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- Volume 17, Issue, 2009
Pragmatics & Cognition - Volume 17, Issue 3, 2009
Volume 17, Issue 3, 2009
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Distributed language and dynamics
Author(s): Stephen J. Cowleypp.: 495–508 (14)More LessLanguage is coordination. Pursuing this, the present Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition challenges two widely held positions. First, the papers reject the claim that language is essentially ‘symbolic’. Second, they deny that minds (or brains) represent verbal patterns. Rather, language is social, individual, and contributes the feeling of thinking. Simply, it is distributed. Elucidating this claim, the opening papers report empirically-based work on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, their cognitive consequences, Shakespearean theatre, what images evoke, and insight problem-solving. Having given reasons for rejecting linguistic autonomy, the papers turn to theory building. Initially, attention is given to a possible origin for semiotic cognition. Then, it is claimed that language functions by realizing values. Next, it is argued that human dynamics are co-regulated by cultural and biological symbols. Finally, in a review article, the distributed view of language is used to contrast Clark’s (2008) organism-centered cognition with what is here called ecologically extended cognition.
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The role of anticipation in reading
Author(s): Timo Järvilehto, Veli-Matti Nurkkala and Kyösti Koskelapp.: 509–526 (18)More LessThe paper introduces measurement of fixation-speech intervals (FSI) as an important tool for the study of the reading process. Using the theory of the organism-environment system (Järvilehto 1998a), we developed experiments to investigate the time course of reading. By combining eye tracking with synchronous recording of speech during reading in a single measure, we issue a fundamental challenge to information processing models. Not only is FSI an authentic measure of the reading process, but it shows that we exploit verbal patterns, textual features and, less directly, reading experience. Reading, we conclude, is not a matter of decoding linguistic information. Far from being a text-driven process, it depends on integrating both sensory and motor processes in an anticipatory meaning generation based on the history of experience and cultural context of the reader. Finally, we conclude with remarks on the social character and cognitive history of reading.
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The experiential basis of speech and writing as different cognitive domains
Author(s): Alexander V. Kravchenkopp.: 527–548 (22)More LessTraditionally, writing is viewed as a code that stands in one-to-one correspondence to spoken language, which is therefore also viewed as a code. However, this is a delusion, which is shared by educators and has serious consequences for cognition, both on individual and on social levels. Natural linguistic signs characteristic for the activity of languaging and their symbolizations (graphic markings) are ontologically different phenomena; speech and writing belong to experiential domains of different dynamics. These dynamics impact differently on the linguistic/behavioral strategies of individuals and communities, viewed as second- and third-order living systems operating in a consensual domain as structure-determined systems. Failure to acknowledge this contributes to the spread of functional illiteracy in modern societies, which may lead to cognitive/communicative dysfunction. Technology-enhanced new literacies challenge the value of traditional written culture, raising questions about the relationship between speech and writing and their roles in human evolution
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Insightful thinking: Cognitive dynamics and material artifacts
Author(s): Evridiki Fioratou and Stephen J. Cowleypp.: 549–572 (24)More LessWe trace how cognition arises beyond the skin. Experimental work on insight problem solving is used to examine how external artifacts can be used to reach the goal of assembling a ‘cheap necklace’. Instead of asking how insight occurs ‘in the head’, our participants in Experiment 1 can either draw solution attempts or manipulate real objects (specifically, chain links that make up a necklace). Even though performance with real chain links is significantly more successful than on paper, access to objects does not make this insight problem simple: objects themselves do not shape cognition. This challenges extended mind views. While failure often results from the inappropriate (to the current insight problem) application of hill-climbing, material artifacts can trigger solutions. In Experiment 2, we used ‘open link’ conditions of the concretized problem to prompt participants to act (or think). Solutions arrived via insight, serendipity, or trial-and-error. By investigating how objects are used, we show that they do more than supplement neural events. Rather, participants monitor and anticipate the effects of action (and thinking) within an organism-environment system. By analogy, language too draws on experience of monitoring real-time effects as bodily dynamics play out in a normative and cultural world. In engaging with public language, it is likely that verbal patterns function by constraining anticipatory (action-based) cognitive processes.
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Taking the language stance in a material world: A comprehension study
Author(s): Kristian Tylén, Johanne Stege Bjørndahl and Ethan Weedpp.: 573–595 (23)More LessThis paper investigates a special kind of social meaning-making manifest in how we experience static objects and properties of our everyday world. This happens, for example, when we recognize objects like vacuum cleaners, sliced tomatoes, and sneakers as placed in special sites in the environment. Given the compositional features of such images, we see them as designed to accomplish communicative functions. It is argued that object configurations of this kind are recognized as externalized ostensive cues. They are seen as having been created with the intention of setting off an intersubjective mode of perception. This significantly changes the perceiver’s semiotic exploration of the scene. From a ‘private’ mode of sense-making mostly structured by reference to episodic, autobiographical experiential content, the perceiver takes a language stance. In other words, the perceiver adopts a qualitatively different meaning-constructing strategy in dealing with such images. Defending this claim, we present evidence from an empirical investigation of 20 participants’ construals of photographic images depicting everyday static objects. We show that a subset of these object configurations (signals) evoke a special kind of socially responsive attitude as manifested in participants’ introspective reports. The importance of these findings is brought out by discussion of parallels in neuro-cognitive work and how ostensive cues influence infant behavior.
