my mind on books

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher (Metropolitan Books, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture

Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for “blue”?

Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a “she”—becomes a “he” once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery.

See also: recent New York Times article based on this book, Neuroanthropology.net response to NY Times article, Guy Deutscher’s website

The Language of Pain: Finding Words, Compassion, and Relief by David Biro (W.W. Norton & Co, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

“…pain, and stories of pain, provide us with an extraordinary opportunity to witness the way language and meaning come into being.” p 139

To counter the isolation and silence that are often experienced by people in pain, physician Biro draws on literary accounts, memoirs and works of art to explore metaphor as a way of developing a language of pain. The three types of metaphor he discusses are agency (an external force causing pain), mirror (feelings projected into external objects) and X-ray (metaphors to picture interior of body).

Product description from the publisher:

David Biro breaks through the wall of silence in this impassioned, hopeful work. Pain regularly accompanies illness, as David Biro knows only too well. Faced with a bone marrow transplant, the young doctor was determined to study his pain but found himself unable to articulate its depths, even to his doctors and wife. He has now discovered a way to break through the silent wall of suffering—physical and psychological—and wants to share it with others. In his new book, the critically acclaimed author expertly weaves together compelling stories and artwork from patients along with insights from some of our greatest thinkers, writers, and artists.

In the tradition of Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, Biro’s groundbreaking book is sure to transform our understanding of and ability to communicate pain. Language can alleviate the loneliness of pain and improve the chances that other people—family, friends, and doctors—empathize and respond most effectively. 10 illustrations

excerpt from p. 206-7

Pain is difficult to express because it isn’t necessarily connected to objects or referents in the shared, outer world. To overcome this obstacle, a person might imaginatively create a referent through metaphor. The material we have looked at during the course of the book, from the actual words of patients to works of fiction and art, offers three strategies for the creation of such referents. First, an agent in the outside world can be identified as acting against a person and causing pain. Next, the world can be remade to experience pain and empathize with a sufferer. And finally, the body can be opened up, enabling the sufferer to picture the internal source of pain.

Related works:

Biro cites Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World as a prime inspiration for his book.

Perceptions of Pain grew out of artist Deborah Padfield’s work with pain clinic patients. Some images from the book are reproduced in Chapter 9 of Biro’s book.

James Geary’s website

Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans by Derek Bickerton (Hill & Wang, 2009)

Product description from the publisher:

How language evolved has been called “the hardest problem in science.” In Adam’s Tongue, Derek Bickerton—long a leading authority in this field—shows how and why previous attempts to solve that problem have fallen short. Taking cues from topics as diverse as the foraging strategies of ants, the distribution of large prehistoric herbivores, and the construction of ecological niches, Bickerton produces a dazzling new alternative to the conventional wisdom. Language is unique to humans, but it isn’t the only thing that sets us apart from other species—our cognitive powers are qualitatively different. So could there be two separate discontinuities between humans and the rest of nature? No, says Bickerton; he shows how the mere possession of symbolic units—words—automatically opened a new and different cognitive universe, one that yielded novel innovations ranging from barbed arrowheads to the Apollo spacecraft. Written in Bickerton’s lucid and irreverent style, this book is the first that thoroughly integrates the story of how language evolved with the story of how humans evolved. Sure to be controversial, it will make indispensable reading both for experts in the field and for every reader who has ever wondered how a species as remarkable as ours could have come into existence.

See also: review at New Scientist

Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language by Dean Falk (Basic Books, 2009).

from the publisher:

Description

Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool making, and warfare, and eventually developed into spoken language. In Finding Our Tongues, Dean Falk overturns this established idea, offering a daring new theory that springs from a simple observation: parents all over the world, in all cultures, talk to infants by using baby talk or “Motherese.” Falk shows how Motherese developed as a way of reassuring babies when mothers had to put them down in order to do work. The melodic vocalizations of early Motherese not only provided the basis of language but also contributed to the growth of music and art. Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with classic anthropology, Falk offers a potent challenge to conventional wisdom about the emergence of human language.