What do you think?
Rate this book
Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity between Life and Language
A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language.
Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies.
The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy.
432 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 12, 2018
22 people are currently reading
198 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 19, 2019
Di Paolo, Cuffari, and De Jaegher propose an enactivist framework for understanding language, which they intend to be used to prompt future linguistic research. On this framework, major features of linguistic experience (e.g., interpersonal communication; grammatical structures; semantic meaning) are to be understood in terms of the dynamics of primordial tension, which is entailed by the autopoietic organization that defines organisms. According to the authors, we and all organisms are autopoietic systems; that is, we are autonomous, and this autonomy both enables and depends on constant interaction with the environment. In order for the biomatter that gives rise to an individual organism to maintain the complex organization that is sufficient for its livelihood, the organism must fulfill homeostatic needs (e.g., nourishment, warmth). The bodies of all organisms continuously fall away from ideal homeostatic levels, so they must continuously interact with the environment for the sake of maintaining their autonomy and identity. Primordial tension refers to these dynamics by which the identity of an organism requires that it open itself to the environment. It seems that being autonomous and being constitutively dependent with the environment are in tension, and this tension marks the possibility of life, as distinguished from inorganic matter. The authors introduce autopoiesis, primordial tension, and related concepts in chapters 1-4.
The authors distinguish between organic, sensorimotor, and linguistic bodies in chapter 5. These three ‘bodies’ refer to distinct but interdependent autopoietic systems that make up any individual human being. Previous literature on autopoiesis has mainly focused on studying how autopoiesis can explain the emergence of life and simple organisms. The authors think that the key concepts of autopoiesis can be used to explain distinctively human characteristics. Our human experience is not exhausted by a bodily striving towards maintaining homeostasis; we also embody a sensorimotor agency, by which we perceive a meaningful world and can voluntarily move around within it. Moreover, we embody a more complex linguistic agency, by which we can engage with sociocultural meanings of objects (whether words, facial expressions, cultural artifacts, or the natural environment), and create meaningful linguistic expressions or other objects with communicative functions. This linguistic agency is more complex than sensorimotor or organic agency; it involves grasping and navigating through complicated sociocultural and semantic meanings.
The authors imply that given that the autopoietic structure is the most phylogenetically primitive feature shared between all living organisms, and we have evolved from this, the processes underlying our distinctively human capacities must also operate in accordance with this autopoetic structure. In other words, the authors have in mind that there is a prior schemata, and any developments that this schemata undergoes must also share a general isomorphism with the original schemata in order to emerge from and be integrated with it. They stipulate that this isomorphism holds between organic, sensorimotor, and linguistic levels, without much defense.
With this autopoietic framework, the authors examine what they believe to be primary features of language over chapters 7-12. In chapter 7, they argue that language emerges from social interaction. Individual agency and socially coordinated agency are to be understood as standing in primordial tension, analogous to how organic autonomy and its relevant ecological niche stand in such tension. Whenever we engage in dialogue with another person, there are conversational norms that we aim to maintain, analogously to how in biological survival, there are homeostatic norms that biological processes are geared towards maintaining. For example, in conversation we have our own thoughts and intentions, and our conversational partner has her own understanding of our intentions; a conversational norm is that there be mutual understanding between conversational partners.
Such norms are inherently at constant risk of violation. The possibility of conversation depends on this risk. For example, conversations are always at risk of significant mismatching between our intention and our partner’s apprehension of it. When such mismatching happens, we ask questions, engage with our partner, realize further details of our intentions, and let them become transformed by this communicative process. There would be no reason to converse if we knew our own and others’s intentions perfectly beforehand. Conversation consists of breakdowns, which vary in their salience, and constant re-negotiations of meaning. The authors call this remediation of breakdown coregulation. Recovery from breakdown can never be achieved by a person alone. Recovery requires that both partners mutually understand each other, and so both must put in work and adjust themselves in accordance with one another’s intentional states.
