Bio

Professor Vyvyan Evans, PhD, is an internationally renowned expert on language and digital communication, and an author and researcher. He received his PhD in Linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington DC., in the USA and taught for many years in the UK at the University of Sussex, Brighton University and Bangor University. He has written numerous books on language, meaning, mind, and digital communication, and the impact of technology on language and mind. His popular science books include The Emoji Code: The Linguistics Behind Smiley Faces and Scaredy Cats (2017); The Crucible of Language: How Language and Mind Create Meaning (2015); and The Language Myth: Why Language is Not an Instinct (2014). Prof. Evans frequently provides expert opinion on language to the written and broadcast media. His popular writing has been featured in Aeon, CNN Style, The New York Post, The Guardian, The Conversation, Nautilus Magazine, Newsweek, New Scientist, and Psychology Today, among other publications.

Public Resources

Published Interviews

Author page at Amazon has full details of all published books
Google Scholar profile provides metrics and citations
Official author page at Facebook
YouTube channel
Blog at Psychology Today
Author page at Goodreads

Access Semantics

Evans is the architect of Access Semantics (also known as LCCM Theory): a theoretical account of the intersection between the linguistic and conceptual systems, which subserve linguistically-mediated meaning construction. This he investigates in a book-length treatment: How Words Mean, which provides a technical overview of Access Semantics, the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models (aka LCCM Theory). A technical book, Language & Time develops a detailed application of Access Semantics to the domain of time. The Crucible of Language provides a pop-sci overview of this perspective for a general audience. A chapter-length overview of the theory is available as Chapter 18 of Cognitive Linguistics: A Complete Guide. All the technical articles and book chapters on the theory are available for download here.