Abstract
This paper has two objectives. The first is to formulate a critique of present-day cognitive linguistics (CL) concerning the inner workings of the cognitive system during language use, and the second is to put forward an alternative account that is inspired by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Due to its third-person methodology, CL views language use essentially as a problem-solving activity, as coping with two subproblems: the problem of minimum and maximum, which consists in selecting the appropriate expression out of an unlimited multitude of possibilities, and the problem of the underdetermination of signification. This approach presupposes a notion of an isolated subject and a representationalist view of perception. We defend an alternative view of man's relation to the world in which intersubjectivity is constitutive of embodied subjectivity and which exchanges the representationalist view of perception for a direct nonrepresentationalism. We describe the ensuing view of linguistic action as intra- and interpersonal “all-at-onceness.” This approach dismisses the two subproblems CL implicitly identifies as constitutive of language use. The first is countered by rethinking what it means to be a situated speaking subject and results in the concept of “style.” The second is tackled by opposing the concept of “overdetermination” to CL's notion of underdetermination.
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Notes
For the purposes of this paper, we will broadly conceive of “Cognitive Linguists” to comprise self-proclaimed Cognitive Linguists (such as Ronald Langacker), philosophers of language informing Cognitive Linguists (such as François Recanati), and cognitive scientists related to Cognitive Linguistics (such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson).
We use the phrase “somehow” so that we may include the “causal” accounts of mind in which the mental is a product or an attribute of the physiological.
We quote Langacker because of his obvious importance for this paper. To support our claim that the view of the cognitive system as a hurried problem-solving device is an almost universal assumption, we throw in some random analog formulations from related disciplines: Dennett (1991:32), for example, talks about “our time-pressured brains”, apparently confident that the expression is self-explanatory. Bavelas (2007:128) describes feedback responses in face-to-face dialogue to be “highly probable and extremely fast”. Johnson and Rohrer (2007:19), in summing up the key tenets of embodiment theory, state that embodied cognition is “problem-centered” and that it “is not concerned with finding some allegedly perfect solution to a problem, but one that works well enough relative to the current situation”. Wilson (2002:626) agrees with the view that cognition “must be understood in terms of how it functions under the pressures of real-time interaction with the environment”. Clark (2001:66, 67) attacks a certain view on cognition as problem-solving, but goes along with the problem-solving account in general: “The systematic problem-solving of biological brains (…) does not really follow the plan-as-program model. Instead, individual agents deploy general strategies which incorporate operations upon the world as an intrinsic part of the problem-solving activity.” In modeling minds he also rejects the concept of a central planner using a single symbolic code because it is “time-consuming” and “block(s) fast, real-time response” (Clark 2001:21).
Also referred to as “the problem of semantic underspecification”
Bits and pieces can be found all over Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre, but the essay “On the phenomenology of language” (Merleau-Ponty 1964) is wholly dedicated to identifying some overly rationalistic elements in Husserl’s philosophy of language. Merleau-Ponty argues that these upheavals of rationalism lead the phenomenologist away from what is her original objective, i.e., to explain how the expressivity of the social other can be experienced as a direct and meaningful presence.
The maxim of well-conducted philosophy of mind of Dretske (1994), which states that in order to fully understand a cognitive system, we should try to come up with the knowledge such that we could build one, has in fact been taken over by most cognitive scientists: “(…) cognitive science cannot be separated from cognitive technology. Thus, we do not offer the enactive approach as a refined, European-flavored position that has no hands-on applications in cognitive science. On the contrary, we claim that without the key notions of the enactive approach, cognitive science will be unable to both account for living cognition and to build truly intelligent, cognitive artifacts.” (Varela et al. 1991:207) What strikes us is not the attempt to build “truly intelligent, cognitive artifacts,” which may very well be possible in the future, but the apparently self-evident equation of technologically reconstructing the perceiver and the coming about of “truly first-person” experiences.
And this last step, which transplants a system of theoretical processes and mechanisms into the heads of real people, in the end, is really the only step taken by Cognitive Linguists that we object to.
