In among these topics, we always had extensive discussions about language and meaning, about the source of words, and about how changing words, even word order, can change meaning. It's no wonder to ...

Research in language philosophy has long interrogated the interplay between normativity and meaning. Central debates focus on how linguistic practices are governed by norms that not only delineate ...

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” observed philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1922. We might ask, accordingly, how does language shape reality, arbitrating human experience of ...

Much has been said about the remarkable ability humans have to extract meaning from language. That ability is remarkable indeed. In a split second, we perceive a spoken or written word and immediately ...

This is your brain on stories. By tracking the blood flow in people’s brains as they listened to a storytelling radio show, scientists at UC Berkeley have mapped out where the meanings associated with ...

(RNS) — In 1712, Jonathan Swift, the Anglican clergyman most famous for his brilliant satire, published “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue.” Complaining that the ...

The technology to decode our thoughts is drawing ever closer. Neuroscientists at the University of Texas have for the first time decoded data from non-invasive brain scans and used them to reconstruct ...

The meaning of words, and the way we used them, change all the time — and that's OK with linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University. He writes about how the English language has evolved in his new ...