Can Communications Be Learned From Chimps?

Pine UK writes "The Zoological Society of London are looking for volunteers who are willing to 'talk chimp' in everyday life. The ZSL will be studying the volunteers to see how talking chimp affects situations like workplace conflicts. According to BBC News, the volunteers are expected to show their emotions in a chimp like fashion. This can be done by baring their teeth and by using submissive body language such as lowering their heads and crouching. The ZSL will publish their findings later this year."

Comments

Aren't we chimps?

[CGP314]

News, the volunteers are expected to show their emotions in a chimp like fashion. This can be done by baring their teeth and by using submissive body language such as lowering their heads and crouching

And this is different from how human body language is used how?


-Colin

Re:Well,

[pilgrim23]

From some literature I read some years ago, I remember that the hallmark of an alpha male in Chimp society was the ability to scream loud, gesticulate aggressively, then while standing in a position between its tribe and the perceived threat or object of displeasure, squat, defecate and then skillfully project the product thereof in the general direction of dislike. This is consistent primate behavior. Would not the US Congress or perhaps the UN be a better venue for this sort of study?

Re:Can Communications Be Learned From Chimps?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Yeah- we're really sophisticated. When we have to deal with someone we don't like we don't throw feces at him. Noooo- we PUT A BULLET IN HIS HEAD. And then we dump napalm all over his relatives, and burn their cities down, or drop atomic bombs on them.

We would NEVER throw poop at someone - WE'RE CIVILISED!!!

RS

Re:better way to do it

[dunkstr]

...and this is why scientific communities have ethics boards.

Re:Is Learnt a word?

[Marlor]

This is why "the universal language is American English" - Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant empire building in the 15th and 16th centuries, and because of the distances involved British "english" evolved and the rest of the world was largely uneffected by the changes.

Then how come we write and speak "British English" (aka Commonwealth English) in Australia, New Zealand, and most other nations of the Commonwealth, despite the fact that we are far more geographically separated from Britain than the USA is?

Another thing that is strange is that (Australian) historic documents from the 1700s and 1800s use something much closer to Commonwealth English than American English.

Commonwealth English is far more widespread than American English worldwide (despite American English being the de-facto standard language of the Web).

Even the link you provided to Wikipedia claims that "language reforms [in America] were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers". It also explains that "Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster."

It does, however state that "standard American English of the upper Midwest has a sound profile much closer to seventeenth century English than contemporary speech in England". However, this is not referring to spelling and grammar.

So, American English is a version of English that is peculiar to the United States, and is far from a "traditional" approach (it was unilaterally changed by Webster to appear different from British English), and it certainly has no historical claim to be "the universal language".