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Chapter 2 - Language as an Inner/Cognitive Tool

from Part I - Language and Its Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2023

Anna M. Borghi
Anna M. Borghi
Affiliation:
University of Rome
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Summary

Chapter 2 develops the idea that language operates as an inner tool, enhancing cognition. The first part focuses on inner speech, and the second on language as a way to access meaning. I describe inner speech and outline the history of the concept focusing on the traditions started by Vygotsky and Baddeley. I describe the main methods to investigate it, from questionnaires to experiments, the debate on whether inner speech involves articulation, and its functions for memory and metacognition. I then illustrate inner speech’s neural bases and evidence that different kinds of inner speech exist. In the second part, I discuss how embodied/grounded, distributional, and hybrid views intend meaning. Language might work as a shortcut to access meaning and enhance our cognition, providing an efficient way to access simulations, respond to contextual challenges, and, more generally, a new way of being in the world.

Keywords

inner speechVygotskyworking memoryarticulationvarieties of inner speechsimulationlanguage as shortcutembodied/grounded cognitiondistributional semanticshybrid views
Type
Chapter
Information
The Freedom of Words
Abstractness and the Power of Language
 , pp. 52 - 85
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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