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Title
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Language without representation : Gibson's first- and second-hand perception on a pragmatic continuum
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Author
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Abstract
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| Ecological psychology isn & rsquo;t just a psychology of perception and action but offers a post-cognitivist approach to psychology as a whole. In this paper we explore how the con-ceptual tools of ecological psychology might be put to work to account for linguistic deeds, the activities people can perform when they are competent speakers of a language. We pursue this question by starting from a suggestion Gibson made that language use and perception co-shape each other. However such a relation of reciprocity between active perception and linguistic practices has generally not been taken to heart in ecological psychology. The relation between first-hand perception, based on natural laws, and second-hand perception, enabled by social and cultural convention, has been understood hierarchically not reciprocally. We show there isa trace of a traditional (cognitivist) view of language in how Gibson characterised what people do when they talk to each other. A second obstacle to a reciprocal reading lies in Gibson & rsquo;s concept of information. Gibson argued explicitly against thinking of ecological information for perception as a quantity that can be transmitted. However, when it comes to language he treated information as a commodity, as something that can be re-presented, contained and transferred through conventional patterns, through speaking, writing and depiction. In order to move away from a traditional cognitivist picture of language as mediated by systems of representa-tions, we offer an alternative usage-based view of information, one where information is not a thing that can be re-presented, in language or anywhere else. This allows us to fully set aside the assumption that language is re-presentational and symbolic at heart and follow through on the post-cognitivist ambitions of ecological psychology. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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Language sciences : a world journal of the sciences of language. - Oxford, 1979, currens
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Publication
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Oxford
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2021
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ISSN
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0388-0001
[print]
1873-5746
[online]
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DOI
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10.1016/J.LANGSCI.2021.101380
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Volume/pages
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85
(2021)
, p. 1-12
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Article Reference
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101380
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ISI
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000649269300011
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Medium
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E-only publicatie
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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Full text (open access)
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