The Biological Rationale for Revising Communication Theory: Mirror Neurons, Epigenetics, Brain Functions, and Lexicon-based Semantics

Abstract

There are many recent changes in modern science that necessitate the change in communication theory. Mirror neurons demonstrate how by watching others one learns to mirror their behaviors; epigenetics provides insight into how the environment plays a major role in the workings of the mind; the role of the brain and its functions play a major role in how language is created neurolinguistically, and these changes also require a new model of language called lexicon-based semantics. Language, it is argued, is not generated by the brain, as Noam Chomsky (1965) argues, but works on the basis of a network of overlaid neural functions (auditory, visual, tactile, and sensory motor) that combine to form the various components of language (phonation, audition, reading, and writing). Instead of generating language as a mathematical language acquisition device (LAD), this model begins with semantics which includes the lexicon and it is argued that many structures already exist in the lexicon that demonstrate the presence of syntactic structures. Other components of this model include syntactic and rhetorical devices needed to account for linguistic variation. Consequently, communication appears to be exogenetic in that it begins with signals that exist outside of the human body and are received via biological receptors and collectors into the brain where it is processed and integrated into language and cognition. It is argued that even if a lexicon-based semantics were feasible, it would still need to deal with the more difficult problems of how logical forms are represented and interpreted in a biological model of language.

Keywords

Mirror neurons / epigenetics / motor neuron system / acoustic processes / visual processes / phonation processes / neurological receptors / lexicon-based semantics / the exogenesis of language / the exogenesis of culture / cultural scripts / a biologically based model of human communication

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