Moreover, our linguistic agency depends on the maintenance of conversational norms. If we are totally misunderstood by our partner, we cannot communicate our intentions and exercise this agency. Thus, our linguistic agency depends on yielding to and coordinating with another person. This is supposedly analogous to that organic and sensorimotor agencies depend on comparable submission and interaction with the external environment.
In chapter 8, the authors examine the processes that give rise to the semantic components of natural languages. They argue that “linguistic agency… depends on the incorporation of acts of other people” (p. 192). Our linguistic acts utilize linguistic items (e.g., words, phrases, and gestures) that come with normative meanings. These meanings have been shaped and maintained by many individuals intergenerationally. The intersubjective processes that establish linguistic items are, in turn, dependent on various sociocultural conditions, such as local cultural norms and geopolitical events. So sociocultural history is constitutive of linguistic utterances. Our linguistic agency depends on such cultural history and predecessors. Moreover, our linguistic agency is shaped by such history. Phrases belong to certain sociocultural ways of life, and so when we utter them, we come to embody the perspectives entailed by those ways of life. To use language autonomously is constitutively entwined with ‘losing autonomy’ in the sense of becoming the sorts of people who have constructed the language we use. This is another manifestation of the aforementioned primordial tension.
The authors examine the developmental process of becoming a language user, or a linguistic body, in chapter 9. Becoming a linguistic body is primarily a matter of incorporating linguistic items into our repertoire that have been shaped intergenerationally in particular sociocultural contexts. Thus, it is a matter of entering into perspectives foriegn to one’s own, and incorporating elements of those into our own. Utterances are “granted to the individual almost as an alien presence in her body” (p. 222). How do we come to “internalize” these perspectives and learn to use language adequately? From infancy, we are attuned to others, being sensitive to and concerned with their intentions. This sets the stage for us to communicate with others, and develop increasingly sophisticated forms of communication. The authors draw on Vygotskyian literature on scaffolding and self-talk, showing how it is consistent with their autopoietic framework.
The last three chapters focus on the implications of this framework for three distinct areas. In chapter 10, the authors apply their framework to understanding language as experienced by people with autism. This helps us see that people with autism have linguistic agency as much as people without autism. The primary differences between these types of people show up at the levels of the particular strategies each uses for coregulation, and of the behavioral manifestations of each’s self-expression. In chapter 11, the authors argue that grammar is not a set of biologically-given rules, but involves sociocultural processes as its constitutive conditions. Grammar develops in the same way by which other linguistic items develop (see chapter 8), although they are comparably less open to change. In the final chapter 12, the authors explore ethical problems that arise from our being linguistic bodies, such as microaggressions and ideological imperialism.
I am overall dissatisfied with this book. All my issues with it stem from one general problem: the authors are too ideologically loyal to an autopoietic framework that was originally developed for distinguishing life from inorganic matter, and for understanding the organization of simple organisms. While this framework has some uses outside the domains for which it was developed, the authors are overly confident that it applies equally across diverse domains. They believe that they do not need to tailor the framework in any way for a distinct domain, and nonetheless capture the phenomena in any domain with equal thoroughness and acuity.
There are problematic consequences. Strict application of the autopoietic framework to linguistic phenomena makes only limited aspects of language salient, as well as limited kinds of explanations as viable. The authors notice only those few aspects and treat them as sufficiently exhaustive of linguistic phenomena as a whole; and they formulate all their explanations in accordance with those few explanatory approaches, and believe that this is adequate. But there are critical aspects of language that become noticeable only when one is no longer trying to defend autopoiesis. There are important kinds of explanations that might not immediately employ the very abstract autopoietic processes of their framework, but that might be importantly complementary of the explanations they do provide. It is as if the goal of the book is not to make progress in our understanding of linguistic experience, but rather to defend that autopoietic principles can manifest at a linguistic level.
