Experimental Semiotics

Abstract

In the last few years, researchers have begun to study novel human communication systems in the laboratory (Experimental Semiotics, ES). The first goal of this article is to provide a primer to ES, which we will do by reviewing the experimental paradigms developed by experimental semioticians, as well as the main research themes that have emerged in the discipline. A second goal is to illustrate what implications ES has for linguistics. In particular, we will argue that ES has the potential to complement linguistics in important ways and illustrate such potential in the context of each of the themes we review.

Neural mechanisms of communicative innovation

“…First, given that establishing shared symbols requires taking into account the inferred knowledge of the interlocutor ["audience design" (17)(18)(19)], the generation and comprehension of those symbols should involve neural patterns associated with flexible conceptual knowledge (20)(21)(22)(23), rather than sensorimotor couplings with limited generalization patterns (9,(24)(25)(26)(27)(28). Second, cerebral activities supporting these conceptual processes during generation and comprehension of novel shared symbols should overlap, given that these processes relate to the specific conversational context shared by the interlocutors of the communicative exchange (29).…”

On the generation of shared symbols

“…Novel symbols, like new words and gestures, are arbitrary tokens that may represent and be used to convey ideas and beliefs while their meaning becomes shared between interlocutors. Studying how people generate shared novel symbols (technically known as 'experimental semiotics', (Galantucci & Garrod, 2011)) therefore may provide a window into the mechanisms supporting the human competence to rapidly generate and understand communicative actions.…”

“…First, given that establishing shared symbols requires taking into account the inferred knowledge of the interlocutor ("audience design", (Clark, 1996;de Ruiter, et al, 2010;Galantucci & Garrod, 2011)), the generation and comprehension of those symbols should involve neural patterns associated with flexible conceptual knowledge (Derix, Iljina, Schulze-Bonhage, Aertsen, & Ball, 2012;Kumaran, Summerfield, Hassabis, & Maguire, 2009;Lambon Ralph, Sage, Jones, & Mayberry, 2010;Siegal & Varley, 2002), rather than sensorimotor couplings with limited generalization patterns (Hasson, et al, 2012;Jiang et al, 2012;Keysers & Perrett, 2004;Orban de Xivry et al, 2011;. Second, cerebral activities supporting these conceptual processes during generation and comprehension 6 0 | C h a p t e r 3 .…”

“…Given that human referential communication rides on a large background of pragmatic inferences, several authors have started to study these inferential abilities under situations in which shared symbols are not available and their occurrence can be experimentally controlled Galantucci & Garrod, 2011). This work has shown that the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is an important element of the cerebral system supporting human referential communication, both for communicators generating novel signals as well as for addressees trying to decode those signals (de Langavant et al, 2011;Gao, Scholl, & McCarthy, 2012;Mashal, Faust, Hendler, & Jung-Beeman, 2007;Noordzij, et al, 2009Noordzij, et al, , 2010.…”

“…Although those efforts have undoubtedly improved our understanding of the cognitive structures intrinsic to the language faculty (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002), considerably less emphasis has been given to defining the cognitive processes that support the communicative use of language (Levinson, 2006;Schilbach et al, 2013;Wittgenstein, 1953Wittgenstein, /2001. This thesis steps into this gap by focusing on our ability to share the meaning of a novel symbol, independently from the conventions and additional complexities introduced by linguistic processing Galantucci & Garrod, 2011). Although it is often assumed that pre-existing symbols can be shared across interlocutors by simply coding and decoding them, using those symbols requires a computational mechanism powerful enough to mutually negotiate them across communicators (Levinson, 2006).…”