Grooming and play.

            Social mammals devote a large portion of their waking hours to grooming:  Among some primates, grooming occupies as much as 90% of the waking hours that are not devoted to foraging for food. 

Grooming serves practical functions for the groomed animal – it includes untangling hair and removing burrs and parasites, but non-hostile touch is also intrinsically pleasurable.  There is evidence that touch activates the release of endorphins, chemicals with a function similar to opiates, so the groomed animal enters into a mildly euphoric state.  Aside from the practical function of removing parasites, burrs, and tangles, grooming contributes to social bonding, creating and reinforcing mutual support networks.  When the victor of a confrontation subsequently grooms the defeated animal, it also helps to smooth over the conflict and contribute to restoring group harmony.  

We humans also use touch in various forms, including the vicarious touching with eyes and voice.  About two thirds of our language use is devoted to gossip (including gossip about celebrities, sports teams, and other trivial topics), teasing and other forms of language play.  All of this supports Robin Dunbar’s claim that language developed for social bonding and is used primarily as an extension and amplification of grooming.  The common size of an informal conversation is three or four people, effectively tripling the number of group members that can be groomed by language.  Moreover, the reciprocal and interactive structure of conversation allows simultaneous mutual grooming.  Because conversation can be conducted over a distance of several feet, it also allows grooming while engaged in other activities, including food gathering, preparation, and consumption as well as play, productive labor -- and croquet, softball, and mountain climbing.  

            Play, both solitary and social, is widespread among social animals, and it is often blended with grooming. Play usually involves physical touch and is often reinforced by special forms of signaling and vocalizing  (a “play voice” and “play face”).  Humans are particularly adept at combining language, play, and grooming – along with many other social functions.  Though often regarded as “serious,” music, drama, and other performing arts also function as play.  I have long thought that play, activity done for its own sake (not necessarily competitive play, which is often an entirely different kind of behavior) has been under-valued in the study of

communication, and I’ve been gratified to see it receiving more attention in recent years. 

            In this blog I will be reflecting from time to time on the playful elements of communication, primarily but not exclusively human communication.  These include metaphor, which is still a central focus of my scholarly work, as well as humor, irony, even aesthetic expression.  I will occasionally comment on recent research in cognitive and neural science, when these seem to shed light on the central themes of communication, language, and play.  I will comment on elements of metaphor and play in serious events and activities, and on the serious, social bonding elements of absurd and playful activities. 

 

References

Carter, R. (2004).  Language and creativity:  The art of common talk.  NYC, NY:  Routledge.

Dunbar, R.I.M. (1996). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press.  

Dunbar, R.I.M. (2003) The social brain: Mind, language, and society in evolutionary perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 32, 163–81. 

Kerr, John A. and Apter, Michael J., eds., Adult play:  A reversal theory approach.   Amsterdam, The Netherlands:  Swets & Zeitlinger

Pellegrini, A. D., and Smith, P. K., Eds.  The nature of play:  Great apes and humans.  NYC, NY:  The Guilford Press. 

Ritchie, L. D. (2009b).  Distributed cognition and play in the quest for the double helix.  Ch. 11, pp. 289-323 in Pishwa, H. (Ed.), Language and social cognition:  Expression of the Social Mind.  Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter.

Ritchie, L. D., Feeling, Thinking and Talking: How the Embodied Brain Shapes Everyday Communication.  Cambridge University Press, to be released autumn, 2022.