The human person acts as such, as a rational animal and as an agent of truth, especially in his use of language, when he thinks in the medium of words. We began our study of human rationality by focusing on the use of the word I, and specifically on the declarative form of such usage. Let us now locate declaratives within the wider employment of language. We can distinguish four levels in the way words are used.

Four Levels of Speech

The first level is prelinguistic or sublinguistic. Words can degenerate and can be used in a purely associative, sensory way, as part of a general reaction to a situation and a general expression of feeling. If I am in pain and say things like “Ow, stop, that hurts,” I am really not making a formal statement about things. My “words” are not very different from moans or, if the experience is pleasant and the words are happy, cries of delight, as in “Wonderful! That's just great!” They are expressions of pain or pleasure, not statements that could be quoted or verified. I am not putting an articulated thought on record; I am engaged in voice and not in speech. Although I may be making sounds that could serve as words in another context, here they have been deconstructed or dismantled as words; they are serving as mere sounds and are not very much different from expletives or exclamations. Both their syntax and their phonemic structure have been watered down.