LANGUAGE is truly a wondrous thing. It is what enables me to write these words on this page and you to read them. It can be used to create lyric poetry of spectacular beauty, to carry the thread of a complex argument or to give instructions for how to assemble a set of shelves or bake a cake.
But most of the time we human beings don't use language for such high flown purposes at all. Research has shown that two thirds of human conversation is taken up with, not discussion of the cultural or political problems of the day, not animated debates about films we've just watched or books we've just read, and certainly not nitty gritty matters like where our next meal is coming from or whether the security locks on the igloo are up to scratch, but plain and simple gossip.
Language is our greatest treasure as a species, and what do we habitually do with it? We gossip. About who's doing what with whom; whether it's a good or a bad thing; who's in and who's out - and why; how to deal with difficult social situations involving children, lovers, colleagues.
So why are we obsessed with gossiping about one another? Are we just natural wasters, of both time and words? Or do we witter on about nothing in particular simply to avoid facing up to the really crucial issues of life? Not according to Professor Robin Dunbar. In fact, in his latest book, Grooming. Gossip and the Evolution of Language, the psychologist and anthropologist says gossip is one of the really crucial issues of life.
Dunbar rejects the conventional view that language was developed by the men in primitive societies in order to co ordinate their manly hunting activities more effectively - "there's a bison down by the lake, lads, let's go get it" - or even to facilitate the exchange of poetic stories about tribal origins and the supernatural.
Instead, he suggests that language evolved among women. We don't spend two thirds of our time gossiping just because we can talk, argues Dunbar - on the contrary, he says, language evolved specifically to allow us to gossip.
Dunbar arrived at this cheery theory by studying the behaviour of the higher primates, otherwise known as monkey business. "To be groomed by a monkey," he writes in his opening chapter, "is to experience primordial emotions: the initial frisson of uncertainty in an untested relationship, the gradual surrender to another's avid fingers flicking expertly across bare skin, the light pinching and picking and nibbling of flesh as hands of discovery move in surprise from one freckle to another newly discovered mole."
Rather you than me, pal; but monkeys, especially female monkeys, spend so much of their time grooming each other that scientists have come to the conclusion there's more to it than a mindless preoccupation with fleas, dead leaves and matted hair. It is, apparently, an expression of friendship and loyalty: a literal case of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". By means of grooming, monkeys form coalitions with other individuals on whom they can rely for support in the event of some kind of fracas within the group or attack from outside it.
As we human beings are descended from a particular branch of the primate family, Dunbar concludes that at one time in our history we did much the same. Grouping together made sense because the bigger the group, the greater the protection it afforded from marauding predators; on the other hand the bigger the group, the greater the stresses and strains of living in close proximity to others. Grooming, which stimulates the production of the body's natural opiates, helped ease those tensions and calm everybody down.
But as, for various evolutionary and ecological reasons, the groups got bigger and bigger, the amount of time spent in grooming activities also had to be extended in order to maintain its effectiveness. Clearly a more efficient kind of grooming was called for and thus language evolved as a kind of vocal grooming to allow us to bond ever larger groups by exchanging information over a wider network of individuals than would be possible by one to one physical contact.
Ever larger, says Dunbar, up to a point; even now, with approximately 5,000 fully fledged languages to our credit worldwide and a plethora of mechanical communications technology, there is much evidence to suggest that human beings communicate and co operate best in groups of no more than 150. Bigger groups tend to become overly hierarchical or fragmented - as many of the casualties of the free market society have found to their cost. "Psychologically speaking, we are Pleistocene hunter gatherers locked into a 20th century political economy," is how Robin Dunbar puts it.
Apologies are undoubtedly in order to Professor Dunbar at this point for the aforementioned reductio ad absurdum of his carefully argued, immaculately illustrated 230 page thesis. From his initial focus on grooming among primates he broadens the discussion to include such topics as whether it's possible that apes have some form of religion and/or science, the reasons why women in a mixed group are more likely to smile and laugh in response to men speaking than to other women speaking, the fact that crows in eastern Europe pronounce their caws differently from crows in western Europe, how Russian linguists have reconstructed several thousand words from a language called Nostratic which originated around 13,000 BC and the likely arrival of a social phenomenon he calls "Net rage", which is like road rage except on the Internet.
If he's right about all this, the implications for linguists and anthropologists - not to mention male chauvinists - will be profound and far reaching. And even if he isn't, his book provides a marvellous excuse to put your feet up and have a good long natter about the neighbours. After all, you're not just gossiping; you're networking, exchanging socially relevant information, managing your reputation and facilitating the bonding of your personal group by monitoring the activities of potential free loaders. Phew. Anyone for a nice relaxing argument about the relative merits of Heidegger and Schopenhauer?
