Linguistic embodiment and verbal constraints: human cognition and the scales of time.
Frontiers in Psychology 2014 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01085 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Cognitive linguistics Coordination Distributed cognition Distributed language Ecological psychology Enactivism Prosody Social interaction |
| Citations | 51 |
| Key points | Proposes that language is symbiotic, arising from agent-environment dynamics managed under verbal constraints, and redefines language as "activity in which wordings play a part." |
Abstract
USING RADICAL EMBODIED COGNITIVE SCIENCE, THE PAPER OFFERS THE HYPOTHESIS THAT LANGUAGE IS SYMBIOTIC: its agent-environment dynamics arise as linguistic embodiment is managed under verbal constraints. As a result, co-action grants human agents the ability to use a unique form of phenomenal experience. In defense of the hypothesis, I stress how linguistic embodiment enacts thinking: accordingly, I present auditory and acoustic evidence from 750 ms of mother-daughter talk, first, in fine detail and, then, in narrative mode. As the parties attune, they use a dynamic field to co-embody speech with experience of wordings. The latter arise in making and tracking phonetic gestures that, crucially, mesh use of artifice, cultural products and impersonal experience. As observers, living human beings gain dispositions to display and use social subjectivity. Far from using brains to "process" verbal content, linguistic symbiosis grants access to diachronic resources. On this distributed-ecological view, language can thus be redefined as: "activity in which wordings play a part."