Language A Biological Model

"Ruth Millikan presents a radically different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, the norms and conventions of language. The central norms applying to language, like those norms of function and behaviour that account for the survival and proliferation of biological traits, are non-evaluative norms. Specific linguistic forms survive and are reproduced together with co-operative hearer responses because, in a critical mass of cases, these patterns of production and response benefit both speakers and hearers. Conformity is needed only often enough to ensure that the co-operative use constituting the norm - the convention - continues to be copied and hence continues to characterize some interactions of some speaker-hearer pairs."--BOOK JACKET.