Explanation
In the Atlas, the body is not merely an object named by language but the bodily basis of voice, gesture, perception, writing practice, and metaphorical concept formation. Language is breathed, articulated, heard, seen, or signed; even digital communication remains tied to capacities for perception and action. At the same time, bodies are linguistically categorised, evaluated, and politically ordered. The profile therefore neither reduces body to anatomy nor equates it with embodiment: body denotes a complex bearer and object, whereas embodiment is an explanatory perspective on cognition and meaning. Cultural ideas of possession, gender, vulnerability, and personhood also shape which bodies become linguistically visible. The concept returns abstract language to its material conditions without treating those conditions as immutable destiny.
Movement of thought
1. An utterance or sign action is first considered as a carrier of meaning while its bodily conditions remain easy to overlook. 2. Breath, articulation, gaze, hand movement, posture, and sensory uptake become visible as constitutive parts of its performance. 3. Analysis also traces how language names, norms, metaphorises, and positions bodies within social and political relations. 4. A counter-test separates the concrete and culturally interpreted body from embodiment as theory, interoception, and purely anatomical description. 5. Language returns to its bodily scene: meaning appears as something borne by vulnerable, acting bodies that respond to one another.
Scientific use case
Phonetics, gesture studies, semiotics, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics combine movement, audio, and textual data. Critical research also examines how norms and metaphors socially classify bodies.
Example
A speaker shortens his sentences as breath becomes scarce; rhythm and argument change together, making a bodily limit audible within linguistic form.
Counterexample
An anatomical inventory of bones and organs describes the human body, but without voice, sign, perception, or cultural interpretation it does not yet address the body's function in the Atlas.
Distinction
Distinguish body from lived body in phenomenology, embodiment as explanatory approach, interoception, body metaphor, biological organism, and personhood as a legal-social category.
Effect on thought and perception
The concept reconnects abstract language with breath, posture, movement, and sensory life and reveals that expression is both bodily enabled and socially shaped.
Resonance
A voice does not arrive as a disembodied sign; breath, muscular tension, and gaze reverberate within it, and another body answers through attention, movement, or resistance.
Etymology
Technical core term; individual etymological review pending
Provenance
Unresolved relation network → core-concept review → Metzler/HWRh cross-check → ATLAS 238
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Body“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-CORE-238-045. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-CORE-238-045The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
James places the body at the innermost region of what he calls the material self, then follows the sense of belonging outward towards clothing, possessions and close relationships. This is a historical psychological account of self-experience, not a claim that all these objects have the same anatomical status. For the Atlas, body becomes more than a neutral object observed from outside: it also names a site of felt ownership and practical concern. The useful countertest asks whether we are discussing living tissue, an experienced body or the boundaries of what someone regards as their own. James’s examples reflect his social setting and should not be universalised. The inspected 1918 printing documents his argument, not the English word’s etymology or a contemporary neuroscience of embodiment.
How conceptual history changes the analysis
Analysis of body must separate anatomical organism, lived body, and an extended field of belonging; James supports the historical psychological extension, not its present validity.
References for the historical section
- William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. I, New York: Henry Holt, 1918 printing; author’s preface dated August 1890; Project Gutenberg ebook 57628 · Chapter X, The Consciousness of Self, pp. 292–293: the material self
Selected passage, not a complete genealogy or an English first-attestation claim. Original Atlas applications are editorial interpretations, not reported experiments. Selected passages read in the transcription of the 1918 printing. The filename recalls the work’s 1890 origin, not the printing inspected. No collation with the first edition. James’s physiological proposals and judgments about animals or mental capacities are historical positions, not current scientific findings.