“The scientist cannot make the rejoinder here that he thinks without ontological background. To believe that one is not doing metaphysics or to want to abstain from doing it is always to imply an ontology, but an unexamined one—just as governments run by “technicians” do not make political policy, but never fail to have one—and often the worst of all.” (De Waelhens 2006:xxviii)
Ethno-methodology and the analysis of socially situated conversation have successfully “relieved” the language user from her isolated position. However, no “cognitive” conclusions are drawn: a descriptive analysis of the embodied and situated nature of language use by itself does not speak in favor of a representationalist or non-representationalist theory of mind, intersubjectivity and language. The fact that language users can be described as highly depending on their social context can be accommodated by both frameworks; it does not imply a certain cognitive architecture.
This is the reason why earlier on the apparent oxymoron of “fast, real-time cognition” could make sense. We would think that “real-time” cognition does not qualify as either “fast” or “slow” because time has no speed by itself. Real-time only seems fast when we look at it with a yet-to-be-built artificially intelligent system in perspective, which is the modern-day version of the isolated Cartesian subject, enclosed in itself and independent from the world.
“Dependent on” not in a negative (subjected) or a positive (solidary) sense but as a factual, non-negotiable way of existing.
This view is often called the “extended” or “distributed” mind, which “off-loads” cognition into the world. This terminology of course only makes sense relative to a non-extended, non-distributed, and “loaded” conception of mind, and it is our intention to surpass this distinction.
The delayed auditory feedback experiment is the first of several experiments described in McNeill (1992, Ch.10) which attempt to break the speech–gesture bond, in contrast to experiments that aim to gain insight into gesture as it is bound with speech in everyday situations. The outcomes show unanimously that the expressive mind, mouth, and body work in tandem.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing us to this reference.
Terms also and even more frequently used are ‘mimicry’, ‘mirroring’ and ‘synchrony’. We prefer ‘entrainment’ because it evades the image of one conversational participant mimicking, mirroring or getting in sync with the other, and rather suggests that both participants are carried away by the linguistic event: “Motor mimicry is not an individual phenomenon. It depends on, is shaped by, and in turn influences a particular moment in dialogue, illustrating the fine-tuned reciprocity that is the essence of the micro-social context.” (Bavelas 2007:136)
The term “coherent deformation” is originally from André Malraux and was then adopted by Merleau-Ponty (1964).
Many thanks to Sue Duncan for sharing this material. Unfortunately, we cannot reproduce video stills from this experiment because of the subject’s limited permission to do so.
Bavelas (2007), too, still takes the coordination view as her self-evident framework. From there, she analyzes face-to-face dialogue in a micro-social context and finds that, e.g., responses are “extremely fast” and that frame-by-frame microanalysis “reveals” that responses are simultaneous. In our framework, in which conversational participants construct conversation together as a unity, this “speed” or “simultaneity” are self-evident phenomena.
Andrén (in press), walking the line between expressive and practical action, has made the observation that “(…) semantic and temporal linking of speaking and doing in general (…) is highly neglected within the gesture literature,” while in reality it is highly occurent. His example, among others, is that of a little girl picking up a toy milk can from the table while saying “milk”. Also in adult life we often name out loud the object of our actions, e.g. when checking your pockets while leaving the house: “keys”, “wallet”, “phone”, etc. The apparent non-efficiency of saying while doing may suggest that a plurality of modes lightens the cognitive burden of identifying objects and states of affairs even when there is no listener, and the action seems practical only, and not expressive.
The body of work describing real-life instances of embodied language use is growing. The number of linguistic modes that are looked at has however always been quite limited for the obvious reason that even for the trained eye such a description is a difficult and time-consuming undertaking (e.g. gaze may be studied vis-à-vis words, gesture vis-à-vis facial expression, etc., either or both intra- or interpersonally). Charles Goodwin’s work tends to focus on more than two semiotic modes and gives impressive accounts of how these modes interact to convey meaning (see, for example, Goodwin 2006).
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Quaeghebeur, L., Reynaert, P. Does the need for linguistic expression constitute a problem to be solved?. Phenom Cogn Sci 9, 15–36 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9146-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9146-2