Towards a motion-sensitive linguistics: Neurocognitive synergies between language and ongoing actions

GARCÍA, ADOLFO M.

Wollongong

Congreso; 44th International Systemic Functional Congress; 2017

University of Wollongong

There is more to language than the object of linguistics. Language pervades our everyday life and, among many other things, it affects our inner and outer bodily dynamics. In particular, language processing is often accompanied by deliberate hand movements: as you get ready to slide your debit card into an ATM machine, you read the instruction ?swipe here?; later, as you open the door to the cafeteria, you face a sign that reads ?push?; once inside, a colleague at a nearby table says ?hi? and you wave at him? These verbal and bodily events, which occur simultaneously or in temporal proximity, influence each other and give us hints on the neural organization of linguistic systems. In this talk, I will present results from various experiments addressing this issue via behavioral and neuroscientific methods. The evidence motivates a novel theoretical proposal: the Hand-Action-Network Dynamic Language Embodiment (HANDLE) model. Based on well-established neurocognitive principles, HANDLE accounts for key aspects of motor-language coupling, namely, (i) effect variability, (ii) temporal dynamicity, (iii) modulation by verbal variables, (iv) sensitivity to motor complexity, and (v) representational granularity. Crucially, HANDLE explains when language-induced motor resonance during manual actions yields interference, facilitation, and null effects, shedding light on the situated dynamics of language use. This framework has non-trivial implications for modeling in systemic functional linguistics, and it paves the way for new basic and translational research in the field.