Rethinking the role of language
in embodied cognition
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb
Opinion piece
Cite this article: Dove GO. 2022 Rethinking
the role of language in embodied cognition.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20210375.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0375
Downloaded from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/ on 15 February 2023
Received: 15 December 2021
Accepted: 26 June 2022
One contribution of 23 to a theme issue
‘Concepts in interaction: social engagement
and inner experiences’.
Subject Areas:
neuroscience, cognition
Keywords:
concepts, cognition, embodied, grounded
cognition, language, semantic memory
Author for correspondence:
Guy O. Dove
e-mail: guy.dove@louisville.edu
Guy O. Dove
Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, 313 Humanities Building, Louisville, KY 40292, USA
GOD, 0000-0003-0470-7006
There has been a lot of recent interest in the way that language might enhance
embodied cognition. This interest is driven in large part by a growing body of
evidence implicating the language system in various aspects of semantic
memory—including, but not limited to, its apparent contribution to abstract
concepts. In this essay, I develop and defend a novel account of the cognitive
role played by language in our concepts. This account relies on the embodied
nature of the language system itself, diverges in significant ways from
traditional accounts, and is part of a flexible, multimodal and multilevel
view of our conceptual system.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Concepts in interaction: social
engagement and inner experiences’.
1. Introduction
A robust and growing body of evidence suggests that conceptual processing is
functionally reliant on action, emotion and perception systems [1–3]. In other
words, we think about the world by means of the same mechanisms that we
use to experience it. Our brains leverage representations indigenous to experi-
ential systems when encoding general knowledge and deploy these
representations by means of a process of neural simulation or re-enactment.
Given that a great deal of our experience involves language, it seems reasonable
to wonder whether language itself should be viewed as a significant source of embo-
diment. Despite the initial plausibility of this conjecture, researchers in embodied
cognition have generally excluded language from their conception of embodiment
[4]. This exclusion comes in two primary forms. The first explicitly denies that
language contributes to conceptual processing and holds that language merely
engages simulations that are grounded in non-linguistic sensorimotor experience.
This theoretical perspective underlies the orthodox understanding of the term embo-
died language. The second acknowledges that language plays a role in our concepts
but treats it as a fundamentally disembodied symbol system that has no connection
to the mechanisms associated with embodiment. In other words, the appeal to
language is made in the context of embodied/symbolic hybrid approach.
Not everybody subscribes to this exclusion. For instance, some contend that
language serves as an external cognitive scaffold for embodied cognition [5,6].
Two recent theories of concepts, the word as social tool (WAT) theory [7,8] and
the language is an embodied neuroenhancement and scaffold of (LENS) theory
[9], go further and propose that language serves as fully realized source of embo-
diment. The purpose of this essay is to explore what this stronger hypothesis
means and why we should consider it. This critical assessment will be focused
solely on the theoretical potential of the linguistic embodiment hypothesis and
will not be concerned with analysing the similarities and differences between
the WAT and LENS theories (for a comparison of these theories, see [10]).
2. Language as an experiential modality
Embodied cognition is a broad research programme. As such, it encompasses a
variety of theoretical approaches that emphasize the ways in which the body
© 2022 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
 influences thinking [11,12]. If language is a source of
embodiment, concepts should rely in part on simulations of
linguistic experience.
Admittedly, this idea seems to be a nonstarter for several
prima facie reasons. The experiential components of language
seem ill suited to encoding semantic information about cat-
egories, abstract or concrete. First, the arbitrary connection
between words and their referents seems to fit poorly with
the apparent connection of embodiment to experiential ground-
ing. Aside from iconic sound–meaning correspondences (which
I will discuss below), words often seem to have a disembodied
relationship with the content they encode. Indeed, this arbitrari-
ness seems to play an important role in language acquisition
and language change. For instance, the English word hussy is
descended from a contraction of the Middle English word for
housewife [13]. The difference between its historical meaning
and its current one cannot be explained in terms of its experien-
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tial properties. Given the distal connection between words
and their referents, one might reasonably wonder about the
purported role of linguistic embodiment.
