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On a distributed view, language
arises from human co-action. In scrutinizing this approach, the
meeting will examine how social coordination has evolved together
with human language. It will examine both biological and cultural
time-scales.
Rather
than a formal symbolic system, that describes a capacity of an individual,
language becomes embodied activity that occurs in a shared environment,
exploiting both individual neural processes and socially structured
perception and co-action. Explanations of linguistic phenomena thus
demand consideration of interindividual dynamics. But besides being
a part of socially distributed cognition, language seems to take
a special role in co-ordinating other cognitive processes among
individuals. In this sense, cognition is both distributed and con-divided
through language, i.e., language is likely to have an important
role in making perception and action social.
The
goal of the meeting is to identify both those kinds of social coordination
that matter most to humans and the aspects of language needed for
such coordination. Examples will include the role of prosodic structure
in physical coordination of mother and infant, affective coordination
in dyads that align values, and the coordination of concept systems
in individuals, dyads, and social groups. Thus we aim to consider
patterns of linguistic activity that range from physical ones right
up the “symbolic” and “normative” aspects
of speech.
Taking
an evolutionary and comparative perspective, will draw attention
to the kinds of social coordination that arise without (human-like)
language, and that contribute to the background used by (and present
in) linguistic communication. By so doing, it will be easier to
appreciate the qualitatively different types of co-ordination that
are specific to humans and language-dependent. The evolutionary
perspective will help with coming to view language as a natural
phenomenon, continuous with other “informational” systems
at various levels of biological organization, that serve not only
vertical (inter-generational) transmission of structure but also
horizontal coordination both within and between organisms.
By bringing together the Distributed Language Group, biosemioticians,
researchers interested in joint action and dynamical systems scientists
we wish to address the theoretical aspects of viewing language as
social co-ordination and related methodological problems. We thus
invite contributions that address a range of issues: from philosophical
reflections on how a distributed view of language changes the questions
we ask, to methodological ones that aim to clarify what kind of
data can answer these questions, and how to find the right measures
for the variables that change on different time scales. Perhaps
most eagerly we expect contributions that consist of empirical work
that examines the coordinative role of informational systems in
living organisms, from the level of cells up to that of human society.
We
expect speakers to include:
Don Ross, University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of
Cape Town
Marcello Barbieri, University of Ferrara, Italy
Carol Fowler, Haskins Laboratories, Yale University and University
of Connecticut
John Collier, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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