Abstract meanings may be more dynamic, due to their sociality

Words as social tools: Flexibility, situatedness, language and sociality in abstract concepts

“…Contextual variability characterizes all concepts, but it is particularly crucial for ACs, especially because their referent is not an object (unlike that of CCs). In agreement with what argued by Falandays and Spivey [7], the fact that "context and core meaning are likely processed at the same time" can be especially true for ACs, because the environmental support is less available. In our proposal, we hypothesized that ACs might be more variable across cultures and languages than CCs.…”

“…Our definition focused on single concepts. We thought that the claim that concepts are flexible was somehow implied in our proposal, but we agree that it needs to be emphasized it more ( [7]). Concepts are not isolated ( [1]) and conceptual meaning can vary substantially depending on the context.…”

“…A very promising proposal is to study them in conversations. As Glenberg [8] argues, we should focus more on language in a social context, studying words as tools "in a complex, collaborative, communicative situations"; see also [25].…”

“…First, it helps reframing the definition of abstract concepts, highlighting that the concrete/abstract distinction might be relative and fuzzy (see point 1). Second, it contributes to highlight how important is to study concepts in novel ways, relying less on single words -as in the psycholinguistic tradition -and more on words in contexts, and dynamic situations such as conversations (see point 8) ( [7], [8]).…”

“…MNs play clearly a role during language use, and they likely play an important role in shaping representations of ACs, which likely reflect experiences of language acquisition and use. We are grateful to Art Glenberg [8] for arguing that, when speaking of sociality, we could refer more extensively to the mirror neuron mechanisms. One could even hypothesize that, because ACs involve more extensively sociality compared to CCs, their processing should involve more the MNs than processing of CCs, while the latter should involve more canonical neurons.…”