How Language Makes Meaning - Embodiment and Conjoined Antonymy

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.

List of contents

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.

About the author

Herbert L. Colston is Professor and Chair for the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Summary

This book shows how language's key function is to enable human social interaction, a function that is motivated by powerful brain mechanisms. Written for researchers and graduate students, it provides a framework for observing how language operates and explains how the meaning-making components of language interact.

Product details

• Authors: Herbert L. Colston, Herbert L. (University of Alberta) Colston, Colston Herbert L.
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2022
• EAN: 9781009246026
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0924602-6
• No. of pages: 301
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Non-fiction book > Psychology, esoterics, spirituality, anthroposophy > Psychology: general, reference works; PSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, Cognition & cognitive psychology, Psycholinguistics, Cognition and cognitive psychology, Psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics