buhNO, or Whence Language? The Evidence of Microevolution

To show his disdain for Bono's pretensions, a friend of mine pronounced his name buhNO, with a short U and the accent on the second syllable. It sounds funny out loud, and it totally conveys that disdain.

In the growing and unfolding of our love, Dawn and I have, like billions of others, taken up with sweet talk. We started calling each other bubba, but it quickly became buhBUH, with the same accent but not the disdain of buhNO - more like humor and affection.

We struggled briefly with how to spell it: buhbuh, bubu, bu'buh, and misstypings like buba'h.

My Windows phone read out that last one as BUbuh h (BOObuh aytch). We say that now and again, and I've been adding a English accent to the 'aytch' and making it 'etch' - BOObuh etch. Then came BOObehnzee etch - meaning buhBUH - meaning bubba, meaning I love you.

That episode, the birth and life of 'buBUH', is just a tiny little, short lived, quickly gone, swirling eddy of language, but can we learn anything about language from it?

I think we can.

First: language has an element that is wholly subjective - interior. When I'm speaking, I'm 'meaning' what I speak. I intend a meaning with the words I speak. Dawn and I were deliberate - intentional - in our use of 'bubba', 'buhBUH', etc., and that meaning and intent originate from inside, not from anything external.

Second: Language isn't entirely subjective - not entirely my creation at my beck and call. I 'intend' and 'mean' when I talk, but the words and sentences I use have stored up and contingent meaning depending on who is hearing what I'm saying.Even in this episode, our individual store of language, meaning, experience, informs us as we riff on 'bubba'. We're not wholly in control of that, of what new twist, accent, spelling and subsequent phonetic pronunciation will come out of our mouths. This is partly what Saussure meant when he said that language was arbitrary. He argued in the Course in General Linguistics that because the linguistic sign is arbitrary, it is resistant to motivated change.

Third: Language constantly changes. A swirling eddy. The rate at which it changes depends on various things, I'm guessing. Like, number of members in the language group? Two, in this case. Dawn and I can, and do, discuss changes to 'bubba' anytime we want. We try out new twists, and the other always know exactly what was meant, so change moves quickly. Don't think this contradicts the previous paragraph - we may riff, but we don't always know ahead of time what that riff will be.

Fourth: If we're not wholly in control of language - something that sometimes seems so obviously and thoroughly deliberate - then what accounts for the 'resistance' that Saussure speaks of?