Second, the sensorimotor properties of words do not appear
to be fine-grained enough to capture meanings. After all, homo-
phones, homographs and homonyms share perceptual and
motor properties. The word bank can refer to a slope, a financial
institution, a flying manoeuver, the act of saving money, and so
on. Clearly, the way this word sounds, how it is spelled, and the
articulatory gestures by which it is produced fail to disambigu-
ate any particular use of it. Standard approaches to language
processing handle ambiguity and polysemy by positing inde-
pendent semantic representations—usually thought to be
handled by a semantic code housed in amodal regions of the
cortex—that are linked to word forms in a mental lexicon.
Third, an embodied approach seems like an appeal to inner
speech. A well-known problem with trying to capture meaning
in terms of inner speech is that this move seems to accomplish
little more that shift the theoretical challenges up a level. Posit-
ing that actual speech is understood in terms of inner speech
just raises the question of how inner speech is understood.
After all, it would be implausible to hold that inner speech is
comprehended by some inner homunculus.
These prima facie challenges may in part explain why
researchers have been hesitant to view language itself as a
source of embodiment. This essay is an attempt to overcome
this hesitancy. In it, I enumerate the empirical and theoretical
reasons to include language within an embodied account of cog-
nition. In other words, I argue that reconceiving the role of
language in embodied cognition is a promising research topic.
One way to conceptualize the proposal that language is a
source of embodiment is to think of the language system as a
kind of experiential modality. While this is not compatible
with a view of embodiment that limits it to primary sensorimo-
tor areas, it fits with the current recognition that experiential
systems often rely on multimodal regions. Few would argue,
for instance, that gustation is not a mode of experience because
it is inherently multimodal.
At first, this reconceptualization might seem to be little
more than a theoretical gimmick. What is to be gained by
rethinking the language system in this way? I suggest that
it leads to specific hypotheses and provides a unified theoreti-
cal explanation for extant bodies of research that are currently
balkanized. A core feature of embodied cognition is that it
proposes a neural mechanism for our concepts: experiential
re-enactment or simulation. Reconceiving language as a
mode of experience suggests that conceptual content might 2
be captured in part by means of the simulation of aspects
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb
of linguistic experience. Roughly put, we might engage in
various forms of simulated talking to support thinking.
The theoretical payoff of this move is that it provides an
integrated framework for understanding the diverse ways in
which language might contribute to the conceptual system.
For example, viewing language as an experiential modality
suggests the possibility that some concepts may be grounded
in the phonetic and/or motoric aspects of language. It thus
provides an explanation of how the iconicity of linguistic
symbols might contribute to their ability to encode semantic
content. Going further, understanding the contribution of the
language system to semantic memory as one of re-enactment
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20210375
also provides a mechanism for understanding how the concep-
tual system might leverage the symbolic properties of the
language. Neural reuse of experiential representations associ-
ated with language action and perception provides access to
embodied representations that are indirectly connected to
their semantic content [14,15]. Finally, an embodied approach
also provides an explanation of how inner speech might be
used to retrieve discourse-related knowledge [10].
The fact that much of our experience is mediated by
language raises the question of whether language might itself
serve as a source of embodiment. The proposal under consider-
ation holds that the language system facilitates our capacity to
encode semantic content in several important ways: iconic
links between linguistic symbols and their content help us
acquire and use concepts, labels facilitate our ability to link
together our diverse experiences, word-to-word associations
enable us draw inferences that go beyond our immediate
experience, and knowledge linked to conversations and
narratives help us to tailor concepts to specific contexts and
tasks. Many of these design features are likely to be particularly
helpful with abstract concepts.
3. A multimodal, multilevel and flexible
approach
To assess the possible contribution of language to embodied
cognition, we need to be clear about what embodiment entails.
Consistent with the fact that embodied cognition is an active
and dynamic research programme, the notion of embodiment
has evolved over time. Early on, embodiment was tied to
what has been called strong embodiment. This term refers to
accounts that limit simulations to primary sensorimotor areas.
