Embodiment
Table of contents
In the course of the 20th century and due to a combination of a growing unrest under the dominance of Cartesianism, the consolidation of evolution theory and the emergence of Gestalt psychology, the literature on embodiment kicked off in all domains dealing with perception, cognition and language. Philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, linguists and social scientists have continued to draw on each other’s work since, convinced of the fact that the notoriously difficult relationship these phenomena have had with their material carriers for hundreds of years, should be grounded in a highly problematic dualism of mind and body, and not in reality. In this entry it is my aim to give the reader some preliminary acquaintance with different attempts at theories of embodied cognition and language. The scope will cover all approaches that are commonly referred to in the embodiment literature and will range from accounts that are almost metaphysical to applied linguistic theory.