Distributed Language

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p i. ...

Author: Stephen J. Cowley

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Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p i. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=1

Distributed Language

Benjamins Current Topics Special issues of established journals tend to circulate within the orbit of the subscribers of those journals. For the Benjamins Current Topics series a number of special issues of various journals have been selected containing salient topics of research with the aim of finding new audiences for topically interesting material, bringing such material to a wider readership in book format. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p ii. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=2

Mφ://benjamins. com/catalog/bct

Volume 34

Di stributed Language Edited by Stephen J. Cowley

Th ese materials were previously published in Pragmatics & Cognition 17:3 (2009)

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p iii. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=3

Distributed Language

Edited by

Stephen J. Cowley

University of Hertfordshire , UK

John

Be时 amins

Publishing Company

Amsterdam / Philadelphia

创TM

卫le

paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials , ANSI z39 .4 8-1984.

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p iv. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Distributed Language / Edited by Stephen J. Cowley. p. cm. (Benjamins Current Topics, ISSN 1874-0081 ; v. 34) lncludes bibliographical references and index. 1. Psycholinguistics 2. Language acquisition. 3. Language and culture. 1. Cowley, Stephen J P37.4.D51284 2011 401:9--dc23 2011029013 ISBN 978 90 272 0253 6 (Hb; alk. paper) ISBN 978 90 272 8415 0 (Eb) 。 2011

- John Benjamins B. V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form , by print , photopri时， microfìlm, or any other means , without written permission from the publisher.

John Benjamins Publishing Co. . P. O. Box 36224 . 1020 ME Amsterdam . τhe Netherlands John Benjamins North America . P.O. Box 27519 . Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 . USA

Table of contents

About the Authors

vii

Distributed language Stephen J. Cowley 咀le

1

role of anticipation in reading Timo Järvilehto, Veli-Matti Nurkkala , and /i伊östi Koskela

15

咀le

experiential basis of speech and writing as different cognitive domains

33

Alexander V. Kravchenko Insightful thinking: Cognitive dynamics and material artifacts Evridiki Fioratou and Stephen J. Cowley

57

Actualizing semiotic affordances in a material world Kristian Tylén , Johanne Stege Bjørndahl, and Ethan

81 讥feed

Languaging in Shakespeare's theatre

101

Evelyn Tribble Semiotic cognition and the logic of culture

117

Barend van Heusden Ecological pragmatics: Values , dialogical arrays , complexity, and caring

135

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p v. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=5

Bert Hodges Symbols as constraints: 咀le structuring role of dynamics and selforganization in naturallanguage

161

Joanna Rqczaszek-Leonardi Beyond mind: An extended ecology oflanguaging

185

Sune Vork Steffensen Subject Index

211

Name Index

219

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p vi. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=6

About the Authors

Stephen Cowley is a Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire , UK. Although his PhD and early career were in Linguistics , since 2000 he has lectured in Psychology and Cognitive Science. Recent empirical work has focused on interactions between mothers and infants , children and robots , and simulations of health emergencies. He founded and co-ordinates the Distributed Language Group , a growing community who aim to transform the language sciences by focusing on how directed , dialogical activity imbues human intelligence with a collective dimension Timo Järvilehto is Professor of Psychology in the University of Oulu since 1986. His basic field of study is brain research and psychophysiology, starting in the 1960's with EEG problems (CNV, evoked potentials) , extending to problems of sensory physiology and psychophysics (human microneurography) , and to unit studies in behaving animals. Since 1990 he has been developing psychological theory under the heading "systemic psychology" based on the Theory of the Organism-environment System. Veli-Matti Nurkkala has a Master's degree in Sport and Health science and is currently doctoral student in the University of Oulu (SkilLab). His doctoral thesis investigates the time course of reading process in different reading situations in order to develop a model of reading process. His other interests include emotional dynamics , well-being and stress levels of athletes and pupils.

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p vii. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=7

Kyösti Koskela has a Bachelor of Engineering degree and is currently studying for a Master of Sport Science at the University of Jyväskylä. He is currently working as a laboratory engineer in SkilLab, specialising in eye movement research. His other fields of interest include motion analysis , heart rate variability, and electromyography in skilled actions.

