Description
Book SynopsisThe book suggests a new perspective on the essence of human language. This enormous achievement of our species is best characterized as a communication technology - not unlike the social media on the Net today - that was collectively invented by ancient humans for a very particular communicative function: the instruction of imagination. All other systems of communication in the biological world target the interlocutors'' senses; language allows speakers to systematically instruct their interlocutors in the process of imagining the intended meaning - instead of directly experiencing it. This revolutionary function has changed human life forever, and in the book it operates as a unifying concept around which a new general theory of language gradually emerges. Dor identifies a set of fundamental problems in the linguistic sciences - the nature of words, the complexities of syntax, the interface between semantics and pragmatics, the causal relationship between language and thought, languag
Trade ReviewFor anyone interested in language and how it works in modern day society, Dor offers a compelling account of competing positions in discourse linguistics...Overall, Dor's book has the potential to establish a new foundation for a communicative socially-based linguistic theory. Dor offers a framework for bringing together the two sides of linguistics which typically form psycholinguistics and socio-linguistics, and the book is about unpacking the tensions across the cognitive-social divide that can be said to be at play in trying to theorize new constructs. * Gavin Budge, The British Society for Literature and Science *
Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. The Functional Specificity of Language ; 3. How the Technology Works ; 4. Sign and Meaning ; 5. The Spiral of Relativity ; 6. Production and Comprehension ; 7. The Social Autonomy of Syntax ; 8. The Universality of Diversity ; 9. Acquisition as a Collective Enterprise ; 10. The Evolution of Language and its Users ; 11. Conclusion ; References
