Feral Language

Last night, I was watching a show on TLC called Wild Child: The Story of Feral Children. I wish the site had more information about it, but as with most of the shows, let alone the information on the channel's site, they only offer a glimpse of the whole story. I'm thinking about looking for a book on the subject when I hit Borders today -- I remember reading a story when I was about ten that fascinated me. Anyway, what I found interesting is where the show focused. I thought the show would be primarily about the difficulties in socializing these children. We've all heard stories of disattached children -- children who received no nurturing at all and therefore are little mini sociopaths, with no ability to relate to the people around them. I thought these feral children would be the same way and I thought that's where the show would focus. No such thing, however. The children all seemed to learn, when put into a normal social environment, how to empathize, how to be part of a social unit. They were damaged in various ways, but that ability to empathize appears to be learned, and not to be age-critical. Instead, the show ended up being primarily about how language develops in our brain, and about how missing that critical time when language can develop truly is critical. If you aren't exposed to language at an early enough age, you don't learn it apparently. You may learn words, but the ability to string them together into sentences will only occur if you learn it at the right time. As I think about it more, the primary reason I'm so fascinated with this story is that it seems like kin to one of my favorite concepts in science fiction/fantasy literature -- what it means to be human. At what point do we stop being animals and start being people? One of the first scientists mentioned in the program, Abbe Sicard, believed that the two requirements for a human to be considered a person were language and empathy. And though the boy developed empathy, he never developed language. And one of my favorite science fiction books, Halfway Human, examines this from a cultural perspective -- if you're told that you're not human, and you believe that you are less than human, does that make you so? It's thought provoking and even a little discomfiting. Technorati Tags: Television Feral Children Language