language as a cultural emergent property
Language, emergence and complexity
One of our claims is that linear, additive models and descriptions of people using language are unsatisfactory, especially in accounting for the complex ecology of the world outside the laboratory. 'Emergence', refers to the generation of features which are not reducible to their constituent elements and must therefore be regarded as distinct from them. 'Complexity' refers to the property of nonlinear systems whereby small changes in particular aspects can lead to large changes in the system as a whole, changes which are not time-reversible. The two ideas are glossed in a popularizing science book (Johnson 2001) as follows. '[The most elemental form of complex behavior', the author explains, involves 'a system with multiple agents dynamically interacting in multiple ways, following local rules and oblivious to any higher-level instructions.' This system 'wouldn't truly be considered emergent until those local interactions resulted in some kind of discernible macro behavior' (p.19). Emergence, refers to the generation of new entities or phenomena from the combination of other entities or phenomena. Because the new entity is emergent from this combination, it possesses certain distinct features, namely: irreducibility to any of its constituent elements; autonomy from any of its constituent elements; the ability to interact with any of its constituent elements.
There are those in the human and social disciplines who view the adoption there of the discourse of emergence and complexity with skepticism, because of its origins in the physical and natural sciences. Critics doubt the extent to which these concepts and processes, deployed in explanations of phenomena such as earthquakes and ant colonies, can be applied in the social world. Stewart (2001), for example, argues that the complexity and particularity of social processes make them unsuitable for mathematical modelling, as does the involvement in social action of ongoing interpretation by participants themselves. We share such reservations, and indeed our position relies on a recognition of the distinctive properties and powers of entities in the social world. The writers on whose work we draw are concerned with the engagement of human beings in social interaction, and, like us, are unpersuaded by mechanistic accounts of these processes. However, we believe that the concepts of emergence and complexity are crucial to explaining social action, including social actors' use of language. We also believe that explanations of socially situated language use entail a recognition of natural phenomena, such as the biological endowment of human beings with particular kinds of vocal, aural and visual apparatus and particular kinds of brains, and that speakers' language use is partly a product of various kinds of interaction between nature and culture.
