Having identified these four components, it is tempting to conclude that specific aspects of language ability can be accorded specific locations in the brain. This is called the localization view and it has been used to suggest that the brain activity involved in hearing a word, understanding it, then saying it, would follow a definite pattern. The word is heard and comprehended via Wernicke’s area. This signal is then transferred via the arcuate fasciculus to Broca’s area where preparations are made to produce it. A signal is then sent to part of the motor cortex to physically articulate the word.

This is certainly an oversimplified version of what may actually take place, but it is consistent with much of what we understand about simple language processing in the brain. It is probably best to think of any proposal concerning processing pathways in the brain as some form of metaphor that may turn out to be inadequate once we learn more about how the brain functions.

The “pathway” metaphor seems quite appealing Language and the brain 159 in an electronic age when we’re familiar with the process of sending signals through electrical circuits. In an earlier age, dominated more by mechanical technology, Sigmund Freud subtly employed a “steam engine” metaphor to account for aspects of the brain’s activity when he wrote of the effects of repression “building up pressure” to the point of “sudden release.” In an even earlier age, Aristotle’s metaphor was of the brain as a cold sponge that functioned to keep the blood cool.

In a sense, we are forced to use metaphors mainly because we cannot obtain direct physical evidence of linguistic processes in the brain. Because we have no direct access, we generally have to rely on what we can discover through indirect methods. Most of these methods involve attempts to work out how the system is working from clues picked up when the system has problems or malfunctions.