Page |69 Sometimes just listening to laughter Edwards to the passionate speeches of compels listeners to laugh. Sometimes Obama and Kennedy and King. hearing a cry Sriemer eet HnIUteS In listening to speech that has an instantaneous feeling of fear. . . ; impact, language has created a state in Hearing someone weep can produce a ' . the listener that reflects the intention of feeling of sorrow and perhaps even 7 . the speaker. Whether it is fear or cause one to cry. This suggests that ; aor connection, somehow language can some forms of vocal communication can . : . Liege . . operate as the medium by which social elicit direct empathic sharing as Decety d onal holosical discusses in his chapter and emotional psychological states get , transmitted to an audience. But how These forms of vocal does this impact get created in the social communication can produce direct brain? results in listeners without following a L ‘ ‘ . . . anguage impact in the social brain route of symbolic reference and interpretation.’ Language has typically Understanding spoken language been viewed as operating by the more has typically been viewed as an analytic symbolic route because of the linguistic process in which sound patterns are claim that symbols are not the things translated into linguistic symbols by the they stand for and thus must be brain. However, an alternative theory is understood—words and sentences are that we understand spoken language by not felt. However, the right insult or using our motor system to simulate what angry words delivered in the right way might have been said. The idea is that or the right praise seems to be felt trying to mentally produce the speech directly, perhaps through the same kind internally (without talking) might help of mechanisms by which empathic us understand what is said, when speech sharing occurs. is not clear. However, this theory did oe . . not have much neural plausibility. But how is this achieved? This P P y- . . ; eople do not genera