#659 Nick Chater & Morten Christiansen - The Language Game; Language as a Game of Charades

The Dissenter

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Dr. Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. He works on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches.

Dr. Morten Christiansen is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. His research focuses on the interaction of biological and environmental constraints in the evolution, acquisition and processing of language.

They are both authors of The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World.

In this episode, we focus on The Language Game. Topics include: the importance of language; language as a game of charades; cognitive mechanisms necessary for language; how languages evolved; linguistic communication as a cooperation process; improvisation; how we keep up with and chunk language; the meanings of words; Universal Grammar; why other species do not use language; if language is in decline; improving children’s language skills; if language influences thought; and how language might shield us from the technological singularity.

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