The authors distinguish between organic, sensorimotor, and linguistic bodies in chapter 5. These three ‘bodies’ refer to distinct but interdependent autopoietic systems that make up any individual human being. Previous literature on autopoiesis has mainly focused on studying how autopoiesis can explain the emergence of life and simple organisms. The authors think that the key concepts of autopoiesis can be used to explain distinctively human characteristics. Our human experience is not exhausted by a bodily striving towards maintaining homeostasis; we also embody a sensorimotor agency, by which we perceive a meaningful world and can voluntarily move around within it. Moreover, we embody a more complex linguistic agency, by which we can engage with sociocultural meanings of objects (whether words, facial expressions, cultural artifacts, or the natural environment), and create meaningful linguistic expressions or other objects with communicative functions. This linguistic agency is more complex than sensorimotor or organic agency; it involves grasping and navigating through complicated sociocultural and semantic meanings.
The authors imply that given that the autopoietic structure is the most phylogenetically primitive feature shared between all living organisms, and we have evolved from this, the processes underlying our distinctively human capacities must also operate in accordance with this autopoetic structure. In other words, the authors have in mind that there is a prior schemata, and any developments that this schemata undergoes must also share a general isomorphism with the original schemata in order to emerge from and be integrated with it. They stipulate that this isomorphism holds between organic, sensorimotor, and linguistic levels, without much defense.
With this autopoietic framework, the authors examine what they believe to be primary features of language over chapters 7-12. In chapter 7, they argue that language emerges from social interaction. Individual agency and socially coordinated agency are to be understood as standing in primordial tension, analogous to how organic autonomy and its relevant ecological niche stand in such tension. Whenever we engage in dialogue with another person, there are conversational norms that we aim to maintain, analogously to how in biological survival, there are homeostatic norms that biological processes are geared towards maintaining. For example, in conversation we have our own thoughts and intentions, and our conversational partner has her own understanding of our intentions; a conversational norm is that there be mutual understanding between conversational partners.
Such norms are inherently at constant risk of violation. The possibility of conversation depends on this risk. For example, conversations are always at risk of significant mismatching between our intention and our partner’s apprehension of it. When such mismatching happens, we ask questions, engage with our partner, realize further details of our intentions, and let them become transformed by this communicative process. There would be no reason to converse if we knew our own and others’s intentions perfectly beforehand. Conversation consists of breakdowns, which vary in their salience, and constant re-negotiations of meaning. The authors call this remediation of breakdown coregulation. Recovery from breakdown can never be achieved by a person alone. Recovery requires that both partners mutually understand each other, and so both must put in work and adjust themselves in accordance with one another’s intentional states.
Moreover, our linguistic agency depends on the maintenance of conversational norms. If we are totally misunderstood by our partner, we cannot communicate our intentions and exercise this agency. Thus, our linguistic agency depends on yielding to and coordinating with another person. This is supposedly analogous to that organic and sensorimotor agencies depend on comparable submission and interaction with the external environment.
In chapter 8, the authors examine the processes that give rise to the semantic components of natural languages. They argue that “linguistic agency… depends on the incorporation of acts of other people” (p. 192). Our linguistic acts utilize linguistic items (e.g., words, phrases, and gestures) that come with normative meanings. These meanings have been shaped and maintained by many individuals intergenerationally. The intersubjective processes that establish linguistic items are, in turn, dependent on various sociocultural conditions, such as local cultural norms and geopolitical events. So sociocultural history is constitutive of linguistic utterances. Our linguistic agency depends on such cultural history and predecessors. Moreover, our linguistic agency is shaped by such history. Phrases belong to certain sociocultural ways of life, and so when we utter them, we come to embody the perspectives entailed by those ways of life. To use language autonomously is constitutively entwined with ‘losing autonomy’ in the sense of becoming the sorts of people who have constructed the language we use. This is another manifestation of the aforementioned primordial tension.
