Language, Feeling, and the Brain: The Evocative Vector - Hardcover

Dan Shanahan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765803542 ISBN 13: 9780765803542

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Linguistic theory since the Cognitive Revolution has fol- lowed one of the premises of that revolution by largely sidelining the issue of emotions and concentrating on those aspects of language that are more strictly cognitive. However, during the last ten years research in cognitive science, especially in neuropsychology, has begun to fill in the gaps left by the exclusion of emotions from cognitive research. The work of those like Oatley, Zajonc, Damasio, and LeDoux, to name a few, has demonstrated both that it is possible to construct models of how emotions play into the workings of the psyche and that they are necessary in giving us a balanced view of the human mind.

Language, Feeling, and the Brain attempts to apply the fruits of this new research in emotion to our understanding of language itself. Building on Karl Pribram's integrated model of emotions and motivations, the book takes an eclectic approach to explaining how emotions contribute to the nature of language, drawing on research done in neuropsychology, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, anthropology, and related fields. Its aim is to construct a propositional model for how the emotions may have contributed to the emergence of symbolic formation, most especially in the forms of gesture and speech, and how identifying that emotional influence sheds new light on everything we have had to say about language itself, from lexis and grammar to culture and literature.

About this title

About the Author:

Dan Shanahan is professor of communication at the Humanities Faculty of Charles University in Prague. He was twice Senior Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies, and has served on faculties in Paris and the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. His first book was Towards a Genealogy of Individualism, and his work on philosophy and language has appeared in such journals as Partisan Review, the Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, and Acta Analytica, as well as in the International Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

Review:

"Language, Feeling, and the Brain by Daniel Shanahan applies this new research in emotion to construct a model for how the emotions contribute to the emergence of symbolic forms and how identifying that emotional influence could shed new light on all previous conceptions of language, culture, ideology, religion and literature."
---Robert Inchausti, Tikkun Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0765803542
• ISBN 13: 9780765803542
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 260