THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNICATION

The evolution of communication, Marc D. Hauser, 2000. A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 760 p. Language: English. ISBN: 0-262-08250-0 (HB), 0-26258155-8 (PB).

Alpina Begossi Pesquisadora Nepam Unicamp

The author, M.D. Hauser, is one of todays foremost exponents in the area of evolutionary psychology who, along the same lines as S. Pinker, has studied communication in the animal kingdom, including our species and our language, in a multidisciplinary fashion, with a Darwinian focus. Hausers work, The evolution of communication, offers a complete and extensive review of this field of study for readers in diverse areas, such as anthropology, ecology, ethology, physiology, linguistics, neurosciences and ps ychology. In a didactic and comprehensive form, the book dissects the methods, techniques and hypotheses of studies on communication, as well as the different experiments employed in the psychology of communication. The diversity of communication systems in nature and their evolution are the starting points of Hausers book, exploring this diversity with regard to four aspects: the understanding of mechanisms of expression, the genetic and environmental factors that direct their development, the functional aspects in terms of survival and reproduction, and the phylogeny - the evolutionary history of the subject species. This method used by Hauser goes back to Nobel Prize winner, N. Tinbergen, famous for his work in ethology. Chapter 2, which is very appropriate for readers of varied areas of knowledge, includes the history of communication evolution and presents, in detail, the concepts and definitions used throughout the book. One of the definitions concerns the singularity of

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human language, where comments by T.H. Huxley, Lieberman and Pinker are presented, among others. The summary on the contributions to the study of communications, made by linguists such as N. Chomsky, D. Bickerton, P. Lieberman, C. Hockett and S. Pinker, and by biologists such as P. Marler and W.J. Smith, is very illustrative. On page 62, the author calls special attention to the fact that, historically, researchers in linguistics, psychology and anthropology have always shown interest in the evolution of language, contrary to biologists, that have kept focus on the communication of other animals, treating human language as a case apart. In this aspect, emphasis is given to the importance of the evolutionary theory for the understanding of language as communication, which implies an approach different from the studies of language structure. The capacity of human imitation is considered one of the most powerful social mechanisms of learning (p. 650), simplifying the speed and fidelity of the transmission of information in a population. This approach is very similar to that used by evolutionary researchers of cultural transmission such as Boyd and Richerson (1985)1 . In the subsequent chapters, Hausers book provides a review of the ecology of communication, including detection and transmission of signs, concepts of similarity and classification, as well as reviews on neurobiology, ontogeny and adaptive aspects of communication. The immensity of examples of communication in the animal kingdom, with special emphasis on toads, birds, bats, primates, including the human species, make the subject even more fascinating.

Boyd, R. e Richerson, P. 1985. Culture and the evolutionary process.University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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