For much of the second half of the twentieth century, the scientific study of language assumed that syntax – our ability to construct grammatically well-formed sentences of great complexity – was the underlying hallmark of human language. The unfortunate consequence was that the study of meaning was relegated to the margins, barely getting a look-in. Yet, in our everyday world of experience, as we act and interact in the host of encounters that make up our daily lives, it is the communicative value of language – the meanings we use it to convey – that is of pre-eminence; in everyday life, how we use language and for what purpose is of the utmost importance; linguistic meaning can be a matter of life and death. And yet ironically, until recently, the scientific study of language relegated its central function – the way we use language to convey ideas, make requests, ask a favour, express anger, love, dismay – to all but the margins of scientific analysis.

In recent times, the study of meaning has returned to the fore, regaining its rightful place as the centrepiece of the scientific study of the human mind. This book tells the story of how our language, in conjunction with the vast body of knowledge about the world which we carry around with us in our heads, enables us to communicate with one another – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. From the barbed, childish taunt on the school playground to the eloquent sophistry of a lawyer prising open a legal loophole in a court of law, meaning arises each time we use language to communicate with one another. The Crucible of Language explains what we know, and what we do, when we communicate using language; it shows how linguistic meaning arises, where it comes from and the way in which language enables us to convey the meanings that can move us to tears, bore us to death or make us dizzy with delight. And in so doing, it proffers profound insight into exactly what it is to be human. This book presents the emerging story of what we now know about how we mean, and how we use language to mean, following a cascade of recent scientific breakthroughs.