Cognition and the language myth

There is arguably a parallel between recent ideas within cognitive science about the distributed mind and the development within linguistics known as integrationism, turning on similarities between the critique offered by the former of the 'classical' view of mind and by the latter of the 'classical' view of language. However, at the heart of the integrationist attack on the classical view of language is rejection of the idea that natural languages are codes. This idea appears to be taken for granted by certain cognitive scientists as the basis for explaining not only how language is mentally apprehended by the individual, but also how it facilitates,second-order cognition'. It is suggested that the language-as-code idea, although prima facie endowed with the attractiveness of common sense, is untenable, and should not figure, at least in the role usually assigned to it, in any inquiry into either language or human cognition in general. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.