The term language has a variety of uses, or misuses. We hear about the
language of flowers or body language; people speak of animal languages as
the language of bees. People confuse language with communication so that
anything that communicates may be a language - so a widespread
misunderstanding of the role of language in human behavior.
The misunderstanding is twofold. FIRST, there is the persistent confusion
between a thing and the uses of a thing. This should not be a problem at
all. People who say "Language is a form of communication" do not confuse
cars with driving, scissors with cutting, or forks with eating. If
language
were a visible tool that you physically used the confusion could hardly
arise. But language is more abstract that cars or scissors, and when thing
and use are both abstract the abssudity of conflating them becomes less
apparent. Given the object-use distinction, nonhuman communication systems
are not communication, either, nor are body language of flowers, and so
on.
Like language, they are REPRESENTATIONAL systems used for communications.
The fact that both language and communication systems are representional
does not mean that they must be accepted as members of the same class,
they
differ with respect to what they can communicate and how they communicate
it. Body language as used by humans suffer the same limitations as "animal
languages".
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