Language as Social Coordination: An evolutionary perspective
Edited by Joanna Raczaszek-Leonardi and Stephen J. Cowley
Special issue of Interaction Studies 13:1 (2012) xvi, 145 pp.
Stephen J. Cowley
List of John Benjamins publications in which Stephen J. Cowley is involved.
Distributed Language
Edited by Stephen J. Cowley
The volume presents language as fully integrated with human existence. On this view, language is not essentially ‘symbolic’, not represented inside minds or brains, and most certainly not determined by micro-social rules and norms. Rather, language is part of our ecology. It emerges when bodies… read more[Benjamins Current Topics, 34] 2011. ix, 220 pp.
Symbol Grounding
Edited by Tony Belpaeme, Stephen J. Cowley and Karl F. MacDorman
When explaining cognition one must explain how representations in the mind, or symbols, become meaningful by connecting to the external world. This process of connecting symbols with sensorimotor experiences is known as symbol grounding. The classical view of symbol grounding is that it is an… read more[Benjamins Current Topics, 21] 2009. v, 167 pp.
Distributed Language
Edited by Stephen J. Cowley
Special issue of Pragmatics & Cognition 17:3 (2009) v, 207 pp.
Symbol Grounding
Edited by Tony Belpaeme, Stephen J. Cowley and Karl F. MacDorman
Special issue of Interaction Studies 8:1 (2007) 180 pp.
2018 Breathing life into social presence: The case of texting between friends Pragmatics and Society 9:2, pp. 274–296 | Article
Whilst many studies focus on human-to-media interactions, this paper turns to how a multimodal medium contributes to human-to-human interaction. By bringing together both radical embodied cognitive science (Chemero 2009) and dialogism (Linell 2009), the paper develops an anti-representationalist… read more
2015 Coordination in language: Temporality and time-ranging Coordination, Collaboration and Cooperation: Interdisciplinary perspectives, Amici, Federica and Lucas M. Bietti (eds.), pp. 474–494 | Article
Temporality underpins how living systems coordinate and function. Unlike measures that use mathematical conventions, lived temporalities grant functional cohesion to organisms-in-the-world. In foxtail grasses, for example, self-maintenance meshes endogenous processes with exogenous rhythms. In… read more
2012 Mimesis and language: A distributed view Language as Social Coordination: An evolutionary perspective, Raczaszek-Leonardi, Joanna and Stephen J. Cowley (eds.), pp. 17–40 | Article
2012 Linguistic fire and human cognitive powers Culture – Language – Cognition, Dascal, Marcelo † (ed.), pp. 275–294 | Article
To view language as a cultural tool challenges much of what claims to be linguistic science while opening up a new people-centred linguistics. On this view, how we speak, think and act depends on, not just brains (or minds), but also cultural traditions. Yet, Everett is conservative: like others… read more
2012 The evolution of language as controlled collectivity Language as Social Coordination: An evolutionary perspective, Raczaszek-Leonardi, Joanna and Stephen J. Cowley (eds.), pp. 1–16 | Article
2011 Distributed language Distributed Language, Cowley, Stephen J. (ed.), pp. 1–14 | Article
2011 Insightful thinking: Cognitive dynamics and material artifacts Distributed Language, Cowley, Stephen J. (ed.), pp. 57–80 | Article
2010 Beyond symbols: Interaction and the enslavement principle New Adventures in Language and Interaction, Streeck, Jürgen (ed.), pp. 47–70 | Article
Humans often contextualize without using cues. While Gumperz showed that analysis is not sufficient to explain interaction, his view of what lay beyond symbols was based in cognitive internalism. Opposing this, prosody can be shown to contribute directly to conversational sense-making. Humans use… read more
2009 Foreword Symbol Grounding, Belpaeme, Tony, Stephen J. Cowley and Karl F. MacDorman (eds.), pp. 1–7 | Foreword
2009 How human infants deal with symbol grounding Symbol Grounding, Belpaeme, Tony, Stephen J. Cowley and Karl F. MacDorman (eds.), pp. 85–106 | Article
2009 Distributed language and dynamics Distributed Language, Cowley, Stephen J. (ed.), pp. 495–508 | Article
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… read more
2009 Insightful thinking: Cognitive dynamics and material artifacts Distributed Language, Cowley, Stephen J. (ed.), pp. 549–572 | Article
We trace how cognition arises beyond the skin. Experimental work on insight problem solving is used to examine how external artifacts can be used to reach the goal of assembling a ‘cheap necklace’. Instead of asking how insight occurs ‘in the head’, our participants in Experiment 1 can either draw… read more
2007 Foreword: Extending symbol grounding Symbol Grounding, Belpaeme, Tony, Stephen J. Cowley and Karl F. MacDorman (eds.), pp. 1–6 | Article
2007 How human infants deal with symbol grounding Symbol Grounding, Belpaeme, Tony, Stephen J. Cowley and Karl F. MacDorman (eds.), pp. 83–104 | Article
Taking a distributed view of language, this paper naturalizes symbol grounding. Learning to talk is traced to — not categorizing speech sounds — but events that shape the rise of human-style autonomy. On the extended symbol hypothesis, this happens as babies integrate micro-activity with slow and… read more