What is central to a strongly embodied account of concepts is
that conceptual processing involves modality-specific, lower-
level experiential representations. Many researchers have
moved from a strong conception of embodiment to a weak con-
ception that is both fundamentally multimodal and multilevel.
This shift has occurred for several reasons. First, it seems likely
that embodied simulations include fundamentally multimodal
phenomena such a gustation and spatial processing. Second, a
wealth of research suggests that even primary sensory areas
engage in multimodal processes. Indeed, the very notion
of primary sensory areas may be tied to a dated and neuroana-
tomically implausible bottom-up view of cortical functioning.
Third, many studies implicate secondary rather than primary
areas in conceptual processing.
The notion of embodiment has also shifted on another
front. Early accounts were generally committed to invariantism
 with respect to conceptual content [16]. They proposed that
concepts involved automatically elicited default general
knowledge about category members [17]. More recent accounts
tend to emphasize the degree to which concepts are realized in
a task- and context-dependent fashion [18–20].
Defending these shifts would take up too much space and
is beyond the purview of this essay. Instead, I am going to
assume that they are warranted without argument. By these
lights, the embodiment of our concepts is multimodal, multile-
vel and flexible [21]. The move to a more inclusive notion of
embodiment—or so-called weak embodiment [22]—has clear
consequences for including language within an embodied
framework. For one, it enables simulations of language to
involve representations that are tied to language action and
perception but are not contained within primary auditory,
visual or motor areas. This is important because it allows for
a certain degree of abstractness with respect the question of
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how, for example, words are represented. Words, idioms and
phrases can be seen as higher-level multimodal phenomena
but still be part of embodied simulations.
4. Symbol grounding
Embodied cognition is often presented as a solution to the
symbol grounding problem [1,23,24]. In this section, I am
going to argue that the general antipathy to viewing language
as a source of embodiment may rest in part on a misinterpreta-
tion of this problem. While it provides some justification for
embodied cognition in general, it does not settle specific issues
such as whether some conceptual content is encoded by
means of the flexible neural reuse of linguistic representations.
The symbol grounding problem is a theoretical challenge
that is incurred by computationalism [25]. Computationalism
requires physical symbol manipulation governed by syntactic
rules [26,27]. For it to work as an account of thinking, these
symbols must be semantically interpretable. The central ques-
tion is how they manage to be about objects and events in the
world. The symbol grounding problem arises because com-
putationalism characterizes cognition merely in terms of the
relations of symbols to other symbols. Harnad [25] asks us
to imagine trying to learn Chinese as a second language
solely by means of a Chinese-to-Chinese dictionary. Going
through the dictionary would lead to a kind of symbolic
merry-go-round that bounces from one meaningless symbol
to another. Purely symbolic accounts of cognitive systems
are in a similar situation because they do not have access to
anything other than other symbols.
This is a general problem for computational approaches to
cognition. What it shows is that a system entirely defined in
terms of the relations between symbols struggles to maintain
contact with the world. The obvious solution is to find some
alternate way to connect some representations to their content.
Almost everyone agrees that experiential systems are the most
likely candidates to provide this connection. Where the dis-
agreement lies is in the relationship between these systems
and our concepts. Harnad argues that the common assumption
that theories of cognition developed in a top-down manner will
eventually make contact with theories of peripheral experien-
tial systems developed in a bottom-up manner, is
theoretically suspect. He proposes that a more promising
approach involves intrinsically dedicated symbols that retain
their connection to the world.
Supporters of embodied cognition have followed Har- 3
nad’s lead and posited that representations borrowed from
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experiential systems provide a means of overcoming the
symbol grounding problem. The idea itself is straightfor-
ward: neural reuse provides the cognitive system access to
representations that retain an appropriate connection to the
world and its contents. Consider the concept of a dog [28].
