Paul J. Thibault

First-Order Languaging Dynamics and Second-Order Language: The Distributed Language View

This article articulates some aspects of an emerging perspective shift on language: the distributed view. According to this view, languaging behavior and its organization is irreducible to the formal abstracta that have characterized the focus on a de Saussure-type system of formal regularities in mainstream linguistics over the past century. Language, in the distributed view, is a radically heterogeneous phenomenon that is spread across diverse spatiotemporal scales ranging from the neural to the cultural. It is not localizable on any one of them, but it involves complex interactions between phenomena on many different scales. A crucial distinction is thus presented and explained, viz. first-order languaging and second-order language. The former is grounded in the intrinsic expressivity and interactivity of human bodies-in-interaction. Second-order patterns emanate from the cultural dynamics of an entire population of interacting agents on longer, slower cultural-historical time-scales. The article also engages in a dialogue with Gibsons (1966/1983, 1979/1986) ecological theory of perception-action. An analysis of a video-recorded interaction illustrates some aspects of the integration of scales involved in the whole-body sense-making that is talk.

Interactivity, Values and the Microgenesis of Learning in a Tertiary Setting

Student learning is a hot topic in tertiary education circles these days. However, it is not always clear what words like ‘learning’ and ‘learner’ mean. It is important for educationalists to understand learning as it actually occurs in real-time learning situations. We build on Hutchins’ theory of distributed cognition and Gibson’s ecological psychology to show how human learning is an interactive process. We propose Multimodal Event Analysis as a tool for analyzing a University tutorial in which students attempt to solve a problem of regression analysis. We investigate how participants’ multimodal interactivity with the changing affordance arrays of the learning situation is the driver and shaper of learning. Moreover, learning is an unfolding microgenetic construction process. Theories of microgenesis (e.g., Brown, Werner) are a fertile starting point for developing new understandings of human learning as an always embodied and culturally-saturated form of values-realizing interactivity.