Cognitive Study for Language as a Complex Adaptive System: Evidence from Chinese WeChat Communications

Abstract

The nature of language has always been the core issue of academic inquiry. Form and function, symbol and representation, linearity and system, static and dynamic, inner and outer, mind and brain, etc. are always the hot arguing topics in both linguistics and philosophical fields. The complex adaptive theory argues that language understanding requires whole-hearted intelligent participation and the adaptive selection of complex systems, which is the overall response of human beings to the external world and language stimulus. In order to prove this, this article chooses Chinese daily language on the WeChat as examples so as to provide evidence for explaining the complexity of language expression and language understanding. With thoughtful analysis and discussion by exploring the essential features of language evidence, this paper concludes that language understanding goes beyond the syntactic sequences of words and involves the whole cognition and adaptation of human being to the environment; semantic generation needs to mobilize the comprehensive coordination of all elements of human cognitive systems to produce the overall effect. It further indicates that thinking is literal and coherent, and suitable for logical modeling. This conclusion is in accordance with the biological and neural science claim by the second generation of cognitive science.