Alex Kravchenko is Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at the Baikal National University of Economics and Law. Since the late 1980s he has worked in cognitive linguistics and , specifically, the perceptual groundedness of grammatical categories. He developed a unified cognitive theory of aspect in English and Russian , and more recently, he has focused on the bio logical theory of language and cognition, the phenomenology of semiotics , and epistemological issues in the philosophy of language. Evridiki Fioratou is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen , working on anaesthetists' intraoperative problem solving. She has previously been a Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire on problem solving projects, including individual differences and verbalization and self-explanation effects , on the student population. Her research focus is on the cognitive dynamics affecting problem solving in the lab and "in the wild" and she is an advocate of the distributed cognition approach.

viii

About the Authors

Kristian Tylén has an MA in Cognitive Semiotics from University of Aarhus and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern Denmark. He currently holds a postdoctoral position at the Center for Semiotics, University of Aarhus , and the Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University Hospital. His main interests reside in the interface between semiotics , aesthetics , and the cognitive sciences and the application of various experimental approaches (including brain imaging) to the study ofhuman meaning construction. Johanne Stege Philipsen has an MA in Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics from University of Aarhus , Denmark. She has worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Language and Cognition, University of Southern Denmark and Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience , Aarhus University Hospital. Her main interests are within social neuroscience, cognitive semiotics , and neurolinguistics. Ethan Weed has an MA in Cognitive Semiotics and is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Linguistics , University of Aarhus. His research interests include language , cognition , and pragmatics. His work combines lesion studies with ERP techniques to investigate communication impairments following right hemisphere damage. Evelyn Tribble is Donald Collie Professor of English at the University of Otago. She is the author of Cognition in the Globe: Attention and Memory in Shakespeare 's Th eatre (New York: Palgrave , 2011) and (with Nicholas Keene) Cognitive Ecologies and the History of Remembering: Religion, Education, and Memory in Early Modern England (Basingstoke , Hampshire: Palgrave, 2011) Her interests include memory studies , performance and memory, theatre history, and literature and cognition

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p viii. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=8

Barend van Heusden is senior lecturer in the Department of Arts , Culture , and Media Studies of the University of Groningen (NL). His research focuses on the semiotics of culture and the arts. Since 2008 he has been leading the Dutch national research project ‘ Culture in the Mirror' (2008-2012) , which aims to develop a theoretical framework for an integrated culture education curriculum for children and youngsters from 4 to 18 years old. Bert H. Hodges received his PhD in Psychology from Vanderbilt University and is Professor of Psychology, Gordon College , Wenham, MA , and Senior Research Scientist, University of Connecticut, Storrs , C T. His work is focused on developing and applying an ecological account of values in perception-action, social psychology, and language. He has co-edited with Reuben Baron a special issue of Ecological Psycholog只 Making social psychology more ecological and ecological psychology more social and another with Carol Fowler, Distributed, dynamical , and dialogical: New coordinations for language. JoannaR电czaszek-Leonardi

received her MA at the University ofWarsaw, and her PhD at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. She is presently Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Bologna and an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. She is a psycholinguist interested in language as a dynamical system, and is engaged in identifying important dynamics and timescales in language functioning , learning , and evolution. Her experimental interests concern methods for studying dynamical processes of on-line communication.

About the Authors

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p ix. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=9

Sune 飞Tork Steffensen is associate professor at the Institute of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark. He leads the Research Group: Holism , Dialogue, Organization which investigates cognition, language and interactivity in organizational se忧ings. His research interests include holistic , ecological and distributed theories in (interactional) linguistics as well as health interaction. He has co-edited the books Language, Ecology and Society: A Dialectical Approach (London: Continuum , 2007) and Signij识 ng Bodies: Biosemiosis, Interaction and Health (Braga: Portuguese Catholic University Press , 2010) , and authored papers and chapters on language and interaction. He is also co-ordinator of the international Distributed Health Interaction programme

