Linguistic signs in action: The neuropragmatics of speech acts.

What makes human communication exceptional is the ability to grasp speaker's intentions beyond what is said verbally. How the brain processes communicative functions is one of the central concerns of the neurobiology of language and pragmatics. Linguistic-pragmatic theories define these functions as speech acts, and various pragmatic traits characterise them at the levels of propositional content, action sequence structure, related commitments and social aspects. Here I discuss recent neurocognitive studies, which have shown that the use of identical linguistic signs in conveying different communicative functions elicits distinct and ultra-rapid neural responses. Interestingly, cortical areas show differential involvement underlying various pragmatic features related to theory-of-mind, emotion and action for specific speech acts expressed with the same utterances. Drawing on a neurocognitive model, I posit that understanding speech acts involves the expectation of typical partner follow-up actions and that this predictive knowledge is immediately reflected in mind and brain.

Making People Autonomous: A Sociological Analysis of the Uses of Contracts and Projects in the Psychiatric Care Institutions.

This article aims at describing the tensions arising from working on and with someone in psychiatry, in order to make this person more "autonomous". First, through the example of the recovery, it acknowledges, the normative horizon of what is considered today as "good care": a negotiation between partners, aiming at increasing the possibilities for everyone to follow their own lifestyle. It then seeks to describe how this definition of good care is endorsed and applied in two institutions (in Belgium and in France) hosting people with severe mental health issues where the care teams are using three words ("contract", "project" and "autonomy"). The article analyses the difficulties encountered while putting into practice these demanding ideals and shows how and to what end the care teams take action in defining the "good" projects and, in a more general way, what patients can or should expect from themselves and from their future.

Semantic Memory Search and Retrieval in a Novel Cooperative Word Game: A Comparison of Associative and Distributional Semantic Models.

Considerable work during the past two decades has focused on modeling the structure of semantic memory, although the performance of these models in complex and unconstrained semantic tasks remains relatively understudied. We introduce a two-player cooperative word game, Connector (based on the boardgame Codenames), and investigate whether similarity metrics derived from two large databases of human free association norms, the University of South Florida norms and the Small World of Words norms, and two distributional semantic models based on large language corpora (word2vec and GloVe) predict performance in this game. Participant dyads were presented with 20-item word boards with word pairs of varying relatedness. The speaker received a word pair from the board (e.g., exam-algebra) and generated a one-word semantic clue (e.g., math), which was used by the guesser to identify the word pair on the board across three attempts. Response times to generate the clue, as well as accuracy and latencies for the guessed word pair, were strongly predicted by the cosine similarity between word pairs and clues in random walk-based associative models, and to a lesser degree by the distributional models, suggesting that conceptual representations activated during free association were better able to capture search and retrieval processes in the game. Further, the speaker adjusted subsequent clues based on the first attempt by the guesser, who in turn benefited from the adjustment in clues, suggesting a cooperative influence in the game that was effectively captured by both associative and distributional models. These results indicate that both associative and distributional models can capture relatively unconstrained search processes in a cooperative game setting, and Connector is particularly suited to examine communication and semantic search processes.

On the Vernacular Language Games of an Antagonistic Online Subculture.

In this paper we develop an empirical, big data approach to analyze how alt-right vernacular concepts (such as kek and beta) were used on the notorious anonymous and ephemeral imageboard 4chan/pol/and the fan wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica. While 4chan/pol/is broadly regarded as an influential source of many of the web's most successful memes such as Pepe the Frog, Encyclopedia Dramatica functions as a kind of satirical Wikipedia for this meme subculture, written in high concept and highly offensive vernacular style. While the site's affordances make them distinct, they are connected by a subcultural style and politics that has recently become increasingly connected with violent right-wing activism, forming a loose subcultural language community. Contrary to "memetic" theories of cultural evolution in media studies, our analysis draws on theoretical frameworks from poststructuralist and pragmatist philosophies of language and deploys empirical techniques from corpus linguistics to consider the role of online platforms in shaping these vernacular modes of expression. This approach helps us to identify instances of vernacular innovation within these corpora from 2012-2020-a period during which the white supremacist "alt-right" movement arose online. Through these analyses we contribute both to ongoing interdisciplinary attempts to bridge the gap between cultural-theoretical and computational-linguistic approaches to studying online subcultures, and to the empirical study of the vernacular roots of the "toxic memes" that appear to be an increasingly common feature on social media.

