BENJAMIN BERGEN is an associate professor in the Cognitive Science Department at UC San Diego where he directs the Language and Cognition Lab. He is trained in linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley, receiving his Ph.D. in 2001. Bergen is an active researcher in cognitive linguistics and cognitive science, with over 40 publications and 60 presentations in the two related fields. He is the author of Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning, and most recently, What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves.
Bergen has presented dozens of invited lectures at linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science departments in the U.S. and abroad, and at national and international cognitive linguistics conferences. A large part of his research uses experimental methods to study the use of mental simulation in language understanding, including motor simulation, perceptual simulation, and how grammar affects mental simulation. In other work, he has constructed computationally precise models of language development and use.
