WHAT do you think of when you read the phrase “flying pig”? Chances are that a striking image will have fleetingly passed through your mind. Perhaps it’s a winged “Pigasus”, as imagined by John Steinbeck. Or, if you are a fan of The Simpsons, it might be Homer’s precious roast pig launching past Mr Burns’s office.
In Louder Than Words, Benjamin Bergen, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, builds a strong case that such “embodied simulations” lie at the centre of the brain’s processing of language. Every time we hear a word, he argues, it…
