my mind on books

Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning by Benjamin K. Bergen (Basic Books, 2012)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – 15 Nov 2012)

Book description from the publisher:

Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning—a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things—from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs. And when you talk, your listener fills in lots of details you didn’t mention—the curliness of the dog’s fur or the vast statuary on the grounds of the French palace. What’s the trick behind this magic? How does meaning work?

In Louder than Words, cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning. When we hear words and sentences, Bergen contends, we engage the parts of our brain that we use for perception and action, repurposing these evolutionarily older networks to create simulations in our minds. These embodied simulations, as they’re called, are what makes it possible for us to become better baseball players by merely visualizing a well-executed swing; what allows us to remember which cupboard the diapers are in without looking, and what makes it so hard to talk on a cell phone while we’re driving on the highway. Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act.

Through whimsical examples and ingenious experiments, Bergen leads us on a virtual tour of the new science of embodied cognition. A brilliant account of our human capacity to understand language, Louder than Words will profoundly change how you read, speak, and listen.

Google Books preview:

See also: Author’s webpage

Genesis of Symbolic Thought by Alan Barnard (Columbia University Press, 2012)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Symbolic thought is what makes us human. Claude Lévi-Strauss stated that we can never know the genesis of symbolic thought, but in this powerful new study Alan Barnard argues that we can. Continuing the line of analysis initiated in Social Anthropology and Human Origins (Cambridge University Press, 2011), The Genesis of Symbolic Thought applies ideas from social anthropology, old and new, to understand some of the areas also being explored in fields as diverse as archaeology, linguistics, genetics and neuroscience. Barnard aims to answer questions including: when and why did language come into being? What was the earliest religion? And what form did social organization take before humanity dispersed from the African continent? Rejecting the notion of hunter-gatherers as ‘primitive’, Barnard hails the great sophistication of the complex means of their linguistic and symbolic expression and places the possible origin of symbolic thought at as early as 130,000 years ago.

The Language of Life: How Communication Drives Human Evolution by James Lull and Eduardo Neiva (Prometheus Books, 2012)

(amazon.co.uk – 22 May 2012)

Book description from the publisher:

Introducing “evolutionary communication” and a brilliant interpretation of life

Communication in its most basic form—the sending of signals and exchange of messages within and between organisms—is the heart of evolution. From the earliest life-forms to Homo sapiens, the great chain of communication drives the evolutionary process and is the indispensable component of human culture.

That is the central message of The Language of Life. In this unique perspective on both the biological evolution of life and the human development of culture, James Lull and Eduardo Neiva explore the totality of communication processes that create and sustain biological equilibrium and social stability. The authors, two international authorities on communication and culture, argue that this ubiquitous connectivity is the elemental unity of life.

Introducing a new subdiscipline—evolutionary communication—the authors analyze the core domains of life—sheer survival, sex, culture, morality, religion, and technological change—as communications phenomena. What emerges from their analysis is a brilliant interpretation of life interconnected through communication from the basic molecular level to the most sophisticated manifestations of culture.

Challenging the boundaries of conventional approaches to cultural analysis, The Language of Life presents an original and engaging view of evolution and an encouraging prognosis for our collective future.

See also: James Lull’s website

Language: The Cultural Tool by Daniel L. Everett (Pantheon, 2012)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – 22 Mar 2012)

Book description from the publisher:

A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide.

For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety.

For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held understanding of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined.

Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.

Google books preview:

See also: Author’s website

How the Brain Got Language: The Mirror System Hypothesis by Michael A. Arbib (Oxford University Press, USA, 2012)

(amazon.co.uk – July)

Book description from the publisher:

Unlike any other species, humans can learn and use language. This book explains how the brain evolved to make language possible, through what Michael Arbib calls the Mirror System Hypothesis. Because of mirror neurons, monkeys, chimps, and humans can learn by imitation, but only “complex imitation,” which humans exhibit, is powerful enough to support the breakthrough to language. This theory provides a path from the openness of manual gesture, which we share with nonhuman primates, through the complex imitation of manual skills, pantomime, protosign (communication based on conventionalized manual gestures), and finally to protospeech. The theory explains why we humans are as capable of learning sign languages as we are of learning to speak. This fascinating book shows how cultural evolution took over from biological evolution for the transition from protolanguage to fully fledged languages. The author explains how the brain mechanisms that made the original emergence of languages possible, perhaps 100,000 years ago, are still operative today in the way children acquire language, in the way that new sign languages have emerged in recent decades, and in the historical processes of language change on a time scale from decades to centuries. Though the subject is complex, this book is highly readable, providing all the necessary background in primatology, neuroscience, and linguistics to make the book accessible to a general audience.

See also: Author’s webpage