ix

Distributed language Stephen J. Cowley University of Hertfordshire, England

In viewing language as multi-scale co-ordination, the distributed perspective challenges two dominant orthodoxies. First, it denies that language is essentially ‘ symbolic' and , second , that verbal patterns are represented inside minds (or brains). Rather, language is , at once , collective , individual and constitutive of the feeling of thinking. It is distributed between us. In illustration , the opening Chapters report empirical work on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, its cognitive consequences , Shakespearean theatre , what images evoke and solving insight problems. Having given reason to consider this challenge to linguistic autonomy, the collection concludes with theoretical papers. First, it is argued that language depends on a species specific form of semiotic cognition. Second , it is suggested that realizing values is a central function of language . 咀11时， as with all social activity, this is traced to how cultural and biological symbols coregulate human dynamics. Finall予 Steffensen (this volume) argues , far from being organism-centred , language gives us access to an extended ecology in which , through co-ordination, we enact our own history.

Cowley, Stephen J. (Editor). Distributed Language. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011. p 1. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ohiostate/Doc?id=10505825&ppg=10

1.

Beyond symbol processing

Computational views of mind invoke a system that functions syntactically and, for that reason , without reference to human life. Today, however, the study of cognition is moving away from such models. Living human beings rely on , not just symbols , but also interactions that sensitise us to each other and our cultural practices. 咀lÍs commonplace idea took on new life when Hutchins (l 995a , 1995b) used cog nitive models to examine how we navigate ships and land planes. He showed that culturally-specific artefacts and narratives serve in propagating representations in a public domain. Cognition is cultural and embodied: while much happens in the brain , events arise as people interact both with each other and the world. While the view is now mainstream in cognitive science, Distributed Language shows its radical implications for language. Since humans do not need artefacts to embody thoughts , language is fundamentally dynamic. Verbal patterns constrain bodily

2

Stephen J. Cowley

movements and the feeling of thinking as people co-ordinate the flow of activity.咀le perspective thus challenges theories that privilege linguistic form and/or function. Co-ordination becomes a means of embodying thoughts: language is , at once , ecological, dialogical and non-local.


2.

咀le

distributed perspective

Language can be traced to how living bodies co-ordinate with the world. On this perspective, far from being a synchronic ‘ system', language is a mode of organization that functions by linking people with each other, external resources and cultural traditions. We concert speech , thinking , gesture and action in speciesspecific ways. Language arises as we give voice to wordings , make gestures , imag ine and deal with 0问 ects and institutions. It is whole-bodied activity that shapes sense-making and, once skills develop , allows texts and institutions to enrich what we think and do. Rather than view language as an object, we live in a social meshwork (Steffensen , Thibault and Cowle予 2010; 咀übault， 2011) whose dynamics fuse events that draw on many time-scales. Lingβistic experience alters who we become as we orient to others (who orient to us). Just as 1 co-ordinate with my imagined reader, you draw on your expectations , scan what is before your eyes , evoke memories and, perhaps , see future prospects. Even in reading , language-activity connects eye and head movements with inscriptions and wordings. For those con cerned with the results , we can ask what happens as we create and construe language and, generall予 manage human action. Language links the here-and-now with what has been and, crucially, what is to come. It is thus beyond dispute that , in this sense , language is a distributed phenomenon. Th ough languages and their parts constrain sense-making , humans also rely on intertwining gestures , voices and artifacts. When the language sciences focus on these multi-scale dynamics , they discover an alternative to positing a priori linguistic signifiers (or language-systems). Before turning to dynamics , 1 briefly sketch di伍culties that arise from putting symbols (or words) 且rst. Above all , these are abstractions that unzip language from embodied activity.τhey conflate acts of utterance (movements) with descriptions of results (as verbal patterns). Not only does this mask the interdependency of voices , gestures and artifacts , but lan guages become disembodied ‘systems'. 咀ley come to be reified in terms of letter like constituents , larger units and linguistic forms. While of value to characterise meanings , words , and grammars , abstractions cannot explain human behaviour. Quite simpl予 what we do and say - how we embody thoughts - is cultural activity. Symbol-first or disembodied approaches over
























































































































































































































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