Language and other artifacts: socio-cultural dynamics of niche construction.

Chris Sinha

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01601

Abstract

Niche construction theory is a relatively new approach in evolutionary biology that seeks to integrate an ecological dimension into the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. It is regarded by many evolutionary biologists as providing a significant revision of the Neo-Darwinian modern synthesis that unified Darwin’s theory of natural and sexual selection with 20th century population genetics. Niche construction theory has been invoked as a processual mediator of social cognitive evolution and of the emergence and evolution of language. I argue that language itself can be considered as a biocultural niche and evolutionary artifact. I provide both a general analysis of the cognitive and semiotic status of artifacts, and a formal analysis of language as a social and semiotic institution, based upon a distinction between the fundamental semiotic relations of “counting as” and “standing for.” I explore the consequences for theories of language and language learning of viewing language as a biocultural niche. I suggest that not only do niches mediate organism-organism interactions, but also that organisms mediate niche-niche interactions in ways that affect evolutionary processes, with the evolution of human infancy and childhood as a key example. I argue that language as a social and semiotic system is not only grounded in embodied engagements with the material and social-interactional world, but also grounds a sub-class of artifacts of particular significance in the cultural history of human cognition. Symbolic cognitive artifacts materially and semiotically mediate human cognition, and are not merely informational repositories, but co-agentively constitutive of culturally and historically emergent cognitive domains. I provide examples of the constitutive cognitive role of symbolic cognitive artifacts drawn from my research with my colleagues on cultural and linguistic conceptualizations of time, and their cultural variability. I conclude by reflecting on the philosophical and social implications of understanding artifacts co-agentively.

Highlights

ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND NICHE CONSTRUCTIONThe body is our general medium for having a world . . . Sometimes the meaning aimed at cannot be achieved by the body’s natural means; it must build itself an instrument, and it projects thereby around itself a cultural world (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 146)Niche construction theory is a relatively new approach in evolutionary biology
I elaborate and extend these accounts here, to argue that niche construction theory lends support to a socioecological theory of language as simultaneously a biocultural niche and the foundational human social institution, and to offer an integrated account of biocultural evolutionary processes in the distant past of human ancestors, and in historical time
It contributes to the restoration to evolutionary theory of an integrative perspective largely neglected in the Neo-Darwinian synthesis

Summary

Introduction

ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND NICHE CONSTRUCTIONThe body is our general medium for having a world . . . Sometimes the meaning aimed at cannot be achieved by the body’s natural means; it must build itself an instrument, and it projects thereby around itself a cultural world (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 146)Niche construction theory is a relatively new approach in evolutionary biology (though with important but neglected precursors). I provide both a general analysis of the cognitive and semiotic status of artifacts, and a formal analysis of language as a social and semiotic institution, based upon a distinction between the fundamental semiotic relations of “counting as” and “standing for.” I explore the consequences for theories of language and language learning of viewing language as a biocultural niche.

Results

Conclusion