[T]hey could not say much because of his presence. But it did not greatly matter, for their past was now rich enough to have given them aprivate language; [...]
In daily life, the Kallawaya use Spanish or Aymara, but when discussing the medicinal plants central to their role as healers, the men speak their ownprivate language.
Aprivate language was not merely a language contingently spoken by one person. . . . Aprivate language was meant to be be semantically and necessarily private: one whose symbols could by definition be "understood only by the speaker".
1995 October 6, Pepe Karmel, “Art in Review”, inNew York Times, retrieved29 April 2014:
Back in the 1960's, art-world philosophers liked to cite Wittgenstein's contention that there can be no such thing as aprivate language, because the meaning of words is determined by their shared public usage.
But aprivate language—one that is spoken and understood by only one person—is a contradiction in terms. The concept of meaning is a public concept. And language is a public phenomenon.
