This lecture will discuss brain localization of language in the context of lesion analysis and functional brain imaging. The discussion will be organized around an experiment in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of discourse comprehension, and will delve into a number of assumptions underlying the general methods of establishing brain/behavior relationships in the study of language. Among the topics to be touched upon are the nature of brain locations, the choice of relevant brain functions, artificial versus natural phenomena, the abuse of metaphors, the meaning of activation, individual variability, the subtraction (comparison) approach to image analysis, and the consequences of data thresholding. As each issue is addressed, the lecture will discuss possible alternatives to the standard practice and a novel approach to the study of brain and language will be proposed.