Distributed cognition in oral poetry improvisation: a semiosis-centered approach

Abstract We propose a semiotic externalist approach that takes cognition as semiosis, gives central importance to the notion of temporal distribution, describes the elements of distributed cognitive systems (DCSs) as signs, and identifies the DCS itself as a system that enacts a sign. This is a semiosis-centered, and thus a non-agent-centered account of DCSs. In order to develop and illustrate our argument, we describe an example of DCS – the Brazilian verbo-musical improvisational tradition of repente – considering it first as embodiment of the formal structure of a cognitive task, and then as embodiment of a semiotic process. The latter corresponds to a semiotization of the description of repente sessions as DCSs, that focuses on how the DCS can embody a meta semiotic process, semiosis that supervenes on, and determines, distinct types of smaller-scale semiotic process.