First-Order Languaging Dynamics and Second-Order Language: The Distributed Language View

Abstract

This article articulates some aspects of an emerging perspective shift on language: the distributed view. According to this view, languaging behavior and its organization is irreducible to the formal abstracta that have characterized the focus on a de Saussure-type system of formal regularities in mainstream linguistics over the past century. Language, in the distributed view, is a radically heterogeneous phenomenon that is spread across diverse spatiotemporal scales ranging from the neural to the cultural. It is not localizable on any one of them, but it involves complex interactions between phenomena on many different scales. A crucial distinction is thus presented and explained, viz. first-order languaging and second-order language. The former is grounded in the intrinsic expressivity and interactivity of human bodies-in-interaction. Second-order patterns emanate from the cultural dynamics of an entire population of interacting agents on longer, slower cultural-historical time-scales. The article also engages in a dialogue with Gibson's (1966/1983, 1979/1986) ecological theory of perception-action. An analysis of a video-recorded interaction illustrates some aspects of the integration of scales involved in the whole-body sense-making that is talk.

Notes

¹I thank Anthony Baldry for making available to me the videorecording of the “Aliens” episode on which the present analysis is based.

Note. Speakers = B1, B2, G1 (Girl1), R (adult researcher).