SOURCE: “Introductory: Language Defined,” in Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921, pp. 3-23.

In the following introduction to his book Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech, Sapir surveys major points covered throughout the book, including his notion that language is a cultural rather than biological function.

Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment's reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into...