linguistics
![](https://www.skeptic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Daniel-Oberhaus-Salon-2x-510x287.jpg)
Exploring Earthlings’ various attempts to reach out to non-Earthlings over the centuries, Daniel Oberhaus poses some not entirely answerable questions. Is there not only a universal grammar (as Noam Chomsky has posited), but also a grammar of the universe? If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand? What languages will they (and we) speak? If we can’t even communicate with non-human mammals and primates, how are we going to communicate with sentient alien…
The endlessly fascinating question of whether we are alone in the universe has always been accompanied by another, more complicated one: if there is extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with it? In Science Salon # 88 Michael Shermer speaks with Daniel Oberhaus about his new book: Extraterrestrial Languages.
Body language “experts” claim they can “read” posture, facial expressions, and other body movements. In this week’s eSkeptic, Karen Stollznow discusses some of the ideas promoted by body language gurus and cautions that “reading” body language may be a superficial and unreliable practice. Skeptic magazine volume 17, number 1 (2011).
In this lecture, based on his book, U.C. San Diego cognitive psychologist Benjamin K. Bergen draws together research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning.