Noam Chomsky has led us to understand language as a biologically-based computational mechanism that can manifest in communication, most powerfully as languages - spoken, written and signed. The precise mechanism is not well understood but much has been said, most originally by Chomsky, about what it seems to accomplish and the patterns in its behaviour, not to mention the astounding built-in creativity that can generate a human language then present it to others for consumption.
I humbly offer my own (brutally) brief introduction to Chomskyan language theory:
Language might be better named linguistic computation. It grants a mind the ability to read meaning in symbols (represented in a language as words), in lists (arrayed as sentences), using a highly creative, non-linear calculus. When the mind is preparing thoughts (the results of the computation), they can surface for the purpose of communication as a language with seemingly infinite forms and possibilities. Percentage-wise, very little linguistic computation that transpires in our heads manifests as outward communication (a language) or action. When the mind is receiving a language, meaning is calculated, largely involuntarily. That meaning could then be the motivation for some response, involuntary or voluntary, which itself might engage linguistic computation.
“A language” is words and sentences derived and assembled within a working system of syntax and semantics that humans use to emit thoughts, however shared, and to derive meaning and thoughts through its interpretation. The power of language is demonstrated by the creative, non-linearity of sentence processing required to usefully discern meaning amid the interplay of potentially complex, often-nuanced meanings of the individual words, according to how they've been arrayed in sentences. Derived meaning is not purely the interpretation of a language, but is influenced by other factors, such as agency, experience, culture and circumstances. Mathematics, for example, is not a human language because it can only be as precise as it is deliberately intended to be. Human languages, while miracles of innate creativity, can be imprecise, not only in their ostensible meaning but also in their flexibility of syntax and grammar, and how artfully they represent the inner language - the thoughts - of the person using a language to communicate.
I concur with Chomsky that language is not only at the core of human nature, but that it is the core. He debated this point with Michel Foucault (yes, THE Michel Foucault), during which Foucault adamantly maintained that human nature is unknowable. Chomsky has been accused of being dismissive of those who don't much agree with him but he's got nothing on Foucault in this regard. You can watch the debate on YouTube here.
I do not, however, concur with Chomsky that language is externalized only through the interpretation or generation of languages. I strongly believe that meaning-making is not restricted to being allied with a language per se. I suggest that there is something more to be considered given the various, so-called languages that we casually refer to, such as the language of dance, for example, and photographs and architecture. As the symbols (movements, pictures, and structured forms) arrayed into a syntax enter our brains, our meaning-engine engages and we respond. We might respond non-linguistically by feeling a particular emotion, or by conjuring a vision of a future in which a desire is manifest. We could choose to labouriously create that vision physically, whether through a carved stone, a physical movement, a kind act, or a chunk of software (code) that solves a natty problem. We can interpret and conjure meaning without involving a human language; we can communicate non-linguistically.
To complicate this discussion, I suggest also that non-human beings (animate life forms, not plants) possess the basis of language as evidenced by their ability to survive in their own subjective worlds. A wolf can sniff at a trail and then react by deriving meaning from the age and nature of the scent. The derived meaning could represent food or danger or nothing of particular interest. (As I chase frantic ants around my kitchen counter with my finger, I can't help but notice that even they understand what is liable to happen next.) The lone wolf could then relay the derived meaning, through meaningful behaviour, to the pack who are liable to respond in kind.
So, rather than being presumptuous enough to actually disagree with Chomsky, I offer that while not necessarily linguistic in a strict sense, our ability with complex and nuanced symbolic representations, whether we are interpreting or creating meaning, doesn’t make sense without the effect of Chomskyan language. I suggest that language - that inner linguistic computer - influences all forms of communication, which can transpire through media-borne transactions of any kind.