Extending across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and medicine, as well as literary and religious dimensions of the question of what language is and where it is located, this book challenges mainstream, mind-based accounts of language. Looking at research from the Middle Ages to the present day, and exploring the work of a range of scholars including Aristotle, Lucretius, Rousseau, Broca, Vygotsky and Chomsky, it assesses raging debates about whether mind and language are centred in heart or brain, brain or nervous-muscular system, and whether they are innate or learned, individual or social.