Reenactment: An embodied cognition approach to meaning and linguistic content [Book Review]
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 11 (4):583-598 (2012)
Abstract
A central finding in experimental research identified with Embodied Cognition (EC) is that understanding actions involves their embodied simulation, i.e. executing some processes involved in performing these actions. Extending these findings, I argue that reenactment – the overt embodied simulation of actions and practices, including especially communicative actions and practices, within utterances – makes it possible to forge an integrated EC-based account of linguistic meaning. In particular, I argue: (a) that remote entities can be referred to by reenacting actions performed with them; (b) that the use of grammatical constructions can be conceived of as the reenactment of linguistic action routines; (c) that complex enunciational structures (reported speech, irony, etc.) involve a separate level of reenactment, on which characters are presented as interacting with one another within the utterance; (d) that the segmentation of long utterances into shorter units involves the reenactment of brief audience interventions between units; and (e) that the overall meaning of an utterance can be stated in reenactment terms. The notion of reenactment provides a conceptual framework for accounting for aspects of language that are usually thought to be outside the reach of EC in an EC framework, thus supporting a view of meaning and linguistic content as thoroughly grounded in action and interaction.
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Revision history

Metaphors We Live By.Lakoff, George
Action in Perception.Noë, Alva
How to Do Things with Words.Austin, J. L.
The Brain's Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System in Conceptual Knowledge.Gallese, Vittorio & Lakoff, George
Six Views of Embodied Cognition.Wilson, Margaret
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2011-09-09
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2011-09-09
Total downloads
238 ( #10,892 of 37,117 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
23 ( #15,101 of 37,117 )
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