Lund Kristine, Fossali Pierluigi Basso, Mazur Audrey, Ollagnier-Beldame Magali (eds.) Language is a complex adaptive system: Explorations and evidence

Berlin: Language Science Press, 2022. — xv, 198 p. — (Conceptual Foundations of Language Science 8). — ISBN 978-3-96110-345-4.The ASLAN labex – Advanced studies on language complexity — brings together a unique set of expertise and varied points of view on language. In this volume, we employ three main sections showcasing diverse empirical work to illustrate how language within human interaction is a complex and adaptive system. The first section — epistemological views on complexity — pleads for epistemological plurality, an end to dichotomies, and proposes different ways to connect and translate between frameworks. The second section — complexity, pragmatics and discourse — focuses on discourse practices at different levels of description. Other semiotic systems in addition to language are mobilized, but also interlocutors’ perception, memory and understanding of culture. The third section — complexity, interaction, and multimodality — employs different disciplinary frameworks to weave between micro, meso, and macro levels of analyses. Our specific contributions include adding elements to and extending the field of application of the models proposed by others through new examples of emergence, interplay of heterogeneous elements, intrinsic diversity, feedback, novelty, self organization, adaptation, multidimensionality, indeterminism, and collective control with distributed emergence. Finally, we argue for a change in vantage point regarding the search for linguistic universals.Acknowledgements.
Introduction to language as a complex adaptive system (Pierluigi Basso Fossali, Kristine Lund).
Epistemological views on complexity.
Magali Ollagnier-Beldame. Introduction to epistemological views on complexity.
Pierluigi Basso Fossali. Semiotic mediations and complexity management: Paradoxes and regulative principles.
Magali Ollagnier-Beldame. What knowledge owes to experience: Complexity and first-person epistemology.
Kristine Lund. Modelling the co-elaboration of knowledge: Connecting cognitive, linguistic, social and interactional systems.
Complexity pragmatics and discourse.
Pierluigi Basso Fossali. Introduction to complexity, pragmatics and discourse.
Alain Rabatel. Proposal for a simplex account of discourse complexity using the pragma-enunciative theory of points of view.
Antonino Bondì. The morphogenesis of language action: Complexity and rhythmic synchronisation of enunciation.
Aleksandra Nowakowska, Hughes Constantin de Chanay. Dialogism for daily interaction.
Pierre Halté. Modalities in written chat interactions: A complex system.
Complexity interaction and multimodality.
Audrey Mazur, Véronique Traverso. Introduction to complexity, interaction and multimodality.
Claire Polo, Kristine Lund, Christian Plantin, Gerald P. Niccolai. Collective reasoning as the alignment of self-identity footings.
Elizaveta Chernyshova, Vanessa Piccoli, Biagio Ursi. Multimodal conversational routines: Talk-in-interaction through the prism of complexity.
Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, Isabel Colon de Carvajal. Multimodal practice of participation in a complex and dynamic framework.
Peter Griggs, Nathalie Blanc. Second language use and development in an immersion class considered as a complex adaptive process.Kristine Lund, Pierluigi Basso Fossali, Audrey Mazur, Magali Ollagnier-Beldame. Considering the complex adaptive system from multiple vantage points.