The Social Origins of Language
Series: Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language; 19;
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 26 June 2014
- ISBN 9780199665327
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages454 pages
- Size 235x162x33 mm
- Weight 838 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
This book presents a new perspective on the origins of language, and highlights the key role of social and cultural dynamics in driving language evolution. It considers, among other questions, the role of gesture in communication, mimesis, play, dance, and song in extant hunter-gatherer communities, and the time-frame for language evolution.
MoreLong description:
This book offers an exciting new perspective on the origins of language. Language is conceptualized as a collective invention, on the model of writing or the wheel, and the book places social and cultural dynamics at the centre of its evolution: language emerged and further developed in human communities already suffused with meaning and communication, mimesis, ritual, song and dance, alloparenting, new divisions of labour and revolutionary changes in social relations. The book thus challenges assumptions about the causal relations between genes, capacities, social communication and innovation: the biological capacities are taken to evolve incrementally on the basis of cognitive plasticity, in a process that recruits previous adaptations and fine-tunes them to serve novel communicative ends. Topics include the ability brought about by language to tell lies, that must have confronted our ancestors with new problems of public trust; the dynamics of social-cognitive co-evolution; the role of gesture and mimesis in linguistic communication; studies of how monkeys and apes express their feelings or thoughts; play, laughter, dance, song, ritual and other social displays among extant hunter-gatherers; the social nature of language acquisition and innovation; normativity and the emergence of linguistic norms; the interaction of language and emotions; and novel perspectives on the time-frame for language evolution. The contributors are leading international scholars from linguistics, anthropology, palaeontology, primatology, psychology, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, archaeology, and cognitive science.
MoreTable of Contents:
Introduction: A social perspective on how language began
PART 1 Theoretical Foundations
Why we need to move from gene-culture co-evolution to culturally-driven co-evolution
Niche construction and semiosis: Biocultural and social dynamics
Signal evolution and the social brain
How can a social theory of language evolution be grounded in evidence?
PART 2 Language as a Collective Object
The 'poly-modalic' nature of utterances and its relevance for inquiring into language origins
BaYaka Pygmy multi-modal and mimetic communication traditions
Language presupposes an enchronic infrastructure for social interaction
The instruction of imagination: Language and its evolution as a communication technology
PART 3 Apes and People, Past and Present
Chimpanzee grooming gestures and sounds: What might they tell us about how language evolved?
Vocal communication and social awareness in chimpanzees and bonobos
Why humans and not apes: The social preconditions for the emergence of language
Language and collective fiction: From children's pretence to social institutions
The time frame of the emergence of modern language and its implications
The evolution of ritual as a process of sexual selection
The red thread: Pigment use and the evolution of collective ritual
Language and symbolic culture: An outcome of hunter-gatherer reverse dominance
PART 4 The Social Origins of Language
The co-evolution of human intersubjectivity, morality, and language
Forever united: The co-evolution of language and normativity
Why talk?
Vocal deception, laughter, and the linguistic significance of reverse dominance
PART 5 The Journey Thereafter
Memory, imagination, and the evolution of modern language
Transmission biases in the cultural evolution of language: Towards an explanatory framework
Breaking down false barriers to understanding
