Chapter 15 Language comprehension is both embodied and symbolic Max Louwerse and Patrick Jeuniaux 15.1 Introduction Over the last decades a divide seems to have emerged in the cognitive sciences between embodied and symbolic approaches to language understanding. Embodied approaches argue that language comprehension requires activation of our experiences with the world, whereas symbolic approaches argue that language comprehension relies on inter- dependencies of words. The current paper argues that language comprehension is both embodied and symbolic. According to the symbol interdependency hypothesis comprehen- ders can ultimately ground symbols, but they also can rely on interdependencies across symbols as a shortcut to the meaning of words. An overview is given of the evidence supporting this hypothesis suggesting that embodied representations are activated under certain conditions and ultimately tend to be encoded in language structures. Attempts to answer the question to what extent language comprehension is embodied or symbolic are not new. For instance, around 360 BC, Plato describes a discussion between Cratylus, Hermogenes, and Socrates, with Socrates asking: Then if you admit that primitive or first nouns are representations of things, is there any better way of framing representations than by assimilating them to the objects as much as you can; or do you prefer the notion of Hermogenes and of many others, who say that names are conventional, and have a meaning to those who have agreed about them, and who have previous knowledge of the things intended by them, and that convention is the only principle; and whether you abide by our present convention, or make a new and opposite one, according to which you call small great and great small – that, they would say, makes no difference, if you are only agreed. Which of these two notions do you prefer? (Plato 1902) Over the last few decades the field of cognitive science seems to be divided between those who prefer one of Socrates’s notions over the other. On the one hand, embodied accounts of language processing argue that symbols are fundamentally grounded in embodied expe- rience (whereby the processing of symbols is modal), and indeed there is compelling evidence that symbols can be grounded, subconsciously or consciously (Barsalou 1999; Glenberg 1997; Harnad 1990; Pulvermüller 1999; Searle 1980; Zwaan 2004). For instance, we all know intuitively that we can imagine the colour red when reading the word ‘rose’, the smell when reading the word ‘perfume’, and the loud noise when reading the word ‘thunder’. However, the specific stance of the embodied accounts of language processing, 15-de Vega-Chap15 5/7/08 6:28 PM Page 309