In Oliver Sacks’s seminal 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,5 he describes a group of aphasia patients who cannot understand spoken language, who are watching a speech by the president and finding it hilarious, which is clearly not the intent. The explanation is that the patients, robbed of their understanding of words, have become adept at recognising non-verbal cues and signs that most people overlook, being distracted by the actual words. The president, to them, is constantly revealing that he is being dishonest via facial tics, body language, rhythm of speech, elaborate
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