Abstract
Human social coordination is often mediated by language. Through verbal
dialogue, people direct each other’s attention to properties of their shared
environment, they discuss how to jointly solve problems, share their
introspections, and distribute roles and assignments. In this article, we propose
a dynamical framework for the study of the coordinative role of language. Based
on a review of a number of recent experimental studies, we argue that shared
symbolic patterns emerge and stabilize through a process of local reciprocal
linguistic alignment. Such patterns in turn come to facilitate and refine social
coordination by enabling the alignment, joint construction and navigation of
conceptual models and actions. Implications of the framework are illustrated and
discussed in relation to a case study where dyads of interlocutors interact verbally
to reach joint decisions in a perceptual discrimination task.