Linguistic reflexivity and language-shaping: Countering representationalism in ecological research on language

Abstract

Everyday metalinguistic ascriptions (“My name is Oliver”, “Swahili ng'ombe means cow”, “She lied about you”) seemingly attribute properties to phenomena of a distinctively linguistic ontology. However, non-representational approaches to cognition, such as ecological psychology, cannot accommodate this linguistic ontology without contravening their non-representational principles. An alternative might be to construe metalinguistic ascriptions as ‘folk’ fictions which are, strictly speaking, false. Yet this would render unintelligible the practical role that metalinguistic ascription occupies in everyday discourse. We suggest another alternative. By analogy to mindshaping approaches in folk-psychological debates, we propose a non-representational account of metalinguistic ascription as a form of language-shaping. Metalinguistic ascriptions shape language behavior over temporal and social scales by prospectively shaping discursive niches.