From merchants to speakers: The common origins of trade and language (original) (raw)

2012, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought

Adam Smith argued that division of labour and language are linked to the concept of persuasion. However, this paper asserts that trade in the long run and linguistic communication have their roots in trust and probity since both imply some sort mutuality; if not, neither one nor the other would occur as strategies in repetitive games show. I. INTRODUCTION. Adam Smith set forth a theory of language functions and linguistic communication which is relevant to economic behavior. Smith distinguishes three functions of language : communicative, narrative, and esthetic. The communicative function takes on two forms : persuasive (TMS, VII, iv p.336 ; WN I, ii p.25) and sympathetic (LRBL, i.17 p.9; i.73 p. 33 ; i.96 p.40; i.v.56 p. 25, etc). Smith takes the persuasive function of language from classical rhetoric, according to which (Aristotle, Rh.,1358b10) the main function of language is for the speaker to hold the listener in her sway. When Smith asks himself for the cause of the trucking disposition, which underlies trading, he finds the answer in persuasion. Thus in LJ (A vi, p.352), Smith asserts that the disposition to truck is founded on persuasion : If we should enquire into the principle in the human mind on which this disposition of We thank two anonymous referees of The Europ. J. of the History of Economic Thought for their thorough comments on an earlier draft of this paper.