More Than Words: How Talking Sharpens the Mind and Shapes Our World

"This beautifully written book by Maryellen MacDonald demonstrates how 'word-work' shapes both our experience of the world and the very brain that produced our capacity to articulate and generate our best thoughts."
—MARYANNE WOLF, author of Proust and the Squid and Reader Come Home

Humans are the only species that can transform internal ideas into talk, whether through speech, writing, or sign language. But why do we have this almost magical, special talent? It turns out that while talking allows us to share ideas and connect with one another, it isn’t just for communication. Other benefits of talking stem from the fact that it is hard work: we can understand speech up to 50 percent faster than we can create it ourselves. The complex processes in the brain that allow us to talk spill over and impact other areas of our lives in surprising ways. In this groundbreaking book, Maryellen MacDonald, a researcher and psycholinguist, explores the marvel and mental task of talking and offers an eye-opening look at how it shapes everything from our attention, memory, and the way we learn to how we regulate our emotions and our cognitive health as we age. Filled with fascinating insights, More Than Words reveals:

• how languages all over the world bend to the demands of talking
• how talking helps us set goals and acts as a learning engine
• the link between speech patterns and mental illness
• why conversations in classrooms are crucial
• how talking can amplify the talker’s political polarization
• how talking can slow cognitive decline as we age

Engaging and illuminating, More Than Words has lessons that have the power to transform education policy, parenting, psychology, and more. It is a sweeping and provocative look at a fundamental human behavior we take for granted.

Maryellen MacDonald is the Donald P. Hayes Professor (emerit) of Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Wisconsin−Madison. She is a cognitive scientist with a focus on psycholinguistics, the study of how we comprehend, produce, and learn languages. She has researched the impact of language in children, young adults, elderly adults, and patients with Alzheimer’s disease, as well as language production in six different languages. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.