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Languaging in Shakespeare’s theatre
Author(s): Evelyn Tribblepp.: 596–610 (15)More LessThe enshrinement of William Shakespeare’s plays in printed editions has led to the assumption that they were performed with an ideal of exact verbatim reproduction of the language. Evidence drawn from alternative versions of the plays circulating in Shakespeare’s lifetime and from our knowledge of the material practices of playing in early modern England presents us with a very different picture. Performing practices in this period were marked by a tension between improvisational here-and-now languaging practices, including the use of gesture in playing, and a new set of expectations based upon an emergent conception of plays as written documents.
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Semiotic cognition and the logic of culture
Author(s): Barend van Heusdenpp.: 611–627 (17)More LessIn this paper I argue that semiotic cognition is a distinctive form of cognition, which must have evolved out of earlier forms of non-semiotic cognition. Semiotic cognition depends on the use of signs. Signs are understood in terms of a specific organization, or structure, of the cognitive process. Semiotic cognition is a unique form of cognition. Once this form of cognition was available to humans, the semiotic provided the ground structure for an evolutionary development that was no longer strictly Darwinian, but followed its own — semiotic — logic. In the increasingly abstract ways in which the ubiquitous difference is dealt with, we discover this logic of cultural evolution, which determines the course of long term cultural change.
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Ecological pragmatics: Values, dialogical arrays, complexity, and caring
Author(s): Bert Hodgespp.: 628–652 (25)More LessThis paper explores the hypothesis that first-order linguistic activities are better understood in terms of ecological, values-realizing dynamics rather than in terms of rule-governed processes. Conversing, like other perception-action skills (e.g., driving) is constrained by multiple values, heterarchically organized. This hypothesis is explored in terms of three broad approaches that contrast with models of language which view it as a cognitive system: (1) conversing as a perceptual system for exploring dialogical arrays (Hodges 2007a); (2) conversing as an action system for integrating diverse space-time scales (Van Orden 2007); and (3) conversing as a caring system for embodying the context-sensitivity and interdependency necessary to realize values (Hodges 2007b). Approaching language as a caring action-perception system leads to a reconsideration of cognitive dimensions of linguistic activities, including consciousness, pragmatics, suffering, and hope.
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Symbols as constraints: The structuring role of dynamics and self-organization in natural language
Author(s): Joanna Raczaszek-Leonardipp.: 653–676 (24)More LessThe paper draws a parallel between natural language symbols and the symbolic mode in living systems. The inextricability of symbols and the dynamics with which they are functionally related shows that much of their structuring is due to dynamics and self-organization. It is also stressed that important factors that determine the shape of language structure lie outside individual mind/brains and they draw on time-scales quite different from those of phenomenological experience. Analysis of language into units and subsystems is thus not straightforward, since they show functionality on many levels and many time-scales. Finally it is recognized that, as a specific and specialized system of inter-individual coordination, natural language is many hierarchical levels away form simpler forms of information transmission in biological systems.
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Language, languaging, and the Extended Mind Hypothesis
Author(s): Sune Vork Steffensenpp.: 677–697 (21)More LessAfter a brief summary of Andy Clark’s book, Supersizing the Mind (2008) I address Clark’s approach to language which I argue to be inadequate. Clark is criticized for reifying language, thus neglecting that it is an interpersonal activity, not a stable system of symbols. With a starting point in language as a social phenomenon, I suggest an ecological approach to the extended mind hypothesis, arguing against Clark’s assumption that the extended mind is necessarily brain-centered.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 31 (2024)
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Volume 30 (2023)
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Volume 29 (2022)
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Volume 28 (2021)
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Volume 27 (2020)
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Volume 26 (2019)
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Volume 25 (2018)
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Volume 24 (2017)
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Volume 23 (2016)
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Volume 22 (2014)
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Volume 21 (2013)
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Volume 20 (2012)
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Volume 19 (2011)
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Volume 18 (2010)
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Volume 17 (2009)
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Volume 16 (2008)
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Volume 15 (2007)
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Volume 14 (2006)
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Volume 13 (2005)
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Volume 12 (2004)
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Volume 11 (2003)
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Volume 10 (2002)
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Volume 9 (2001)
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Volume 8 (2000)
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Volume 7 (1999)
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Volume 6 (1998)
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Volume 5 (1997)
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Volume 4 (1996)
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Volume 3 (1995)
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Volume 2 (1994)
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Volume 1 (1993)
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