How Language Makes Meaning : Embodiment and Conjoined Antonymy

Colston, Herbert L.

Cambridge University Press（2019/11発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 300 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781108421652
• DDC分類 401.43

Full Description

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.

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.