreme poverty and limitations, is44