Enacting communication. Evidence supporting an embodied theory of language

Abstract

Over the last few decades the body has been ignored in theories of mind. Recently, however, several conceptions concerning the way the body shapes the mind have been developed (LAKOFF 1987; VARELA, THOMSON, & ROSCH 1991; HURLEY 1998; BARSALOU 1999; NOA 2004; THOMSON 2007). Common among these theories is the idea that the body plays a critical role in shaping our experiential and cognitive life. Along this line of thought, the embodied theory of language states that conceptual and linguistic structures are shaped by the attributes of our perceptive skills and bodily dynamics, hence, our motor activity cannot be considered as separated from our linguistic abilities. As any other scientific theory, the embodied theory of language must face the burden of the empirical proof. If language cognition is related with the features of our body, then experimental alteration of bodily parameters should produce measurable changes on the overt linguistic behavior and vice versa. The aim of this article is to review a wide ensemble of empirical findings, from behavioral to brain studies, concerning the existing relationships between the body and language understanding. After an introduction of several empirical outcomes from the fields of cognitive linguistics and neuroscience, my conclusion focuses on the necessity to give up a strictly modular conception of our communicative skills and proposes to extend an enactive approach from the study of perception to cognitive linguistics.