The hypothesis under consideration is that thinking about
dogs involves the selective reengagement of various visual,
auditory, olfactory and tactile experiences with them. This
reuse of the relevant perceptual or motor areas of the cortex
ensures that the selected neural representations retain their
pragmatic connection to their referents. Such neural simu-
lation enables cognitive processes to build on hard-won
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20210375
experiential connections to the world that have been gained
through sensorimotor experience.
The symbol grounding problem has become part of the
origin story of embodied cognition. Unfortunately, there has
been a tendency to overinterpret the support that it provides
for embodied cognition [12]. Strictly speaking, it only rules
out purely symbolic accounts. In other words, it leaves
room for hybrid non-symbolic/symbolic accounts of various
types. While it may turn out that fully grounded concepts
provide the most satisfying solution to the problem, inter-
mediate solutions remain viable.
Proposing that language itself can serve as source of embo-
diment may seem to abandon the lessons of the symbol
grounding problem. After all, embodiment is typically associ-
ated with the reuse of representations experientially linked to
the semantic content of our thoughts. Language, though, is a
symbolic system whose symbols are connected to each other
in various ways that are often not directly linked to their refer-
ential content. This worry is misplaced for two reasons. First,
proposing that some semantic content is encoded by means
of the neural reuse of the language system does not deny that
a great deal of semantic content is encoded in the reuse of
directly grounded representations. Instead, it simply proposes
that the same cognitive mechanism—i.e. neural reuse—may
deploy representations involved in linguistic action and per-
ception. For example, the multimodal simulation involved in
the application of the concept dog within a particular context
might include linguistic representations associated with dogs.
Second, there are compelling reasons to think that our concep-
tual system must contain some representations that are not
directly tied to experience. Because many abstract concepts
have referents that we do not directly perceive or manipulate
[7,29,30], it is not immediately clear how they can be grounded
in action, emotion and perception systems [31,32]. In other
words, embodied cognition faces a symbol ungrounding pro-
blem [33,34]. Language may help our conceptual system
overcome this problem. The ability to think about democracies,
genes, or prime numbers may involve in part knowing how to
talk about them. Acknowledging this in no way undermines
the importance of more directly grounded neural simulations.
Indeed, it suggests that linguistic and non-linguistic factors will
often work in concert [35,36].
5. Iconicity
Language involves the manipulation and perception of
physical symbols. Speech production relies on rehearsed
articulatory gestures and speech perception relies on our
 multimodal capacity to anticipate and recognize the products
of these gestures. Viewing language as a source of embodiment
opens the possibility that the physical properties of linguistic
symbols—i.e. the sights, sounds and motor features that realize
them—might contribute conceptual processing. In keeping
with this suggestion, researchers have begun to examine
the role that iconicity might play in our concepts. Iconicity is
typically defined in terms of resemblances between the sensor-
imotor properties of linguistic symbols and their semantic
referents [37]. While onomatopoeia is perhaps the most fam-
iliar form of iconicity, other resemblance-based links between
linguistic forms and meanings are possible. For example, the
sign for book in British sign language (BSL) involves mimicking
the leaves of a book [38].
A growing body of research finds that iconicity leads to
facilitation effects in language production and comprehen-
sion. Lexical decision is quicker with iconic English words
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than non-iconic ones [39]. Iconic BSL signs are produced
faster than non-iconic ones [40]. A substantial body of
research also indicates that iconicity makes important contri-
butions to word learning [41]. Intriguing crosslinguistic
sound-symbolism patterns have been observed. For instance,
a robust body of evidence supports the existence of the
bouba-kiki effect: the tendency to associate the nonce word
bouba with a round shape and the nonce word kiki with a
spiky shape [42]. Words with the /i:/ phoneme (like gleam)
have been found to be generically associated with more posi-
tive emotionality than words with the /ʌ/ phoneme (like
glum) [43]. Iconicity seems to be especially important in the
early stages of word acquisition. Children learning English
or Spanish, for instance, tend to acquire words that receive
high iconicity ratings before they acquire words that are
low in iconicity ratings [44]. This developmental evidence
fits with the proposal that children can use iconicity to
bootstrap semantic content [45].
