that's a good point. i supposed then that the language would really be defined in terms of its grammar (for rules to produce meaningful sentences), rather than the actual alphabet (or binary strings) it uses. but then why do some people say "assembly language" when assembly language is really nothing but a set of symbols with a one-to-one correspondence with the instructions of a particular cpu? you cannot create new cpu instructions out of the blue using some grammar of a language, there are only a finite number of sentences (instructions). perhaps it is an abuse of the word "language" in this case?
