Narrative Persuasion. A Cognitive Perspective on Language Evolution (Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, 7)

✍ Scribed by Francesco Ferretti

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 149
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book explores the evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication, focusing on narrative as its distinctive dimension. Within a framework of continuity with both the communication of our hominin predecessors and that of non-human animals, the book is about a twofold proposal. It includes the idea that (human and animal) communication has an intrinsically persuasive nature along with the hypothesis that humans developed narrative forms of communication in order to enhance their persuasive abilities. In this view, narrative persuasion becomes the feature that distinguishes human communication from animal communication. The study of the transition from animal communication to language addresses both the selective pressures that led communication for persuasive purposes to take a narrative form and the cognitive architectures and expressive systems that enabled our ancestors to cope with the selective pressures of persuasive/narrative-based communication.

Language evolution is interdisciplinary, even from the specific perspective of evolutionary pragmatics chosen here. Therefore, this book is intended for researchers working in fields such as cognitive sciences, philosophy, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and primatology. It also represents a valuable resource for advanced students in cognitive sciences, linguistics, and philosophy.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
Narrative and Persuasion
1 Persuasive Communication
1.1 Rhetoric and Pragmatics
1.1.1 Communication as Persuasive Argumentation
2 Homo Narrans
2.1 Functional Role
2.2 Stories and Arguments
3 The Plot
3.1 Time and Narrative
3.2 Time and Plot in Cognitive Psychology
4 Events
5 Narrative and Desire
5.1 Engagement and Transportation
5.2 Storytelling and Desire
6 Adaptive Rhetoric
7 Conclusions
References
Two Models of Communication
1 The Classical Thesis
1.1 The Mathematical Model of Information
1.2 Limitations of the Informative Model
1.2.1 The Confusion Between Information and Semantic Content
1.2.2 Encoding/Decoding
1.2.3 A Model of Language
2 The Manipulative Model of Animal Communication
2.1 Selfishness vs. Cooperation
2.2 Responses to Criticism
3 A Synthetic Perspective
3.1 Co-evolution
4 Towards a Rhetorical-Pragmatic Model of Language
4.1 Cognitive Effort in Comprehension
4.2 Communication is a Form of Action
4.3 Language and Sexual Selection
5 Conclusions
References
Beyond the Social Brain
1 Thought as a Social Practice
1.1 The Primacy of Factors External to the Individual
2 Language and Narrative
3 The Social Origin of Language: the Cognitive Perspective
3.1 The Social Brain Hypothesis
3.2 The Ostensive-Inferential Model
3.2.1 Ostensive Origins of Language
3.2.2 Is Mindreading Only Human?
4 Global Coherence and Narrative
4.1 Global Coherence
4.1.1 Coherence Cannot Be Reduced to Cohesion
4.1.2 Coherence Cannot Be Reduced to Relevance
5 Mindreading and Storytelling
5.1 The Extended Nature of the Narrative Dimension: Why the Social Brain Is Not Enough
6 Conclusions
References
The Narrative Brain
1 The Oldowan Niche
2 Navigation in Space
2.1 The Sense of Direction
2.2 Hippocampus and Cognitive Maps
2.3 Landmarks
3 Navigating Space-Time
3.1 The Spatiotemporal Brain
3.2 Time and Memory
3.2.1 Clinical Cases
4 The Narrative Brain
4.1 The Default Mode Network
4.1.1 Self-Projection
4.1.2 Scenario Construction
5 Narrating Means Navigating
5.1 The Narrative Space
5.2 Building the Plot
5.3 Space/Time and Coherence
6 Conclusions
References
Stories Without Language
1 How to Invent Language?
1.1 Stories Without Language
2 Bodily Mimesis
2.1 Pantomime
2.2 Animal Pantomime
3 Verbalization and Grammar
3.1 The Issue of the Expressive Means
3.2 The Issue of the Represented Content
3.2.1 The Synthetic and Holistic Models of the Origin of Grammar
4 Communication and Conversation
4.1 The Emergence of Modern Language
5 Conclusions
References