O Besouro na Caixa de Skinner, / The Beetle in Skinner's Box

Resumo A literatura tem indicado algumas aproximações entre as propostas de Skinner e Wittgenstein, como, por exemplo, a crítica às concepções tradicionais de linguagem psicológica. Wittgenstein assenta essa crítica na impossibilidade de uma linguagem privada, enquanto Skinner a faz por meio do conceito de eventos privados. Contudo, esse conceito parece não ser consistente com a proposta de Wittgenstein. Partindo dessa hipótese, este artigo pretende reavaliar o papel do conceito de eventos privados no comportamentalismo skinneriano à luz das discussões críticas de Wittgenstein. Para isso, é feita uma comparação entre as propostas de Wittgenstein e de Skinner, evidenciando que o conceito de eventos privados é suscetível às críticas de Wittgenstein às concepções tradicionais da linguagem psicológica.

Abstract The literature has indicated some approximations between Skinner's and Wittgenstein's proposals, such as a critical standpoint on traditional psychological language conceptions. For Wittgenstein, the critique refers to the impossibility of a private language. On the other hand, Skinner's critique culminates in defense of the concept of private events. However, this concept seems inconsistent with Wittgenstein's proposal. Based on this assumption, this paper aims to reevaluate the role of the concept of 'private events' in Skinnerian behaviorism in the light of Wittgenstein's critical discussions. For this, Wittgenstein's and Skinner's proposals were systematically compared. It is concluded that the concept of private events is not to escape Wittgenstein's criticisms of the traditional psychological language.

A Wittgensteinian Comment on "Psychology: A Giant with Feet of Clay" A Question from Research on Creativity.

The present comment of the paper by Zagaria, Andò and Zennaro (2020) invests in the possible pragmatic entry of language in the problem of Psychology as a scientific enterprise, concerning the impossibility of consensus on its key constructs/concepts, and, consequently, the little cumulative capacity of the knowledge produced. Thus, the necessary discussion on the ambiguity, the cloudiness of the fundamental concepts of Psychology are reflected through the contributions of Wittgenstein II (2009) and the neopragmatism of Rorty (1999, 1995). Rorty offers a contemporary landscape on the purpose of knowledge production through his propositions on the relationship among truth, ethics and science in the humanities. The psychology of creativity is placed in the discussion as a field that well illustrate how the diversity of language games in Psychology reflects ethical perspectives in dealing with the phenomena, in this case related to the emergence of novelty, and the Rortian ironist reading on the relationship between objectivity and solidarity.

Language Evolution in Swarm Robotics: A Perspective.

While direct local communication is very important for the organization of robot swarms, so far it has mostly been used for relatively simple tasks such as signaling robots preferences or states. Inspired by the emergence of meaning found in natural languages, more complex communication skills could allow robot swarms to tackle novel situations in ways that may not be a priori obvious to the experimenter. This would pave the way for the design of robot swarms with higher autonomy and adaptivity. The state of the art regarding the emergence of communication for robot swarms has mostly focused on offline evolutionary approaches, which showed that signaling and communication can emerge spontaneously even when not explicitly promoted. However, these approaches do not lead to complex, language-like communication skills, and signals are tightly linked to environmental and/or sensory-motor states that are specific to the task for which communication was evolved. To move beyond current practice, we advocate an approach to emergent communication in robot swarms based on language games. Thanks to language games, previous studies showed that cultural self-organization-rather than biological evolution-can be responsible for the complexity and expressive power of language. We suggest that swarm robotics can be an ideal test-bed to advance research on the emergence of language-like communication. The latter can be key to provide robot swarms with additional skills to support self-organization and adaptivity, enabling the design of more complex collective behaviors.

From Continuous Observations to Symbolic Concepts: A Discrimination-Based Strategy for Grounded Concept Learning.

Autonomous agents perceive the world through streams of continuous sensori-motor data. Yet, in order to reason and communicate about their environment, agents need to be able to distill meaningful concepts from their raw observations. Most current approaches that bridge between the continuous and symbolic domain are using deep learning techniques. While these approaches often achieve high levels of accuracy, they rely on large amounts of training data, and the resulting models lack transparency, generality, and adaptivity. In this paper, we introduce a novel methodology for grounded concept learning. In a tutor-learner scenario, the method allows an agent to construct a conceptual system in which meaningful concepts are formed by discriminative combinations of prototypical values on human-interpretable feature channels. We evaluate our approach on the CLEVR dataset, using features that are either simulated or extracted using computer vision techniques. Through a range of experiments, we show that our method allows for incremental learning, needs few data points, and that the resulting concepts are general enough to be applied to previously unseen objects and can be combined compositionally. These properties make the approach well-suited to be used in robotic agents as the module that maps from continuous sensory input to grounded, symbolic concepts that can then be used for higher-level reasoning tasks.

