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Essentials of a Theory of Language Cognition

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Essentials of a Theory of Language Cognition NICK C. ELLIS University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, East Hall, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1043 Email: [email protected] Cognition is not just ‘in the head’; it extends well beyond the skull and the skin. Non-Cartesian Cognitive Science views cognition as being embodied, environmentally embedded, enacted, encultured, and so- cially distributed. The Douglas Fir Group (2016) likewise recognizes languages as emergent, social, inte- grated phenomena. Language is the quintessence of distributed cognition. Language cognition is shared across naturally occurring, culturally constituted, communicative activities. Usage affects learning and it affects languages, too. These are essential components of a theory of language cognition. This article summarizes these developments within cognitive science before considering implications for language research and teaching, especially as these concern usage-based language learning and cognition in sec- ond language and multilingual contexts. Here, I prioritize research involving corpus-, computational-, and psycho-linguistics, and cognitive psychological, complex adaptive system, and network science inves- tigations of learner–language interactions. But there are many other implications. Looking at languages through any one single lens does not do the phenomena justice. Taking the social turn does not entail restricting our research focus to the social. Nor does it obviate more traditional approaches to second language acquisition. Instead it calls for greater transdisciplinarity, diversity, and collaborative work. Keywords: embodiment; embeddedness; enactivism; extended mind; emergentism; usage-based ap- proaches to language THE DOUGLAS FIR GROUP (DFG; 2016) brain alone. Cognition is not just ‘in the head’; recognizes languages as emergent, social, inte- it extends well beyond the skull and the skin. grated phenomena. Language cognition is shared Non-Cartesian Cognitive Science views cognition across naturally occurring, culturally constituted as being embodied, environmentally embedded, communicative activities. Language is the quinte- autopoietically enacted, and socially encultured ssence of distributed cognition. Language and and distributed. These are essential components usage are like the shoreline and the sea. Usage of any theory of language cognition. affects learning, and it affects languages, too. So, This article summarizes these developments our understanding of language learning requires within cognitive science before considering impli- the detailed investigation of usage, its content, cations for language research, especially as these its participants, and its contexts—the micro level concern usage-based language learning and cog- of human social action, interaction, and convers- nition in second language acquisition (SLA) and ation, the meso level of sociocultural and edu- multilingual contexts. Here, I prioritize research cational institutions and communities, and the involving corpus-, computational-, and psycho- macro level of ideological structures. linguistics, and cognitive psychological, complex These emphases parallel theoretical develop- adaptive system, and network science investiga- mentsinusage-basedlinguisticsandinthecog- tions of learner–language interactions. I consider nitive sciences more generally. Mind is not the implications for teaching. Looking at languages through any one single lens does not do the phe- nomena justice. Taking the social turn does not The Modern Language Journal, 103 (Supplement 2019) entail restricting our research focus to the so- DOI: 10.1111/modl.12532 cial. It does not limit any educational approach 0026-7902/19/39–60 $1.50/0 to naturalistic exposure. It does not obviate more C National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations traditional approaches to SLA. Instead it calls for 40 The Modern Language Journal, 103, Supplement 2019 greater transdisciplinarity, diversity, and collabo- of ability from single clinical cases in cognitive ration. neuropsychology (Coltheart, 2001; A. Ellis & But first, some history of cognitive psycho- Young, 1988). The cognitive neuropsychology of logy and cognitive science, particularly as these language was particularly fruitful. Cognitive psy- domains relate to language, psycholinguistics, chology 1950–2000 was a time of breakthroughs, applied linguistics, and SLA, and as they have excitement, and brilliance—too much to list come to recognize embodiment, embeddedness, here (though see Sternberg, Fiske, & Foss, 2016). enactivism, the extended mind and distributed We know a tremendous amount about human cognition, and emergentism. cognition as a result (e.g., Anderson, 2015; Reisburg, 