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Narrative Persuasion. A Cognitive Perspective on Language Evolution

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. Francesco Ferretti

    1. Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy

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  • Explores the evolutionary foundations of human communication
  • Reviews the transition from animal communication to language
  • Written for researchers working in cognitive sciences and evolutionary biology

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Evolution Research (IDER, volume 7)

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Narrative and Persuasion

    • Francesco Ferretti
    Pages 1-26

  3. Two Models of Communication

    • Francesco Ferretti
    Pages 27-52

  4. Beyond the Social Brain

    • Francesco Ferretti
    Pages 53-79

  5. The Narrative Brain

    • Francesco Ferretti
    Pages 81-109

  6. Stories Without Language

    • Francesco Ferretti
    Pages 111-138
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores the evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication, focusing on narrative as its distinctive dimension. Within a framework of continuity with both the communication of our hominin predecessors and that of non-human animals, the book is about a twofold proposal. It includes the idea that (human and animal) communication has an intrinsically persuasive nature along with the hypothesis that humans developed narrative forms of communication in order to enhance their persuasive abilities. In this view, narrative persuasion becomes the feature that distinguishes human communication from animal communication. The study of the transition from animal communication to language addresses both the selective pressures that led communication for persuasive purposes to take a narrative form and the cognitive architectures and expressive systems that enabled our ancestors to cope with the selective pressures of persuasive/narrative-based communication. 

Language evolution is interdisciplinary, even from the specific perspective of evolutionary pragmatics chosen here. Therefore, this book is intended for researchers working in fields such as cognitive sciences, philosophy, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and primatology. It also represents a valuable resource for advanced students in cognitive sciences, linguistics, and philosophy.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy

    Francesco Ferretti

About the author

Francesco Ferretti is graduated in Philosophy and received a PhD in Philosophy (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy) with a dissertation on the imagistic nature of thought and language. He is currently Full Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences of Language in the Department of Philosophy, Communication, and Performing Arts at Roma Tre University, where he also manages the CosmicLab (Cognition, Social Multimodal Interaction & Communication Laboratory). His main research interests concern the origins and nature of language and narrative, from a pragmatic and evolutionary perspective, with a specific focus on persuasion. He published several monographs and scientific articles on international journals such as “Frontiers in Psychology”, “Cognitive Science”, “Language & Communication”, "Journal of Neurolinguistics", “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B”.

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