Language Games and Social Cognition: Revisiting Bruner.

This paper discusses the notion of language games as cultural practices in children's early linguistic and socio-cognitive development. First, we trace the emergence of this concept in Jerome Bruner's experimental and theoretical work at Oxford University in the 1960s, work that was informed by the thinking of Wittgenstein and Austin, amongst others. Second, we provide a systematic historical account of how Bruner has influenced more recent research traditions in developmental psychology, especially in the field of social cognition. Finally, we hone in on one specific approach within this field developed by the Laboratory for Developmental and Educational Studies in Psychology at the University of Milano Bicocca.

An Agent-Based Model for the Role of Short-Term Memory Enhancement in the Emergence of Grammatical Agreement.

What is the influence of short-term memory enhancement on the emergence of grammatical agreement systems in multi-agent language games? Agreement systems suppose that at least two words share some features with each other, such as gender, number, or case. Previous work, within the multi-agent language-game framework, has recently proposed models stressing the hypothesis that the emergence of a grammatical agreement system arises from the minimization of semantic ambiguity. On the other hand, neurobiological evidence argues for the hypothesis that language evolution has mainly related to an increasing of short-term memory capacity, which has allowed the online manipulation of words and meanings participating particularly in grammatical agreement systems. Here, the main aim is to propose a multi-agent language game for the emergence of a grammatical agreement system, under measurable long-range relations depending on the short-term memory capacity. Computer simulations, based on a parameter that measures the amount of short-term memory capacity, suggest that agreement marker systems arise in a population of agents equipped at least with a critical short-term memory capacity.

Technology Games: Using Wittgenstein for Understanding and Evaluating Technology.

In the philosophy of technology after the empirical turn, little attention has been paid to language and its relation to technology. In this programmatic and explorative paper, it is proposed to use the later Wittgenstein, not only to pay more attention to language use in philosophy of technology, but also to rethink technology itself-at least technology in its aspect of tool, technology-in-use. This is done by outlining a working account of Wittgenstein's view of language (as articulated mainly in the Investigations) and by then applying that account to technology-turning around Wittgenstein's metaphor of the toolbox. Using Wittgenstein's concepts of language games and form of life and coining the term 'technology games', the paper proposes and argues for a use-oriented, holistic, transcendental, social, and historical approach to technology which is empirically but also normatively sensitive, and which takes into account implicit knowledge and know-how. It gives examples of interaction with social robots to support the relevance of this project for understanding and evaluating today's technologies, makes comparisons with authors in philosophy of technology such as Winner and Ihde, and sketches the contours of a phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use that may help us to understand but also to gain a more critical relation to specific uses of concrete technologies in everyday contexts. Ultimately, given the holism argued for, it also promises a more critical relation to the games and forms of life technologies are embedded in-to the ways we do things.

Translating between social worlds of policy and everyday life: The development of a group-based method to support policymaking by exploring behavioural aspects of sustainable consumption.

A large international literature on how lay citizens make sense of various aspects of science and technology has been generated by investigations which utilise small group methods. Within that literature, focus group and other group-based methods have come to co-exist, and to some extent, hybridise, with the use of small groups in citizen engagement initiatives. In this article, we report on how we drew upon these methodological developments in the design and operationalisation of a policymaking support tool (STAVE). This tool has been developed to gain insight, in a relatively speedy and cost-effective way, into practical details of the everyday lived experience of people's lives, as relating to the sustainability of corresponding practices. An important challenge we faced was how, in Kuhn's terms, to 'translate' between the forms of life corresponding to the world of policymaking and the world of everyday domestic life. We examine conceptual and methodological aspects of how the tool was designed and assembled, and then trialled in the context of active real-world collaborations with policymaking organisations. These trials were implemented in six European countries, where they were used to support work on live policy issues concerned with sustainable consumption.

From "cracking the orthographic code" to "playing with language": toward a usage-based foundation of the reading process.

