Over at the website of the International Cognition and Culture Institute there’s a book club on Thom Scott-Phillips 2014 book “Speaking Our Minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special” (Thom has written a guest post for Replicated Typo previewing the book, which you can find here).
As of now, there are 16 responses on the blog from various reseachers from different disciplines along with responses by Thom.
Researchers who have commented on various aspects of “Speaking Our Minds” include, for example,
- the founders of Relevance Theory,
- Dan Sperber (“Key Notions in the Study ofC ommunication”)
- Deirdre Wilson (“Natural language and the language of thought”)
- primatologist
- Katja Liebal (“A closer look at communication among our closest relatives”)
- philosophers
- Richard Moore (“Why do children but not apes acquire language?”)
- and Liz Irvine (“Combinatoriality and codes”)
- evolutionary linguists
- Kenny Smith (“Communication, culture, and biology in the evolution of language”)
- and Bart de Boer (“Enjoyable, but doesn’t solve the mystery))
And many others.
Well worth a a read, go check it out!
Thanks for the plug! The last of the commentaries has gone up now (I still need to reply to a couple of them). Note that anybody can comment below the line, so please feel free to join in.