Murgiano et al. [46] offer an embodied interpretation of
iconicity. Drawing a contrast between systemic and situated
views of language, they argue that psycholinguists have over-
whelmingly adopted the former and this has led to them
focus almost entirely on the structural properties of language.
A situated approach maintains that this structure emerges
in specific acts of communication that are carried out in phys-
ical and social contexts. The situated nature of language
enables interlocutors to leverage embodied resources to
convey meaning [47].
One of the reasons for the recent interest in the cognitive
role of language in embodied cognition is the perception that
language may help explain how we can acquire and use
abstract concepts [15,48]. An intriguing feature of the research
on iconicity is that it appears to show that the sensorimotor
properties of language can help with the acquisition of con-
crete concepts. Iconicity turns out to be a reliable predictor
of age of acquisition [44]. Moreover, the use of iconic words
tends to fade as children acquire larger vocabularies with
more abstract words in them [49]. Lupyan & Winter [50] go
as far as to suggest that iconicity is inimical to abstraction.
6. Word and concept
Viewing language as a component of multimodal embodied
cognition suggests that the presence, or indeed the absence,
of words should influence our reasoning. Words should
enhance and transform our cognition in specific ways. I out- 4
line three plausible candidates below.
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb
One possibility is that words facilitate generalization.
They may serve as representational anchors that help stabilize
and organize embodied simulations of experience [51,52].
Words (but not tones, sounds or emotion responses) have
been found to help young children with object individuation
[53]. Verbal cues such as the word dog appear to activate
more general category representations than non-verbal cues
such as the sound of a dog barking [54,55].
A second possibility is that words help us attend to
specific conceptual features. Support for this hypothesis is
provided by neuropsychological case studies indicating that
aphasia can lead to impairments on non-linguistic tasks [56].
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20210375
Aphasics often struggle with taxonomic tasks that involve
identifying a specific attribute rather than a global compari-
son [57,58]. One study compared the responses of 12
aphasics with that of 12 age and education matched controls
on a categorization task [59]. The aphasics were impaired on
low-dimensional versions of the task (e.g. things that are
green) but not on the high-dimensional versions (e.g. farm
animals). A related study using neurologically intact partici-
pants found a similarly selective impairment was induced
by a verbal interference task [60].
An embodied perspective not only predicts that the pres-
ence of a word should alter how we conceptualize a category
but also predicts that words themselves should be under-
stood in a way that is tied to situations. A third possibility
is that words may engage background frames or schemas
[61]. For instance, the meanings of the English words buy,
cost, pay and sell are all understood relative to a commercial
event frame. A word like vegetarian makes sense in a society
where many people eat meat.
In sum, viewing language as a component of multimodal
embodied cognition supports three hypotheses concerning
the role that words might play in cognitive tasks. First, as
labels, they may help us generalize away from experiential
particulars. Second, their presence might actively modulate
our categorization processes. Third, their connection to
frames and schemas may generate expectations and influence
our conceptualization of objects and events. These multimodal
connections provide a solution to one of our initial prima facie
problems faced by the hypothesis that words serve as source of
embodiment. Words help link together non-linguistically
embodied content. Homonyms, homographs and homonyms
can be distinguished by their different associations.
7. A structured symbol system
One of the theoretical challenges faced by the hypothesis that
language is a source of embodiment is that, at least from a
certain perspective, linguistic symbols appear to be funda-
mentally ungrounded. After all, they do not enjoy the sort
of immediate experiential connection to their referents that
other embodied representations do. Even iconicity relies on
indirect forms of connection. This distal connection is pre-
cisely what makes language special. Linguistic symbols are
embodied in the sense that they are intimately connected to
actions carried out in communicative situations. Moreover,
they are physical symbols that require a suite of associated
sensorimotor capacities. This form of embodiment, though,
allows for arbitrary semantic reference.