The authors examine the developmental process of becoming a language user, or a linguistic body, in chapter 9. Becoming a linguistic body is primarily a matter of incorporating linguistic items into our repertoire that have been shaped intergenerationally in particular sociocultural contexts. Thus, it is a matter of entering into perspectives foriegn to one’s own, and incorporating elements of those into our own. Utterances are “granted to the individual almost as an alien presence in her body” (p. 222). How do we come to “internalize” these perspectives and learn to use language adequately? From infancy, we are attuned to others, being sensitive to and concerned with their intentions. This sets the stage for us to communicate with others, and develop increasingly sophisticated forms of communication. The authors draw on Vygotskyian literature on scaffolding and self-talk, showing how it is consistent with their autopoietic framework.
The last three chapters focus on the implications of this framework for three distinct areas. In chapter 10, the authors apply their framework to understanding language as experienced by people with autism. This helps us see that people with autism have linguistic agency as much as people without autism. The primary differences between these types of people show up at the levels of the particular strategies each uses for coregulation, and of the behavioral manifestations of each’s self-expression. In chapter 11, the authors argue that grammar is not a set of biologically-given rules, but involves sociocultural processes as its constitutive conditions. Grammar develops in the same way by which other linguistic items develop (see chapter 8), although they are comparably less open to change. In the final chapter 12, the authors explore ethical problems that arise from our being linguistic bodies, such as microaggressions and ideological imperialism.
I am overall dissatisfied with this book. All my issues with it stem from one general problem: the authors are too ideologically loyal to an autopoietic framework that was originally developed for distinguishing life from inorganic matter, and for understanding the organization of simple organisms. While this framework has some uses outside the domains for which it was developed, the authors are overly confident that it applies equally across diverse domains. They believe that they do not need to tailor the framework in any way for a distinct domain, and nonetheless capture the phenomena in any domain with equal thoroughness and acuity.
There are problematic consequences. Strict application of the autopoietic framework to linguistic phenomena makes only limited aspects of language salient, as well as limited kinds of explanations as viable. The authors notice only those few aspects and treat them as sufficiently exhaustive of linguistic phenomena as a whole; and they formulate all their explanations in accordance with those few explanatory approaches, and believe that this is adequate. But there are critical aspects of language that become noticeable only when one is no longer trying to defend autopoiesis. There are important kinds of explanations that might not immediately employ the very abstract autopoietic processes of their framework, but that might be importantly complementary of the explanations they do provide. It is as if the goal of the book is not to make progress in our understanding of linguistic experience, but rather to defend that autopoietic principles can manifest at a linguistic level.
April 13, 2025
Ok i finished this book and the course for this book finally. The style of the book could be very annoying (“We count ourselves among….”), and a bit faddish, things are a bit vaguely defined at times. Nevertheless, there are a lot of interesting ideas here that i find interesting and correct™️. It was my first introduction to enactivism in cogsci, and its made me interested so I think i want to read more. Also introduced me to some interesting philosophers like Gilbert Simondon and Evald Illyenkov. Cool!
January 2, 2026
This book came at just the right time for me, as a PhD student struggling to find a way to study extended reality practices in a way that embraces the messiness of research, interaction and sense-making. The enactive approach the authors promote really challenged me to look beyond the traditional paradigms of cognition and into how we make sense of the world as linguistic bodies. I would have liked more discussion of practical applications, but I also understand the authors refuse to do so because every situation has it's own specific nature and that's the beauty of it.
September 2, 2024
Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity between Life and Language | Ezequiel A. Di Paolo
Scoring Rubric
1: baseline
2: creative contextualization bcs of developing new theoretical frame on philosophy of mind and language
2: creative conceptualization bcs of new holistic and groundbreaking comprehension on mind, body & language interaction in dialectic perspectives
5: total points by 5
Scoring Rubric
1: baseline
2: creative contextualization bcs of developing new theoretical frame on philosophy of mind and language
2: creative conceptualization bcs of new holistic and groundbreaking comprehension on mind, body & language interaction in dialectic perspectives
5: total points by 5
Want to read
November 10, 2020RK ebook
July 3, 2021
From Brandom to Badiou, from Lewontin to Levinas
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews