of language as a merely conventional system of sound symbols, that has
seduced the popular mind into attributing to it an instinctive basis
that it does not really possess. This is the well-known observation that
under the stress of emotion, say of a sudden twinge of pain or of
unbridled joy, we do involuntarily give utterance to sounds that the
hearer interprets as indicative of the emotion itself. But there is all
the difference in the world between such involuntary expression of
feeling and the normal type of communication of ideas that is speech.
The former kind of utterance is indeed instinctive, but it is
non-symbolic; in other words, the sound of pain or the sound of joy does
not, as such, indicate the emotion, it does not stand aloof, as it were,
and announce that such and such an emotion is being felt. What it does
is to serve as a more or less automatic overflow of the emotional
energy; in a sense, it is part and parcel of the emotion itself.
Moreover, such instinctive cries hardly constitute communication in any
strict sense. They are not addressed to any one, they are merely
overheard, if heard at all, as the bark of a dog, the sound of
approaching footsteps, or the rustling of the wind is heard. If they
convey certain ideas to the hearer, it is only in the very general sense
in which any and every sound or even any phenomenon in our environment
may be said to convey an idea to the perceiving mind. If the involuntary
cry of pain which is conventionally represented by "Oh!" be looked upon
as a true speech symbol equivalent to some such idea as "I am in great
pain," it is just as allowable to interpret the appearance of clouds as
an equivalent symbol that carries the definite message "It is likely to
rain." A definition of language, however, that is so extended as to
cover every type of inference becomes utterly meaningless.

The mistake must not be made of identifying our conventional
interjections (our oh! and ah! and sh!) with the instinctive cries