 Language is an external symbol system that enables us to
leverage culturally derived information. It manages to serve
as a scaffold for semantic memory precisely because it is
shared and external. Clark [5,6] points out that language
alters our cognitive niche by providing a novel set of targets
for action and perception. By these lights, language is an
accessible external support for embodied cognition. It is as
external symbol system that can be manipulated in an embo-
died way to extend our cognitive reach.
Viewing language as an experiential modality builds on
Clark’s insights, but it also emphasizes the degree to which
the sensorimotor skills associated with the manipulation of
public symbols provides an internal means of capturing
semantic content [9]. Becoming a speaker of a language
requires the development of a suite of embodied skills. A
child learning a language needs to learn how the phonologi-
cal units of a language are produced and recognized, how
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morphemes containing these elements are combined to
form words, how words are combined to form phrases and
sentences, and how sentences can be combined to form
larger forms of discourse.
The linguistic embodiment hypothesis proposes that the
brain encodes some conceptual content in the neurologically
realized language system. Language provides representational
opportunities that would not be available otherwise. As a
stimulus-independent combinatorial system, it enhances our
cognitive capacities in at least four ways [62]. First, its public
nature expands our conceptual range by giving us access to
information gathered by other people. Second, its stimulus
independence enables us to apply the same concept in diverse
situations. Third, its transparent syntactic structure offers
opportunities to recognize new semantic connections by allow-
ing us to formulate novel thoughts. Fourth, its combinatorial
properties enable us to recognize the inferential relations
among concepts.
A multimodal perspective predicts that individuals may
differ in how they encode individual concepts. A cat-lover
may have a lot of fine-grained experiential knowledge about
the behaviour of domestic cats while a scientist who studies
domestic cats may have more verbally mediated knowledge
about them. In addition, some concepts may generally rely
more on verbal information than others. For example, emotion-
ally neutral abstract concepts may be particularly dependent
on language [41].
The ability of congenitally blind individuals to acquire a
sophisticated understanding of colour concepts [63–65] pro-
vides compelling support for a multimodal approach to
semantic memory that incudes information contained within
the language system. This hypothesis is bolstered by a recent
demonstration that a significant amount of information about
colour concepts can be gleaned from the distributional struc-
ture of colour language [66,67]. Further support is provided
by a recent study implicating a region of the left dorsal anterior
temporal lobe (ATL) in the knowledge of object colours in both
early blind participants and sighted controls [68].
Distributional models of semantic memory propose that
our knowledge of word meaning is derived from the statistical
associations between words. These models propose that the
meaning of a word is determined in large part by the company
that it keeps [69]. They typically extract statistical regularities
from large corpuses of natural speech [70–72] and have been
shown to perform well on lexical access and similarity tasks
[73]. Despite the developmental implausibility of the large
corpus approach, these models provide a proof of concept 5
with respect to the idea that the statistical properties of
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language provide a rich source of information about the
world. Some researchers have adopted an explicitly multi-
modal approach that views linguistic and non-linguistic
experiences as complimentary sources of conceptual infor-
mation [74,75]. Hybrid models exploiting both experiential
and language-based distributional data have been shown to
be more effective than models that rely on only one of these
resources [76,77].
Concepts are thought to underwrite several cognitive
activities. It may be useful to distinguish between referential
and inferential aspects of semantic competence [78]. Referen-
tial competence concerns the relations of words to objects and
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20210375
events in the world, and inferential competence concerns the
relations of words to other words. Calzavarini [79] argues
that neuropsychological case studies suggest that these com-
petences are supported by independent neuro-mechanisms.
In particular, he identifies a double disassociation between
these competences. He points out that patients with visual
associative agnosia and optic aphasia often exhibit a selective
deficit with referential skills but retain inferential ones. Cases
of a selective impairment of inferential skills are rarer but still
attested. One that is particularly suggestive is the case of an
86-year-old man with left hemisphere damage from an
ischemic stroke who performed well on a referential
naming task but poorly on an inferential definition task [80].
