Language: The missing selection pressure

TL;DR

This paper proposes that human language evolved as a social signaling mechanism in a context of insecurity, rather than as an advantageous communication strategy, explaining its unique development in humans.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis that language functions as a social signaling device developed due to insecurity, challenging traditional views on language evolution.

Findings

Language resembles a losing strategy in Darwinian terms

Language development is linked to signaling alertness and information access

The hypothesis explains characteristics of language that are otherwise puzzling

Abstract

Human beings are talkative. What advantage did their ancestors find in communicating so much? Numerous authors consider this advantage to be "obvious" and "enormous". If so, the problem of the evolutionary emergence of language amounts to explaining why none of the other primate species evolved anything even remotely similar to language. What I propose here is to reverse the picture. On closer examination, language resembles a losing strategy. Competing for providing other individuals with information, sometimes striving to be heard, makes apparently no sense within a Darwinian framework. At face value, language as we can observe it should never have existed or should have been counter-selected. In other words, the selection pressure that led to language is still missing. The solution I propose consists in regarding language as a social signaling device that developed in a context of generalized insecurity that is unique to our species. By talking, individuals advertise their alertness and their ability to get informed. This hypothesis is shown to be compatible with many characteristics of language that otherwise are left unexplained.