Discussion Details
| Title: | Language and Environment |
| Submitter: | Alexander Kravchenko |
| Description: | Dear Louis,
I'm surprised that you should be astonished at what Andrei Codrescu said about language in his NPR talk on December 14. In contemporary cognitive science, which is much driven by the epistemological assumptions of autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela 1980), language is viewed as biologically based, cognitively motivated, circularly organized semiotic activity in a consensual domain of interactions aimed at adapting to and, ultimately, gaining control of, the environment (Kravchenko 2003, 2006). In other words, language is distributed across space and time; to view language as distributed is to identify it with a heterogeneous bundle of events, processes and material artifacts. An organism and the environment form a unity, not a union (Järvilehto 1998), the organism stands in a relation of reciprocal causality to the world (Andy Clark 1998). As components of the world with which each of us interacts, other human agents (particularly, their linguistic behavior) are also involved in this relation. Linguistic behavior (languaging) has a biological function of orienting others in a consensual domain of interactions, and orientation as a mode of adaptation occurs every time in a specific physical environment; thus, it is only natural that aspects of the physical environment should affect linguistic behavior (from phonology to grammar). In biology of cognition (Maturana 1970), 'everything said is said by an observer to another observer', and even for this sole reason what is observed by different observers in different environments finds its manifestation in language(s) – take, e.g., the importance of indexicals for the vertical dimension in the languages of mountainous peoples such as the Caucasians, or different degrees of vocalism in the dialects of Russian spoken on the plains in the European part and, e.g., in Siberia. Basically, this is the issue of linguistic determinism (von Humboldt, Whorf, Sapir and, importantly, Maturana) which is now experiencing Renaissance. For some provoking ideas see, e.g., Imoto 2004, 2005. One should acknowledge their shrewd genius and, as a consequence, agree with Andrei Codrescu that translation is a fine art that escapes algorithmization because language is not a code (Kravchenko 2007). References. Clark, A., 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Imoto, S. 2004. The philosophical nature of Maturana's theory of perception. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 11(2). 12-20. Imoto, S. 2005. Nothing as plenum: Lao-tzu's Way and Maturana's Substratum. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 12(4). 107-114. Järvilehto, T., 1998. The theory of the organism-environment system: I. Description of the theory. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science 33. 317-330. Kravchenko, A. V., 2003. Sign, Meaning, Knowledge. An Essay in the Cognitive Philosophy of Language. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang GmbH. Kravchenko, A. V., 2006. Cognitive linguistics, biology of cognition, and biosemiotics: bridging the gaps. Language Sciences 28 (1). 51-75. Kravchenko, A. V., 2007 (forthcoming). Essential properties of language, or, why language is not a code. Language Sciences 29(1). Maturana, H., 1970. Biology of Cognition. BCL Report # 9.0. University of Illinois, Urbana. Maturana, H., Varela, F. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. D. Reidel: Boston. |
| Date Posted: | 08-Jan-2007 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
General Linguistics
Cognitive Science Anthropological Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 18.12 |
| Posted: | 08-Jan-2007 |