A multimodal embodied approach that includes the
language system provides an appealing explanation of this
phenomenon. There are reasons to think that linguistic
competence involves inferential skills that are tied to its com-
binatorial properties. Consider Chomksky’s famous sentence,
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [81]. Weiskopf [82] points
out that even though this sentence is difficult to perceptually
simulate, we do not have trouble understanding what would
follow from its truth: namely, that something slept and did so
furiously, that ideas can be green and colourless, and so on.
Presumably, our capacity to make these inferences is tied to
the syntactic structure of the sentence and the symbolic prop-
erties of the words. An inclusive conception of embodiment
enables us to postulate that both linguistic and non-linguistic
simulations can be selectively impaired or preserved.
8. Inner speech
Treating language as a source of embodiment raises questions
concerning the cognitive role of inner speech. While embo-
died theories of conceptual content focus primarily on the
contribution of unconscious processing, they also acknowl-
edge a connection between this processing and conscious
mental imagery. In other words, there is a general recognition
that conscious multimodal simulations of experience may be
useful in certain cognitive and metacognitive circumstances.
If we treat language as an experiential modality, then we
should expect a similar cline with respect to linguistically
embodied thought. There should be circumstances under
which conscious simulations of language of various stripes
are useful and effective.
This idea has historical precedents. Vygotsky [83] pro-
posed that internalizations of linguistic experience scaffold
learning and memory. A robust body of evidence involving
typically developing children and special populations
 supports the claim that inner speech contributes to learning
and problem solving [84]. Importantly, the relevant uses of
linguistic imagery come in several forms that vary in terms
of their complexity and extent—spanning from fully formed
self-directed speech to highly condensed brief segments [85].
Borghi et al. [86] have recently developed an approach to
inner speech that explicitly treats it as a form of embodied
cognition and offers an innovative account of its functional-
ity. They propose that inner speech helps individuals
monitor their conceptual content and engage in what they
refer to as socially oriented metacognition. This approach
builds on the insight that we tend to be less certain about
the content of abstract concepts [87,88]. A consequence of
this uncertainty is that we tend to rely more on others for
an understanding of their meaning [89]. Inner speech can
help us manage this uncertainty in a couple of ways [90].
First, it can help us monitor our own concepts by enabling
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us to trace a word’s meaning through its connections to
other words. Rehearsing words in working memory can
help us evaluate our understanding in an online fashion.
Second, inner speech can engage discourse-related knowl-
edge by simulating potential conversations concerning the
concept. In other words, it can be used as part of an inner
dialogue about the contents of our thoughts.
9. Neural correlates
The hypothesis under consideration is that our concepts are
embodied in neural simulations of experience that are flex-
ible, multilevel and multimodal. What distinguishes the
linguistic embodiment is the claim that these simulations
can include elements of linguistic experience. This creates a
clear neuroanatomical prediction: the language system
should play a causal role in conceptual processing.
Given that many of the tasks used to study concepts are
themselves linguistic, it can be difficult to disentangle the influ-
ence of the language system on conceptual processing from its
contribution to decoding the experimental stimuli and generat-
ing the responses. One way to overcome this difficulty is
to examine concepts that might differ in their reliance on
language. In keeping with this, a body of literature has found
evidence that the language system is more active with abstract
concepts than it is with concrete concepts. Meta-analyses of the
available neuroimaging data find that the left inferior frontal
gyrus (IFG) and middle/superior regions of the left ATL
show greater activation with abstract concepts than with con-
crete ones [91,92]. Lexical decision accuracy has been found
to be selectively impaired with abstract concepts when repeti-
tive trans-cranial magnetic stimulation is applied over the left
IFG and the left superior temporal gyrus [93].
An extensive literature implicates these areas in language
processing. The left IFG, which includes Broca’s area, has
been linked to phonological [94] and syntactic processing
[95,96]. Neuroimaging implicates anterior subregions with
semantic processing [97–99]. Transcranial magnetic stimulation
studies further implicate these regions in the processing of word
meanings [100,101]. Some researchers propose that they con-
tribute to the retrieval and selection of semantic knowledge
[102,103].
