Language is coordination. Pursuing this, the present Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition challenges two widely held positions. First, the papers reject the claim that language is essentially ‘symbolic’. Second, they deny that minds (or brains) represent verbal patterns. Rather, language is social, individual, and contributes the feeling of thinking. Simply, it is distributed. Elucidating this claim, the opening papers report empirically-based work on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, their cognitive consequences, Shakespearean theatre, what images evoke, and insight problem-solving. Having given reasons for rejecting linguistic autonomy, the papers turn to theory building. Initially, attention is given to a possible origin for semiotic cognition. Then, it is claimed that language functions by realizing values. Next, it is argued that human dynamics are co-regulated by cultural and biological symbols. Finally, in a review article, the distributed view of language is used to contrast Clark’s (2008) organism-centered cognition with what is here called ecologically extended cognition.
2025. Process and Dynamics in AI and Language Use. Topics in Cognitive Science
Fester-Seeger, Marie-Theres
2024. How a Child Learns to ‘Talk’ to a Smart Speaker: On the Emergence of Enlanguaged Practices. Linguistic Frontiers 7:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Kumar, Chandan & Nivea Thomas K
2024. Discourse Of Dissent: Languaging Resistance And Consciousness In Subaltern Literatures – Dalit And Black. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT 12:2 ► pp. 144 ff.
Intke-Hernandez, Minna
2023. Embodiment and a sense of belonging in online language learning contexts. Taikomoji kalbotyra :20 ► pp. 104 ff.
Ilyin, Mikhail
2023. How to do languaging(s), language games and languages. Linguistic Frontiers 6:2 ► pp. 50 ff.
Ilyin, Mikhail
2024. Doing Language(s) and Other Communicative Practices. Linguistic Frontiers 7:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Inoue, Takuya
2023. Toward an ecological model of language: from cognitive linguistics to ecological semantics. Language Sciences 100 ► pp. 101582 ff.
Zlatev, Jordan
2023. The Intertwining of Bodily Experience and Language: The Continued Relevance of Merleau-Ponty. Histoire Épistémologie Langage :45-1 ► pp. 41 ff.
Drain, Chris
2022. Review of Lawrence J. Hatab, Proto-Phenomenology, Language Acquisition, Orality, and Literacy: Dwelling in Speech II. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21:2 ► pp. 469 ff.
Shi, Dan & Paul J. Thibault
2022. Languaging dynamics of classroom interactivity: a distributed view of the pedagogic recontextualization in L2 tertiary settings. Semiotica 2022:245 ► pp. 125 ff.
Tantucci, Vittorio & Aiqing Wang
2022. Resonance as an Applied Predictor of Cross-Cultural Interaction: Constructional Priming in Mandarin and American English Interaction. Applied Linguistics 43:1 ► pp. 115 ff.
THORNE, STEVEN L., JOHN HELLERMANN & TEPPO JAKONEN
2021. Rewilding Language Education: Emergent Assemblages and Entangled Actions. The Modern Language Journal 105:S1 ► pp. 106 ff.
Tison, Remi & Pierre Poirier
2021. Communication as Socially Extended Active Inference: An Ecological Approach to Communicative Behavior. Ecological Psychology 33:3-4 ► pp. 197 ff.
Bondì, Antonino
2020. Enactivism. In Glossary of Morphology [Lecture Notes in Morphogenesis, ], ► pp. 149 ff.
Susan Conrad, Alissa Hartig & Lynn Santelmann
2020. The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics,
Harris, Kathy & Gloria Jacobs
2020. Literacy, Digital Literacy, Language Education, and Equity. In The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 352 ff.
Walters, Keith
2020. Language, the Law, and Forensic Linguistics. In The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 325 ff.
Gahrn-Andersen, Rasmus
2019. Biological simplexity and cognitive heteronomy. Language Sciences 71 ► pp. 38 ff.
Gahrn-Andersen, Rasmus
2021. Conceptual attaching in perception and practice-based behavior. Lingua 249 ► pp. 102960 ff.
Gahrn-Andersen, Rasmus
2023. Radicalizing radical linguistics: on the need to overcome the language–practice divide. Linguistic Frontiers 6:2 ► pp. 5 ff.
2025. Human languaging and large language models. AI & SOCIETY
Hellermann, John, Steven L. Thorne & Jamalieh Haley
2019. Building Socio-environmental Infrastructures for Learning. In Conversation Analytic Research on Learning-in-Action [Educational Linguistics, 38], ► pp. 193 ff.
