The Embodiment of Language

Summary

Meaning is not primarily linguistic but arises from sensory, motor, and affective processes rooted in the body and brain. This article surveys embodied structures of meaning-making—such as body-part projections, perceptual concepts, image schemas, emotions, body-based grammatical constructions, and conceptual metaphors—as understood through simulation semantics, embodied construction grammar, and neural theory of language. It argues that the four Es of cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) should be supplemented with three more: emotional, evolutionary, and exaptative.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract Analytic philosophy of language was originally based on a fundamentally disembodied view of meaning and language. In contrast, research in cognitive linguistics and neuroscience emphasizes the central role of the body and brain in shaping meaning, concepts, and thought. Meaning is not, in the first instance, linguistic. Instead, language depends on and recruits prior sensory, motor, and affective processes. This article surveys some of the more important embodied structures and processes of meaning-making that give rise to the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of natural languages. This includes body-part projections, perceptual concepts, image schemas, emotions, body-based grammatical constructions, and conceptual metaphors, as those are understood from the perspective of simulation semantics, embodied construction grammar, and the neural theory of language. In addition to the four Es of cognition—embodied, embedded, enactive, extended—we need to add three more Es—emotional, evolutionary, and exaptative.