2013). COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE One branch of cognitive psychology, psycholin- SCIENCE guistics, studies the psychological and neurobio- logical factors that enable humans to acquire, use, Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of comprehend, and produce language. Again, the mind and of mental functions such as learning, primary concern was the mechanisms by which memory, attention, perception, reasoning, motor languages are represented and processed in the control, skill, language, and conceptual develop- brain. Psycholinguistics is now a highly devel- ment. Its founding goals are to determine how the oped field (e.g., Gaskell, 2007). It has had con- mind represents the world and how it uses these siderable influence upon research in SLA (e.g., representations in thinking. In the beginnings of de Groot & Kroll, 1997; N. Ellis, 1999, 2006a; the ‘Cognitive Revolution,’ the brain was viewed Hatch, 1983; Kroll & de Groot, 2005; Schwieter, as a computational system, and researchers de- 2015; Segalowitz & Lightbown, 1999; Williams veloped models of information processing and & Gullberg, 2012). successively refined them using the experimental A particularly important innovation in the method. 1980s and 90s was connectionism: the recogni- Early classical information processing held that tion that many mental phenomena can be seen perception, cognition, and action were separable to emerge from the conspiracy of experiences and that they operated in a series of stages: (a) and that these processes can be computationally Perception consists in input from world to mind modelled in distributed neural nets that simu- (with the possible contribution of cognition to late the actions of interconnected neurons in the processing the input in such a way as to render brain (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986). Emer- it meaningful or useful for the subject). (b) gentist, connectionist, and statistical learning ap- Cognition uses this perceptual input to form proaches have become a mainstay of cognitive a representation of how things are in the sub- (Elman et al., 1996) and psycholinguistic (Chris- ject’s environment and, through reasoning and tiansen & Chater, 2001) thinking, as they have planning that is informed by the subject’s goals for theories of second language learning (N. Ellis, and desires, arrives at a specification of what the 1998, 2002, 2003; MacWhinney, 1997; Rebuschat subject should do. (c) Action is the output, in & Williams, 2012). the form of bodily movements, that results from Nevertheless, despite all the progress, and so this cognitive work. Reaction-time measurement much fun, the major focus of mid-twentieth cen- (mental chronometry) was used to analyze how tury cognitive psychology was on internal mental long each stage took (assuming serial processing processes—cognition ‘in the head.’ In caricature, stages) as well as the types of experimental ma- ‘Good Old-fashioned Psycholinguistics’ focused nipulation that separately affected these stages. upon a learner characterized as “an associative The dual-task paradigm was used to investigate network, a mechanistic processor of information, whether different abilities share mental resources relatively unembodied, unconscious, monologic, or not. Cognitive psychological models based on unsituated, asocial, uncultured, and untutored” the results of thousands, perhaps tens of thou- (N. Ellis, 2008b, p. 12). sands of such experiments became increasingly refined to allow for the possibilities of parallel or NON-CARTESIAN COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND cascaded processing. The goal was to determine THE 4ES separable modules of processing, their spe- cialisms, and their connectivity. These were often In the late twentieth century, cognitive science summarized as ‘boxes and arrows’ models. The came to examine a number of additional influ- evidence base was supplemented with patterns ences upon the mind. Four in particular, grouped of dissociation and double-dissociation of loss under the label ‘4E’ to stand for anticlassical (or Nick C. Ellis 41 non-Cartesian) cognitive science (The New Science Cognitive Grammar became a major foundation for of Mind, Rowlands, 2013), are: Embodiment, Em- cognitive linguistic understanding of the relations beddedness, Enactivism, and the Extended Mind between conceptualization and grammar (Lan- (Clancey, 2009; Robbins & Aydede, 2009; Ward & gacker, 1987, 1999). Cognitive grammar treats Stapleton, 2012). human languages as consisting solely of seman- tic units, phonological units, and symbolic units Embodied Cognition (conventional pairings of phonological and se- mantic units). This extension of the notion of The body is our general medium for having a world. symbolic units from lexis to the grammar was (Merleau–Ponty, 1962, p. 169) in direct opposition to the mainstream
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