Finding common ground: Alternatives to code models for language use

The papers in this special issue offer valuable perspectives on public language activities as they are embedded in cultural and social contexts. The perspectives are diverse in their theoretical perspectives, the issues on which they focus, and the methodologies they use and promote using. They represent language studies from the perspective of ecological psychology, dynamical systems approaches, the Distributed Language Approach, and others. The contributions are, in some cases, revolutionary and dis-equilibrating. Different contributions to the special issue offer critiques of conventional scientific studies of decontextualized language and language processing, and offer new perspectives on such diverse domains as the understanding of agency, the study of reading, educational practice, and understanding how articulatory speech actions can have significance beyond that of the physical actions themselves.