Metaphor and engaged coordination

The traditional view in the philosophy of language has been that linguistic competence is constituted by rule-governed, algorithmic skills, which underlie the learnable, creative nature of language. However, increasing evidence about the contextual sensitivity of linguistic understanding has put this traditional view under pressure. I argue that researchers should turn to anti-computationalist proposals in the cognitive sciences in order to develop non-algorithmic views of language use that do not make communication and learning mysterious. Approaches like ecological psychology, enactivism or dynamical systems theory have shown how complex, open-ended competences can be explained without positing underlying rule-guided processes, but rather focusing on the complex interactions and couplings among agents and their environment. These alternative views of linguistic competences make it possible to address metaphor and other areas of speech that, because of their non-algorithmic nature, have been considered derivative and have tended to be excluded from the domain of linguistic meaning. Understanding metaphors requires being able to perceive relevant similarities and correlations between different subjects. This is a highly context-sensitive, embodied ability, which often relies heavily on interpersonal coordination. •Anti-computationalist approaches make room for the possibility of communicative coordination not guided by shared rules.•It is possible to ascribe communicative functions to metaphors even if their interpretation is not guided by shared rules.•Metaphorical interactions constitute complex, nonlinear feedback-driven dynamical systems.•The unfolding of metaphorical interactions depends on interrelated constraints on different timescales.