15-de Vega-Chap15

Over the last decades a divide seems to have emerged in the cognitive sciences between embodied and symbolic approaches to language understanding. Embodied approaches argue that language comprehension requires activation of our experiences with the world, whereas symbolic approaches argue that language comprehension relies on interdependencies of words. The current paper argues that language comprehension is both embodied and symbolic. According to the symbol interdependency hypothesis comprehenders can ultimately ground symbols, but they also can rely on interdependencies across symbols as a shortcut to the meaning of words. An overview is given of the evidence supporting this hypothesis suggesting that embodied representations are activated under certain conditions and ultimately tend to be encoded in language structures. Attempts to answer the question to what extent language comprehension is embodied or symbolic are not new. For instance, around 360 BC, Plato describes a discussion between Cratylus, Hermogenes, and Socrates, with Socrates asking: