Elsevier

Language Sciences

Volume 63, September 2017, Pages 91-104
Language Sciences

An evolutionary approach to low-level conversational cooperation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.01.005Get rights and content

Highlights

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    “Cooperation” is an evolutionarily interesting problem only when defined in game-theoretic terms.

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    In face-to-face conversation, individuals coordinate, and cooperate, on multiple levels.

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    These can be analytically distinguished into “higher” and “lower” levels.

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    Low-level coordination phenomena facilitate cooperation by establishing and sustaining interactional focus.

Abstract

The cooperative character of language is an empirical fact and one of the key tenets in linguistics. However, this cooperative character is what makes it evolutionarily suspect: under normal circumstances sharing honest information with biologically unrelated individuals and without any obvious costs is not an ESS (evolutionarily stable strategy) and is not expected to evolve. Here we approach this problem in the context of prototypical language use (also evolutionarily), that is face-to-face conversation, a multimodal interaction unfolding in real time that involves a complex interplay between embodied agents in spatial proximity. We focus our review on low-level coordinative processes – examples being proxemic alignment or postural mirroring – to a large degree continuous with what is found in non-human primates. We aim at categorisation and terminological clarification of these processes, which in turn helps us evaluate their role in initiating and maintaining cooperatively oriented communicative interaction. We conclude with suggesting ways in which such low-level coordinative processes might have formed an evolutionary basis for cooperation, with a focus on the possible role of TFT (tit-for-tat) and TFT-like strategies.

Introduction

When considered from a rigorously (neo)Darwinian perspective characteristic of modern language evolution research, conversation is problematic. Conversation involves parties sharing honest information (also) with biologically unrelated individuals, rather than using the strategies predicted by the standard signalling theory, i.e. keeping information to oneself or even manipulating the other party. Cooperation of this sort is generally not considered an evolutionarily stable strategy and is not expected to evolve under normal circumstances (Krebs and Dawkins, 1984).

Researchers into language evolution are acutely aware of this problem, by now a classic one, as well as of its importance (Tomasello, 1999, Tomasello, 2008, Hurford, 2007, Fitch, 2010, Dor et al., 2014; Knight, 2016). It manifests itself in two complementary versions: why listen, given that you stand a risk of being manipulated to the other party's advantage (Krebs and Dawkins, 1984), and why talk, given that others, wary of the possibility of deception, should not listen to you (Dessalles, 2014). It is true that normative mechanisms against dishonesty – such as formal obligations or reputation – help explain the stability of cooperative communication in modern humans (Gärdenfors, 2008, Gärdenfors, 2012, Nowak, 2006, Nowak and Sigmund, 2005, Sperber et al., 2010), but such mechanisms are themselves language-dependent and cannot be presupposed from the “origins” point of view. Although several explanatory frameworks have been proposed (see section 2), “the cooperative sharing of information […] remains a central puzzle in language evolution” (Fitch, 2010: 417).

However, the cooperative character of conversation is a fact (Grice, 1975, Clark, 1996; cf. also Żywiczyński and Wacewicz, 2012). We approach this paradox from the perspective of the interactional logistics of conversation. In what follows, we present an overview of the literature on low-level mechanisms of interactional coordination (micro-coordination), i.e. such that do not directly transmit propositional content but nevertheless facilitate smooth and focused interaction. The overview leads to a classification of these mechanisms into synchrony, responsible for temporal coordination of interactants' behaviours, and mimicry, responsible for similarity in the form of interactants' behaviours (section 3). Finally, we bring the two together by reviewing evidence for the link between low-level coordination and cooperation, and we conclude by exploring the possible mechanisms behind this link on the ultimate level (section 4).

Section snippets

Cooperation: definition

Numerous definitions of cooperation exist (see e.g. West et al., 2011). Our discussion here is specifically constrained by the game-theoretic perspective based on quasi-economic cost-benefit analysis. So construed, cooperation is a general problem, fundamental to behavioural ecology and the entire evolutionary paradigm. Within that perspective, some authors predicate cooperation upon the benefit to the other party rather than the possible cost.1

Coordination

Here understood specifically in the context of conversation, coordination can be defined as the interactive co-adjustment of “nonverbal and linguistic behaviour along many levels of social interaction [such as] facial expressions, postures, pronunciation and speech rates” (Latif et al., 2014). We simplify the “many levels” of coordinative processes in conversation into the higher-level and lower-level ones: the higher levels are representational and consist in the coordination of meaning and

From low-level coordination to cooperation in conversation

What is the relation between the low-level coordinative processes discussed in section 3 and cooperation in conversation? A key consideration here is that such low-level coordination, by facilitating smooth and focused interaction, provides a cooperative foundation in face-to-face conversation. We begin by illustrating this with available empirical data from behavioural economics, developmental psychology, Conversation Analysis, and nonverbal behaviour studies, and then we use evolutionary and

Conclusion

Human language is unique in nature as a cheap but honest cooperative signalling system. Available evidence from the linguistic and psychological study of conversation suggests that this cooperative character rests on a scaffolding of lower-level mechanisms, which in turn show continuity with those found in non-human animals. In this paper, we have provided a review of low-level coordinative mechanisms (formal: mimicry, and temporal: synchrony), and we pointed to several properties that are of

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was supported by grant UMO-2012/07/E/HS2/00671 from the Polish National Science Centre.

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