INT J LANG COMMUN DISORD, MAY–JUNE 2012,VOL. 47, NO. 3, 346

Book Review

Talking Heads: The Neuroscience of Language

By GIANFRANCO DENES, trans. PHILIPPA VENTURELLI SMITH

(Hove: Psychology Press, 2011)[Pp. 236.] ISBN 978-1-84872-039-8. £45.00 (hbk)

Gianfranco Denes is a neurolinguist and neuropsychologist based atthe universities of Padua and Venice; he has been researching aphasiafor many years. In Talking Heads: The Neuroscience of Language hebrings together over 150 years of research in neurolinguistics, fromclassic investigations of aphasia to more recent brain-imaging studies,in a range of different populations. Denes covers linguistic theory,neurology, cognitive neuropsychology and neuroimaging, illustrat-ing how the marriage of these disciplines sheds light on the nature oflanguage in the brain, and showcasing the groundbreaking work thatis being done currently in the field. Its broad scope and up-to-dateanalysis of the literature makes this book an enticing read.

Chapter 1, ‘Defining language’, sets out the debate that hasbeen raging over the last ten years between Hauser et al. (2002)and Pinker and Jackendoff (2005) as exactly to which aspects of thelanguage faculty are unique to humans and unique to language. InChapter 2, ‘The origin and evolution of language and words’, Denesnavigates a wildly speculative area of scientific enquiry by puttingforward evidence in favour of the evolution of spoken languagefrom manual gestural communication. In Chapter 3, ‘The anatomyof language’, he starts by taking us back in time to the mid-19thcentury and the work of Broca, Wernicke and others who usedaphasia as a way of investigating the links between brain anatomyand language function, before introducing current neuroimagingmethods. Chapter 4, ‘Acquired language disorders: the aphasias’,discusses anatomical–functional correlations in more detail, bringingtogether clinical evidence from a range of different types ofaphasia.

The next three chapters deal with the components of spokenlanguage. Chapter 5, ‘The sounds of language: the production andcomprehension of words’, tackles the production and perceptionof speech, together with their neurological basis and the types ofproduction and perception deficits that can arise from cerebrallesions. One of the longest chapters, Chapter 6, explores thefunctional and neural architecture of the lexical system; whileChapter 7, by Eleonora Rossi, is devoted to syntax and morphol-ogy. The final four chapters cover written language, bilingual-ism, sign language (albeit very briefly), and language acquisi-tion/developmental disorders of language. There is some useful

additional material: an appendix on neuroanatomy, and a glossaryof technical terms.

The chapters are short and concise, and will serve as aspringboard for further reading. In places they are arguably a littletoo short. For example, that on sign language is very welcome, butgiven that the literature in this field is small, it is a shame that someof it is missing altogether, e.g. the neuroimaging work of DaphneBavelier and colleagues. However, a particularly nice feature isthe inclusion of references at the end of each chapter rather thanat the end of the book, making it easier for chapters to stand on theirown when assigned to students as seminar reading.

Although for the most part the book is highly readable, there areoccasions where errors creep in, and it is not clear whether these areerrors in the original text or whether they arise from the translation,e.g. the identification of ‘book’ and ‘pen’ as verbs (p. 131); the claimthat sign languages tend to become ‘more and more iconic’ over time(they actually become less iconic; Frishberg, 1975); and the use ofthe term ‘diacritic’ to refer to features such as person, number andtense. The index also contains some errors. ‘Chereme’ remains inits Italian version, ‘cherema’, where it appears under ‘sign language’;and the page number given is incorrect. Rather strangely, ‘DownSyndrome’ does not have its own entry, but instead appears under‘Specific Language Impairment’.

Nevertheless, these are minor quibbles. I thoroughlyrecommend this book to a range of readers, including speech andlanguage therapists who want to keep up to date with current workon neurolinguistics, students of psychology and linguistics who arelooking for a comprehensive overview of neurolinguistics, and indeedall those fascinated by language.

CHLOE MARSHALL

Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Human Development, Institute ofEducation, London, UK

email: c.marshall@ioe.ac.uk

References

FRISHBERG, N., 1975. Arbitrariness and iconicity: historical changein American Sign Language. Language, 51, 696–719.

HAUSER, M., CHOMSKY, N. and FITCH, W., 2002. The faculty oflanguage: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science,298, 1569–1579.

PINKER, S. and JACKENDOFF, R., 2005. The faculty of language:what’s special about it? Cognition, 95, 201–236.

International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersISSN 1368-2822 print/ISSN 1460-6984 online c© 2012 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-6984.2011.00100.x