How Language Makes Meaning
Embodiment and Conjoined Antonymy

Explains the complexities of how language supports human social interaction using the framework of embodied cognition.

Herbert L. Colston (Author)

9781108421652, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 November 2019

300 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'This book breaks new ground by furnishing familiar models of 'meaning making' with new outfits. It provides a guided tour through the adjacent territories of linguistics and psychology, with abundant examples from current language-in-use. Importantly, the book also builds a bridge between recent experimental psycholinguistic findings and classical semiotic conceptualization.' Jacob L. Mey, Syddansk Universitet

Language's key function is to enable human social interaction, for which people are motivated to engage by powerful brain mechanisms. This book integrates recent work on embodied simulations, traditional meaning-making processes and a myriad of semantic and other meaning contributors to formulate a new model of how language functions following a pattern of conjoined antonymy. It investigates how embodied simulations,semantic information, deviation, omission, indirectness, figurativity, language play, and other processes leverage rich meaning from only a few words by using inherently biological, cognitive and social frameworks. The interaction of these meaning-making components of language is described and a language-functioning model based on recent neuroscientific research is laid out to allow for a more complete understanding of how language operates.

1. The coin toss
2. Deviance
3. Omission
4. Imprecision
5. Indirectness
6. Figurativeness
7. Language play
8. The social media
9. The art of language
10. The end game
Epilogue: a clearing revealing an eclipse
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Psycholinguistics [CFD]