Trasmundi, Sarah Bro
2019. Skilled Embodiment in Emergency Medicine. Chinese Semiotic Studies 15:4 ► pp. 627 ff.
Trybulec, Marcin
2019. Extending the Private Language Argument. Chinese Semiotic Studies 15:4 ► pp. 513 ff.
Zheng, Dongping, Ying Hu & Ivan Banov
2019. A Multiscalar Coordination of Languaging. Chinese Semiotic Studies 15:4 ► pp. 561 ff.
Borchmann, Simon
2018. Utterances as tool-mediated specifications of affordances - ecological pragmatics. Psychology of Language and Communication 22:1 ► pp. 124 ff.
Borchmann, Simon
2019. The spectator bias in the linguistic descriptions of information structure. Language Sciences 76 ► pp. 101180 ff.
Hellermann, John
2018. Languaging as competencing: considering language learning as enactment. Classroom Discourse 9:1 ► pp. 40 ff.
Kuhle, Anneliese
2018. Clues to the puzzle: The significance of material cultures in nonhuman primates for the study of language. Language Sciences 67 ► pp. 72 ff.
Stuart, Susan A. J.
2018. Enkinaesthesia: Proto-moral value in action-enquiry and interaction. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17:2 ► pp. 411 ff.
Trasmundi, Sarah Bro & Matthew Isaac Harvey
2018. A blended quantitative-ethnographic method for describing vocal sonification in dance coaching. Psychology of Language and Communication 22:1 ► pp. 198 ff.
Madsen, Jens Koed
2017. Time During Time: Multi-scalar Temporal Cognition. In Cognition Beyond the Brain, ► pp. 155 ff.
Moore, Roger K.
2016. Introducing a Pictographic Language for Envisioning a Rich Variety of Enactive Systems with Different Degrees of Complexity. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems 13:2
ORMAN, JON
2016. Distributing mind, cognition and language: exploring the (un)common ground with integrational linguistics. Language and Cognition 8:1 ► pp. 142 ff.
Fassin, Yves, Andrea Werner, Annick Van Rossem, Silvana Signori, Elisabet Garriga, Heidi von Weltzien Hoivik & Hans-Jörg Schlierer
2015. CSR and Related Terms in SME Owner–Managers’ Mental Models in Six European Countries: National Context Matters. Journal of Business Ethics 128:2 ► pp. 433 ff.
2015. Why Language Evolution Needs Memory: Systems and Ecological Approaches. Biosemiotics 8:1 ► pp. 47 ff.
De Beule, Joachim
2014. Sketch for a Theory of Evolution Based on Coding. Biosemiotics 7:2 ► pp. 181 ff.
Bottineau, Didier
2013. Pour une approche enactive de la parole dans les langues. Langages N° 192:4 ► pp. 11 ff.
Kinnear, Penny
2013. IEEE International Professonal Communication 2013 Conference, ► pp. 1 ff.
Aro, Mari
2012. Effects of authority: voicescapes in children's beliefs about the learning of English. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 22:3 ► pp. 331 ff.
Hodges, Bert H., Sune V. Steffensen & James E. Martin
2012. Caring, conversing, and realizing values: new directions in language studies. Language Sciences 34:5 ► pp. 499 ff.
Steffensen, Sune Vork
2012. Care and conversing in dialogical systems. Language Sciences 34:5 ► pp. 513 ff.
Steffensen, Sune Vork
2015. Distributed Language and Dialogism: notes on non-locality, sense-making and interactivity. Language Sciences 50 ► pp. 105 ff.
Zheng, Dongping
2012. Caring in the dynamics of design and languaging: exploring second language learning in 3D virtual spaces. Language Sciences 34:5 ► pp. 543 ff.
Zheng, Dongping, Kristi Newgarden & Michael F. Young
2012. Multimodal analysis of language learning in World of Warcraft play: Languaging as Values-realizing. ReCALL 24:3 ► pp. 339 ff.
Cowley, Stephen J.
2011. Taking a Language Stance. Ecological Psychology 23:3 ► pp. 185 ff.
Cowley, Stephen J. & Dongping Zheng
2011. The turning of the tide: Rethinking language, mind and world. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 6:2 ► pp. 197 ff.
Keestra, Machiel & Stephen J. Cowley
2011. Concepts – not just yardsticks, but also heuristics: rebutting Hacker and Bennett. Language Sciences 33:3 ► pp. 464 ff.
Worgan, Simon F.
2011. Towards an artificial model of ‘languaging’: reviewing the distributed language hypothesis. Language Sciences 33:1 ► pp. 229 ff.
Zheng, Dongping & Kristi Newgarden
2011. Rethinking Language Learning: Virtual Worlds as a Catalyst for Change. International Journal of Learning and Media 3:2 ► pp. 13 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.
