The Freedom of Words: Abstractness and the Power of Language

This book will tell the story of the power of words and of how this power is particularly crucial for abstract concepts and the words that express them – words like "fantastic," "freedom," "furious," and "ideas." In recent years, the topic of abstract concepts has become increasingly debated, as testified by the special issues on the subject (e.g., Borghi, Barca, Binkofski & Tummolini, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science, 2018; Bolognesi & Steen, Topics in Cognitive Science, 2018; Borghi, Shaki & Fischer, Psychological Research, 2022). Finally, a recently edited book (Bolognesi & Steen, 2019) and two monographs focus on the theme (Borghi & Binkofski, 2014; Dove, 2022). The rising interest in abstract concepts is partially due to the increasing success of embodied and grounded views of cognition (e.g., Robinson & Thomas, 2021). According to some embodied theories, concepts encode bodily states during acquisition and use (Myachykov et al., 2014). Grounded views of cognition, more general, propose that cognition involves not only bodily states but also physical and social situations (Barsalou, 2008; 2016; Pezzulo et al., 2011). Compelling evidence now supports these views. Still, in the domain of categorization and language, this evidence is mainly confined to concrete concepts and words (e.g., nouns of manipulable objects, action verbs). Demonstrating that abstract concepts like "freedom" are also embodied and grounded is a crucial challenge. In recent years, new views have emerged, showing that to account for abstract concepts, we need to posit that they are not only grounded in the sensorimotor and interoceptive systems but also in the emotional, linguistic, and social systems. Here I will propose that, in order to build a full-fledged theory of abstract concepts, researchers have to seriously consider not only the body but also language and social interaction. In doing this, I will also consider the perspective of more radical embodied views, the enactivist ones. These views negate that language encodes meaning. Rather, they propose that we are linguistic bodies who participate in changing how we constitute ourselves in the language (Di Paolo et al., 2018). The book will thus deal with abstract concepts and words, how they are acquired and represented in the brain, their varieties, and the flexibility and contextual dependency that characterizes them. Unlike the (few) other books on abstract concepts present in the literature, this book will not focus only on abstract concepts. It will be primarily a book on language and its potentialities. I will try to flesh out how these potentialities have one of their maximal expressions in forming the capability for abstractness and in the masterful use of abstract language. At the same time, this book is not an exhaustive book on language and its functions. Many excellent books exist that deal with language. The volume aims to outline some ways in which language shapes our mind and life and show that this influence of language is particularly evident if we consider abstract concepts and words.