The Complex Dynamics of Meaning Construction

Abstract

In consonance with the assumption that language is a complex adaptive system, the third chapter summarizes the complex dynamics of meaning construction in current theoretical frameworks. Language is definable as an embodied, semiotic, and symbolic instrument, a meaning-making system composed of many interconnected levels that speakers use in order to communicate and interact. This definition follows from a conception of meaning construction which is far from the old-fashioned idea of meaning as an algorithmic computation of the compositional interplay between linguistic units; meaning is instead a by-far more complex process which is not limited to language but permeates any form of human interaction, due to the fact that it correlates mind, body and context within the complex dynamic adaptive system of enaction. Meaning construction is also the outcome of the intertwining between linguistic knowledge and encyclopaedic knowledge: language users internalize linguistic knowledge on the basis of entrenchment through symbolic activity with the meaning of words and constructions, and combines it with encyclopaedic knowledge. Meaning construction is an elaborate process that draws on both types of knowledge, as well as on all available resources (linguistic, cognitive, or contextual) for employing such knowledge. Meaning does not reside in linguistic units, but it is constructed in the minds of the language users. Consequently, the patterns of linguistic structure are underspecified prompts that require conceptual completion through metonymic processes in any act of meaning construction. Language exhibits only partial compositionality and linguistic units are simple points of access to more elaborate conceptual structures. Embodied Semantics goes a step further and postulates that concepts acquire meaning when they are associated with their neural representations in the brain, representations that are produced by way of the same neural apparatus that activates in the planning and perception of real referents for linguistically perceived concepts. The semantic content expressed by language correlates to brain responses involving bodily effectors. Semantic information is grounded in the action-perception system of the human brain, and meaning is embodied in our mind through the sensori-motor system that guides our interaction with the world.