Forthcoming 2026

How Language Works

Mind, Meaning, and the Human World

Dan Herbatschek

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The forthcoming title

The Book

How Language Works book cover
Grothendieck House New Release

How Language Works

Mind, Meaning, and the Human World

Dan Herbatschek

From speech sounds and symbols to grammar, memory, institutions, identity, and culture, the book asks how language gives shape to thought and makes a shared human reality possible.

Format
Hardcover
Published
2026
Status
Pre-order
Pre-order updates
The author

The writer behind the book

An inquiry years in the making, written for the general reader.

Portrait of Dan Herbatschek

The author

Dan Herbatschek

Author of How Language Works

Dan Herbatschek writes at the intersection of language, technology, philosophy, mathematics, and cultural history. How Language Works extends that inquiry into the oldest technology of the human mind: the words by which we think, remember, build, and belong.

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About the book

Language is the architecture through which minds meet.

We speak, and meaning appears. We listen, and another mind becomes partly available to us. We read marks on a page, and the dead speak. How Language Works treats that everyday act not as background, but as the central drama of human life.

One capacity, a whole human world.

FAQ

Common questions

Is this a technical book about linguistics?

It is intellectually serious, but written for general readers. Technical ideas appear only where they illuminate the larger story of mind, meaning, and human culture.

Is the book only about communication?

No. The central claim is that language is more than communication: it is a shaping force for thought, memory, identity, institutions, and civilization.

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How Language Works

Out of sound, we make meaning. Out of meaning, we make worlds.

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