Interaction, Coordination, Languaging : the Operational-relational Matrix of Language

In order to understand the socio-interactional nature of linguistic activity and the cultural praxis with which it is interwoven, we need to make explicit the constitutive conditions of the phenomena which relate to language starting from their operational-relational matrix. The approach introduced here challenges cognitivist approaches that offer mentalist models that are inadequate in their attempts to explain the relation between language and interaction. We account for the linguistic phenomenon through the notion of languaging and the analytical category of “recursive consensual coordination”. Based on Maturana’s work, and within a “bio-logical” epistemological framework, we show the prominent features of this approach and develop its implications.