I Thought I Said

Language allows us to express our thoughts and ideas. Every day we use language to tell others - friends, colleagues, family members, casual acquaintances, lovers - whether we are happy or sad, to convey whether we are angry or bored. We use language to compose an email, to purchase groceries in the supermarket, to buy a bus ticket. We need language to propose marriage, to argue, or to declare undying love. We use it to make requests and demands, to signal our wishes and desires, to say whether we prefer our coffee with or without sugar. Language is indispensable in making public our thoughts. But while we use language to get our thoughts across, the way language is patterned in expressing these thoughts also provides us with insight into the very nature of our minds. In I Thought I Said Vyvyan Evans demonstrates the ways in which language reveals how we think. Language can illuminate, to the scientist, the way in which thought is structured. It reveals underlying features of mind design.