Just How Important Is Language?

Above this paragraph is the explanation of what it is like to be prosecuted. How so? It's blank space, after all.
Well, the man in question is deaf, mute, and illiterate in Spanish and American sign language. And he's being prosecuted as a drug mule. And, if you can wrap your head around it, that blank space above us doesn't show a lack of intelligence, but, rather, an absolute void in the space where language would be. This is a man without language.
How does anyone function without some form of language or of grammar, you ask? What does such a person do?

Well, in this case, much to the chagrin of prosecutors, the man makes the perfect, unbreakable, "brings-"strong-and-silent-type"-to-a-whole-new-level" drug mule.

In my personal opinion, just how many more there could be like him or how these individuals get this way are not the most important questions to ask. The world has so many billions of possibilities for the turnout of someone's life that I am compelled to argue that we ought not even be surprised by this man's ultimate illiteracy. To me, it is instead what we can gather about human expression from this case that is most fascinating and beneficial.

Unfortunately for Juan Jose Gonzalez Luna, this court case has cast a light not only on his less-than-angelic activity, but also on a new way of looking at the subject of human communication that has rarely, if ever, been presented in this light. This situation brings up many questions: are words more effective than images in human brains, in general, outside of their obvious advantage in rapid communication? In other words, given that Luna only has images and pantomime to display his thoughts or process the actions of others, does this imply that images are just as effective as words in processing images within the human brain? Granted, all brains are unique in how they best receive and analyze information, but what can we learn from this man?
In political parties, is yelling across the aisle something that's going to gain you supporters, or will a graph or presentation proving the worth of your opinions have much more success at the same task? There are both auditory and visual learners, and many times, learning which is simply visual is determined "artistic" and, sadly, less worthy of our esteem than lectures on more conventional, strictly job world-oriented subjects.
If you had no voice, no hearing, and seemingly no way of making yourself understood at all times by at least one person in the world, how would you choose to express yourself. I feel as though that would open up more time to artistic musings and exploration--assuming one is less expected to contribute to the continuing mechanics of society when they simply cannot communicate, there could be an incredible amount of time dedicated toward digging up one's creativity and developing new ways to perceive and interpret the world. Therefore, although we may determine individuals like Luna as lesser contributors to conventional society, people with similar conditions to his could be much-overlooked idea tanks. And, perhaps most importantly, if that is the true, then how to we as a society access the information floating around in mute, illiterate, deaf individuals?
This is a very new topic to me, and I simply found its subject matter very conducive to hypothesizing and analyzing the nature of our perception of language. If you have any ideas of your own on the possible efficacy or secret benefits to having such a condition, please let me know! Let's let this topic build up steam and really grow.