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Embodied and Hybrid Theories of Abstract Concepts and Words

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Words as Social Tools: An Embodied View on Abstract Concepts

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Abstract

The chapter overviews the most important recent theories of abstract concepts. We argue that it is still an open issue whether a unifying theory explaining all abstract concepts is possible. We highlight the strengths and limitations of each theory and underline their similarities and differences from the WAT proposal. First, we focus on embodied cognition theories according to which abstract and concrete concepts do not differ as they are both grounded in action, emotion, and force dynamics. Then, we illustrate theories which, even if maintaining an embodied stance, argue that abstract and concrete concepts are grounded on different aspects, for example situations versus perceptual properties and direct experience versus metaphors. Finally, we describe approaches arguing for the necessity of a double representation, some of which originate from the classical theory of Paivio. In line with all other embodied proposals, according to WAT, all concepts, not only concrete ones, are embodied and grounded. As other theories, WAT stresses the fact that the grounding of abstract concepts differs from that of concrete ones: Abstract concepts activate more situations, more linguistic information, and more emotions compared to concrete concepts, which evoke more sensorimotor information. In line with distributional models and similarly to hybrid models, WAT stresses the role of language for abstract concepts representation. However, it does not equate the role of language only to the information derived from word associations in a distributed network. WAT intends language in a complex sense, as a social experience which involves our body and triggers our emotions.

To say it another way, thinking, however abstract, originates in an embodied subjectivity, at once overdetermined and permeable to contingent events.

Teresa de Lauretis

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Anna M. Borghi

  2. Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy

    Anna M. Borghi

  3. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Ferdinand Binkofski

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  1. Anna M. Borghi
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Borghi, A.M., Binkofski, F. (2014). Embodied and Hybrid Theories of Abstract Concepts and Words. In: Words as Social Tools: An Embodied View on Abstract Concepts. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9539-0_3

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