The empirical study of reading dates back more than 125 years. But despite this long tradition, the scientific understanding of reading has made rather heterogeneous progress: many factors that influence the process of text reading have been uncovered, but theoretical explanations remain fragmented; no general theory pulls together the diverse findings. A handful of scholars have noted that properties thought to be at the core of the reading process do not actually generalize across different languages or from situations single-word reading to connected text reading. Such observations cast doubt on many of the traditional conceptions about reading. In this article, I suggest that the observed heterogeneity in the research is due to misguided conceptions about the reading process. Particularly problematic are the unrefined notions about meaning which undergird many reading theories: most psychological theories of reading implicitly assume a kind of elemental token semantics, where words serve as stable units of meaning in a text. This conception of meaning creates major conceptual problems. As an alternative, I argue that reading shoud be rather understood as a form of language use, which circumvents many of the conceptual problems and connects reading to a wider range of linguistic communication. Finally, drawing from Wittgenstein, the concept of "language games" is outlined as an approach to language use that can be operationalized scientifically to provide a new foundation for reading research.

O cliente como parceiro na conversação: construindo novas possibilidades para o cuidado do diabetes / The client as a partner in dialogue: building new possibilities for diabetic care

Este artigo apresenta o histórico do grupo (GECD) de atendimento a diabetes, que traz uma proposta inovadora para o tratamento dessa doença. Realiza um trabalho intensivo em equipe que começou num formato multidisciplinar e foi se transformando em interdisciplinar. Para situar o trabalho, faremos um breve apanhado sobre a doença, a situação atual do diabetes no Brasil e no mundo e as dificuldades encontradas para a adesão ao tratamento. Discutiremos a contribuição da psicologia, a partir de uma postura construcionista social e de algumas ferramentas do neopragmatismo, que foram orientadores de sua atuação. A inclusão de múltiplas vozes e da construção do conhecimento na relação serão enfatizados, além de analisarmos as mudanças ocorridas no grupo a partir dessa inserção.(AU)

This article presents the history of the group (GECD) for diabetes care, which brings an innovative proposal for the treatment of this disease. The group conducts an intensive teamwork that started in a multidisciplinary format and turned into interdisciplinary. To situate the work, we will make a brief overview of the disease, the current situation of diabetes in Brazil and in the world and the difficulties encountered in treatment adherence. We will discuss the contribution of psychology from a social constructionist approach and some tools of neo-pragmatism that guided its actions. The inclusion of multiple voices and the construction of knowledge in the relationship will be emphasized, besides analyzing the changes in the group.(AU)

Language, games and the role of interpreters in psychiatric diagnosis: a Wittgensteinian thought experiment.

British society is becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse. This poses a major challenge to mental health services charged with the responsibility to work in ways that respect cultural and linguistic difference. In this paper we investigate the problems of interpretation in the diagnosis of depression using a thought experiment to demonstrate important features of language-games, an idea introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his late work, Philosophical investigations. The thought experiment draws attention to the importance of culture and contexts in understanding the meaning of particular utterances. This has implications not only for how we understand the role of interpreters in clinical settings, and who might best be suited to function in such a role, but more generally it draws attention to the importance of involving members of black minority ethnic (BME) communities in working alongside mainstream mental health services. We conclude that the involvement of BME community development workers inside, alongside and outside statutory services can potentially improve the quality of care for people from BME communities who use these services.

Produção de sentidos no uso que se faz de gráficos / The production of meanings in the use of graphs

Este artigo discute os sentidos que leitores potenciais de jornais e revistas produzem para relações quantitativas apresentadas graficamente em textos da mídia impressa. Nosso foco é o processo de semiotização próprio à produção de sentidos em um contexto extra-escolar, que ilustramos através da análise de entrevistas com uma adolescente de 16 anos. A partir de uma leitura crítico-metodológica das proposições de L. Wittgenstein em Investigações Filosóficas, propomos a noção de trânsito lingüístico entre certa "gramática da escola" e os jogos de linguagem experienciados pelo sujeito no entendimento de gráficos, enquanto componente central do referido processo. O artigo visa contribuir para o debate acerca do uso que se faz de informações sobre quantidades na vida diária fora da escola, assim como para o desenvolvimento de uma perspectiva cognitiva acerca de questões relacionadas com a produção de sentidos.

This article discusses the meanings that potential readers of newspapers and magazines produce for quantitative relations presented as graphs in texts of the printed media. Our focus is the semiotic process proper to the production of meanings in an out-of-school context, which we illustrate through the analysis of interviews with a 16-year-old girl. Starting with a critical-methodological reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, we suggest the notion of the linguistic transit between a certain "school grammar" and the language games which are experienced by the subject in his or her understanding of graphs, as a central component of such a process. The article aims at contributing to the debate on the use of quantitative information in everyday life out-of-school, as well as for the development of a cognitive view on issues related to the production of meanings.