Language as a tool

The very expression "use of language" is an invitation to investigate language from the functional perspective of a tool; such a perspective might then allow us to draw a parallel between the evolution/invention of language and the evolution/invention of the various tools that a significant number of living beings can use (to various extent), and even build.

• for example, certain crows (new caledonian crows) can perform various tool manipulations, from picking up and using a stick in order to get food from an otherwise inaccessible location, to actually building tools themselves and even using meta-tools; some primates (e.g. the great apes) are capable of an even larger variety of tool usage, including building tools for some activities that are not (immediately) related to basic instincts, e.g. making a toothpick out of a branch.

From the language-as-a-tool perspective, not only can language be seen as a tool, but it is probably the most powerful tool ever invented. By being able to communicate operating instructions to a potentially unlimited number of other individuals, the acting force of one individual can be boundlessly multiplied; also, because language is not a physical tool, there are virtually no "manufacturing costs" and intrinsic "usage costs" associated with it. The very low cost of using language, coupled with its extremely high action potential (as mentioned before, it can be seen as a boundless physical force amplifier), together reveal language as a tool capable of shifting the balance of power inside an ecosystem by allowing individuals that are skillful in using language in their own interest to overwhelm the physically powerful, but less language-skilled individuals. In this way, the advent of language is a game-changing phenomenon on the evolution scale as it may radically change the darwinian fitness function that governs an entire ecosystem; essentially, language is paving the way to the supremacy of intelligence over physical power by means of "hijacking" the physical power of others.


Language as a body extension
The parallel between language and tools also allows us to approach language from the tools-as-body-extensions perspective, which essentially states that the repeated use of a tool can make that tool become cognitively perceived as an extension of the body, with the special note that the "evolution" of tools is shaped by a different kind of evolutionist pressures than the biological body parts. Despite accepting "body parts" who's evolution and structure are not strictly depending on the laws of biochemistry (i.e. the tools, including language), this perspective over language is however an evolutionist approach anchor as it suggests an evolutionist continuum that spans the biological body parts, the tools, and finally language, even though the evolutionist pressures are of a different nature in each of the cases.


The linguistic production mechanism as an actuator
Within the language-as-a-tool framework, the mechanism responsible for producing the linguistic constructs (e.g. a simple sentence or even an entire succession of phrases) can be regarded as a body actuator, i.e. a specialized body part with dedicated capabilities for handling language as a tool.

An eloquent illustration of this perspective is a 4 year old boy sitting next to his mother and talking to her: when he speaks, there will be many occasions when he will use language as a form of action, e.g. he'd say 'open your purse and give me your mirror'; we'd then see the child totally focused on his mother's hands as she starts digging her purse in search for the mirror, his mind becomes completely captivated ("trapped") in awaiting for the process to finalize. What he does when he speaks out loud such a request is that he actually elaborates and controls an action: specifically, he essentially opens the purse with his mother's hands. The linguistic production mechanism can in this case be regarded as an organ with which the child acts with much confidence in the outcome, much in the same way he would act if using his own hands.

The above model can also be observed in the seemingly different situation of a usual conversation between two people: for example, the process of saying something to someone (e.g. 'hey, you really need to check this out, [...]') can represent an intentional act of giving an information to the interlocutor, and the act of giving something (the information) can be regarded as being performed by means of exercising the linguistic production mechanism as an actuator (any action that is being performed implies a mechanism that performs it - the actuator).

• note 1: the act of intentionally conveying an information may or may not be accompanied by a conscious representation for the reasons behind that act; having a conscious representation for the reasons for which one wants to say something to someone is not a requirement for being able to actually say what one wants to say
• note 2: not all phrases exchanged during a conversation need to be the result of an intentional act of giving [an information]; on the contrary, most parts of a usual conversation will "flow naturally", with the original intention of giving an information being temporarily suppressed (e.g. in the middle of a conversation one may find oneself saying: 'oh, but sorry, i don't know why i am telling you all this. let's go back to what i wanted to tell you in the beginning)