Language dynamics and the phenomenology of
individual experience
10-12 May, 2007
Course Centre,
Agder University College, Grimstad, Norway
This Symposium aims
to bring together research on the cognitive dynamics of language
as a phenomenon that connects body, brain and world. Building
on previous meetings of the Distributed language Group (DLG) at
Cambridge, UK in September 2005 and Plymouth, UK in July 2006,
participants will develop the DLG’s perspective on individual
experience. This issue demands careful rethinking when it is posited
that, using multiple space-time scales, language and cognition
connect events in the brain with cultural activities and artefacts.
Rather than limit our view of experience to events ‘in’
an individual’s head, we take the view that language is
itself grounded by external dynamics that, in development, promote
the rise of linguistic experience. Thus we view human phenomenology
as an emergent and distributed process based in culturally embedded,
embodied causal processes. In its most dramatic form, these enable
humans to become skilled in the silent rehearsal of ideas (thinking
to oneself).
The theme of the
Symposium to be held in May 2007 is “Language dynamics,
and the phenomenology of individual experience”. We seek
to debate: (i) how does our phenomenal experience of language
derive from individual participation in cultural practices; (ii)
what role do language and other modalities of communication play
in focusing experience around the unique embodied perspective
of an individual whose resources include the cultural ‘background’;
and (iii) in what ways is the phenomenology of subjective experience
an emergent and distributed process dependent on causal processes
operating over many different space-time scales in a given cultural
system?
The scientific agenda
of the conference is summed up by the following:
1. Can a distributed
perspective on language clarify the nature of silent rehearsal?
2. In what ways does human phenomenology depend on linguistic
experience?
3. How does the phenomenal-linguistic aspect of experience emerge
in both evolution and development?
We invite papers
that address these issues. Enquiries should be made to Stephen
Cowley.
The Symposium links
a cognitive science focus on language dynamics with work in: (i)
the psychology and phenomenology of consciousness; (ii) language
as a means of achieving joint experience in the course of interpersonally
coordinated, semiotically mediated activity; (iii) the embodied
basis of cognition and social semiosis; and (iv) the socially
and culturally situated nature of cognition.
The main goal of
the Symposium to prepare the ground for work on how language is
grounded in perception and action that will be presented at a
larger event in 2008. In rethinking nature of symbol grounding,
language reaches not only into both brain and cultural world but,
strikingly, into experience of verbal expression. Indeed, to believe
in words, these must be separated from expression by recognising
that, in some contexts, for some functions, they are paramount.
How does this happen? And, how can verbal patterns become a both
an enabling and constraining force on what we say and do?
As in previous meetings of the DLG, we aim to develop new directions
in the scientific study of language behaviour. If all goes according
to plan, Paul J. Thibault will edit a collection of papers emanating
from the Symposium for a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics
towards the end of 2008. The deadline for final submission of
papers will beabout 8 weeks after the Dømmesmoen meeting
(details will be announced at the Symposium).
Organizers
Paul Thibault (Agder
University College, Norway
Stephen Cowley (University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom)
Provisional List
of Speakers:
| Stein Bråten |
University of Oslo, Norway |
| Lynne Cameron |
The Open University, UK |
| Rob Clowes |
University of Sussex, UK |
| Stephen Cowley |
University of Hertfordshire, UK |
| Jesper Hermann |
University of Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Richard Hirsch |
Linköping University |
| Bert Hodges |
Gordon College, Massachusetts, USA |
| Lois Holzman |
East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy,
New York, USA |
| Barbara Johnstone |
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA |
| Peter Jones |
Sheffield Hallam University, UK |
| Jay Lemke |
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA |
| Nigel Love |
University of Capetown, South Africa |
| Derek Melser |
Independent scholar, New Zealand |
| Jayne Mutiga |
University of Nairobi, Kenya |
| Peter Naur |
University of Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Ivar Ørstavik |
Trondheim University, Norway |
| Prof. Dr. Güler Ülkü |
Gazi University, Turkey |
Tom Ziemke
|
University of Skövde, Sweden |
Jordan Zlatev
|
Lund University |
