A new picture of language - Many Minds
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- Title
- A new picture of language
- Description
- <p class="MsoNormal"><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> If you've taken Linguistics 101, you know what language is. It's a system for conveying meaning through speech. We build words out of sounds, and then complex ideas out of those words. Remarkably, the relationship between the sounds and the meanings they convey is purely arbitrary. Human language consists, in other words, of abstract symbols. Now, of course, there are also sign languages, but these operate in the same way, just in different medium. This, anyway, is the view of language that has dominated and defined linguistics for many decades. But some think this it gets some pretty fundamental things, pretty wrong. Some think we need a new picture of language altogether.</span><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> My guest today is</span> <a href= "https://www.visuallanguagelab.com/neilcohn"><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Dr. Neil Cohn</span></a><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">. Neil is Associate Professor at the Tilburg Center for Communication and Cognition, in the Netherlands; he is also the director of the</span> <a href= "https://www.visuallanguagelab.com/"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Visual Language Lab</span></a> <span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> at Tilburg. For about two decades, Neil has been studying the rich properties of graphic systems—especially comics—and has built an argument that some constitute full-blown languages. His latest book, co-authored with, Joost Schilperoord, is titled</span> <a href="https://www.visuallanguagelab.com/mlf"><em><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> A Multimodal Language Faculty</span></em></a><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">. It challenges that longstanding, deeply held view of what language is. Instead, the book argues that the human language capacity combines three different modalities—the vocal modality (as in speech), the bodily modality (as in gesture), and the graphic modality (as in comics and other visual narratives). And each of these modalities is naturally able to support full-blown languages.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Here, Neil and I talk about the basic assumptions of modern linguistics and where those assumptions come from. We discuss the idea that there are three expressive modalities that come naturally to humans, with each modality optimized for certain kinds of meaning. We talk about Neil's career, not only as an academic, but as an illustrator. We discuss cross-cultural differences and similarities in comics, and how comics have changed over the last century. And, finally, we consider how Neil's framework challenges current theorizing about the evolution of language. Along the way, Neil and I touch on sign languages and homesign systems, visual style vs visual language, Peircean semiotics, animal tracks, cave art, emoji, upfixes, sand drawing, Manga, the refrain "I can't draw," and the idea that the graphic modality is the only one that's truly unique to our species. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> After this episode we'll be taking a bit of a summer break, but we'll be posting some old favorites to tide you over. Alright friends, hope you enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Neil Cohn. Enjoy!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style= "font-family: 'Ti
- Publication Date
- 2024-06-26T16:29:00+00:00
- Status
- completed
- Website
- https://manyminds.libsyn.com/a-new-picture-of-language
- Length
- 115:10
- File
- /podcasts/Many Minds/1719419340-4833.mp3
- Size
- 92.27 MB
- Bitrate
- 109-CBR
- Channels
- 2
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