Language without representation: Gibson's first- and second-hand perception on a pragmatic continuum1

Ecological psychology isn't just a psychology of perception and action but offers a post-cognitivist approach to psychology as a whole. In this paper we explore how the conceptual tools of ecological psychology might be put to work to account for linguistic deeds, the activities people can perform when they are competent speakers of a language. We pursue this question by starting from a suggestion Gibson made that language use and perception co-shape each other. However such a relation of reciprocity between active perception and linguistic practices has generally not been taken to heart in ecological psychology. The relation between first-hand perception, based on natural laws, and second-hand perception, enabled by social and cultural convention, has been understood hierarchically not reciprocally. We show there isa trace of a traditional (cognitivist) view of language in how Gibson characterised what people do when they talk to each other. A second obstacle to a reciprocal reading lies in Gibson's concept of information. Gibson argued explicitly against thinking of ecological information for perception as a quantity that can be transmitted. However, when it comes to language he treated information as a commodity, as something that can be represented, contained and transferred through conventional patterns, through speaking, writing and depiction. In order to move away from a traditional cognitivist picture of language as mediated by systems of representations, we offer an alternative usage-based view of information, one where information is not a thing that can be re-presented, in language or anywhere else. This allows us to fully set aside the assumption that language is re-presentational and symbolic at heart and follow through on the post-cognitivist ambitions of ecological psychology. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper examines how ecological psychology can account for linguistic deeds, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between active perception and linguistic practices. The hierarchical view of first-hand perception based on natural laws versus second-hand perception enabled by social and cultural convention in ecological psychology is critiqued.