The left superior ATL has been linked to high-level speech
processing and sentence comprehension [84,85]. It may be
involved in sentence-level compositional semantic processing
[104]. Within the literature, there has been an active discus- 6
sion concerning possible hemispheric specialization of the
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb
ATLs [105]. Some researchers propose that the left ATL pre-
ferentially represents information associated with verbal
inputs whereas the right ATL represents information associ-
ated with non-verbal inputs [106–108]. Others propose that
the left ATL generally handles word retrieval and that the
right ATL generally handles visual recognition [109,110].
Researchers have begun to recognize that abstract concepts
are heterogeneous [111]. Moreover, individual concepts may
vary in terms of their relative abstractness in different situ-
ations and contexts [112]. Fortunately, the hypothesis under
consideration does not rest on the abstract/concrete distinc-
tion. While the conjecture that language may serve as a
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20210375
source of embodiment is in part driven by a need to explain
our facility with abstract concepts, much of the evidence impli-
cating the functional importance of language outlined in the
earlier sections of this paper involved concrete concepts. By
these lights, the greater reliance of (some) abstract concepts
on language provides a means of highlighting the functional
contribution of language to conceptual processing.
Embodiment is a task-sensitive phenomenon. This raises
the possibility that certain tasks should engage the language
system more than others. As discussed earlier, there are
reasons to think that language should be more important
for inferential tasks than for referential ones. Some neuroima-
ging studies have found selective activation of the left ATL by
inferential naming tasks [113,114]. A different study failed to
find this activation but found instead increases in other tem-
poral regions, particularly the left posterior middle temporal
gyrus ( pMTG) [115]. Intriguingly, the left pMTG is a com-
ponent of the language system and relevant to language
comprehension [116].
In the end, the available neuroimaging evidence is sugges-
tive but somewhat equivocal. The observed neural correlates fit
with the current proposal, but alternative explanations are
available. For example, an extensive literature suggests that
the ATLs are trans-modal hubs for conceptual knowledge
[117]. Whether this represents a complete alternative to the lin-
guistic embodiment hypothesis is not fully clear. Trans-modal
hubs could be an extralinguistic means of organizing stored
semantic knowledge. However, a hybrid approach that
acknowledges existence of such hubs but remains committed
to the causal relevance of the language system also seems poss-
ible. Broadly speaking, the neuroanatomical evidence fits well
with linguistic embodiment, but many important details have
yet to filled in. Of particular importance are the functional
contributions of specific subregions of the relevant cortical
areas. A promising feature of viewing language as a target of
flexible simulation is that it provides a theoretical framework
for assessing the relative functional contributions of these
areas. This approach enables us to entertain different hypo-
theses concerning the contribution of different subregions of
the left ATL. For instance, some of these subregions might
encode discourse-related information that contributes to the
task- and context-sensitivity of our concepts [30].
10. Conclusion
Embodied cognition has taken a linguistic turn. Several recent
theories propose that language plays a functional role in our
concepts. Some examples are the embodied conceptual
 combination theory [118], the language and situated simu- a category, that some conceptual content should be encoded 7
lation theory [119], the language and associations in in the relations of words to other words, and that inner

thinking theory [120] and the symbol interdependency
theory [73]. Many of these theories treat language as a disem-
bodied form of symbolic cognition. Two recent theories, the
WAT theory [7] and the LENS theory [9], buck this trend
and treat language as a source of embodiment.
In this essay, I have critically examined the linguistic
embodiment hypothesis on its own. This hypothesis gener-
ates several promising predictions that enjoy a degree of
empirical support: namely, that iconicity should make impor-
tant contributions to concept acquisition and use, that the
presence of a label should influence how we conceptualize
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb
speech should help us resolve uncertainty about our con-
cepts. Further support is provided by the fact that abstract
concepts and inferential tasks elicit greater activation in the
language system than concrete concepts and referential
tasks, respectively.
Data accessibility. This article has no additional data.
Authors’ contributions. G.D.: conceptualization.
Conflict of interest declaration. I declare I have no competing interests.
Funding. No funding has been received for this article.

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20210375

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