Feeling, Thinking, and Talking: How the Embodied Brain Shapes Everyday Communication

Description

The way the brain, body, and mind interact with social structure to shape communication has so far not received the attention it deserves. This book addresses this gap by providing a novel account of communication as a social, biological and neurological force. Combining theories from communication studies and psycholinguistics, and drawing on biological and evolutionary perspectives, it shows how communication is inherently both biological and social, and that language and the neural systems that support it have evolved in response to a complex social environment. It introduces a clear set of terms based on current research, and illustrates key concepts using real-life examples from everyday conversation - speaking to a number of current debates around the evolutionary and biological basis of language, and the relationship between language, cognition, and environment. Thought provoking and engaging, it will change the way we think about the relationship between communication and cognition.

L. David Ritchie is Professor of Communication at Portland State University. He is the author of four books, including three on metaphor theory, and has contributed extensively to journals and edited volumes.

'Feeling, Thinking, and Talking is an enlightening piece of work on the nature of communication, language, and cognition, written in accessible but, at the same time, expert language, constituting welcome reading material for both students and scholars in the fields of language and communication studies.' Ana Cristina Pelosi, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Federal University of Ceara - Brazil