CFP - TOPOI - Special Issue on “Linguistic Relativity and Post-Cognitivism”
Filippo Batisti
Deadline for Submission: August 1st, 2026
Special Issue URL: https://link.springer.com/collections/ababdhaagi
Overview:
Linguistic diversity and its influence on thought remain largely overlooked topics within cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. While Classic Cognitivism conceptualizes the mind as a computational machine, more recent perspectives known as 4E Cognition claim that this view dramatically underplays the constitutive role of the body and the environment in cognitive processes. However, even these latter approaches have not sufficiently considered how the vast differences documented across the world’s languages might be relevant for current research.
This is the focus of linguistic relativity, a field of research that has grown rapidly over the past 30 years driven by new psycholinguistic and ethnographic methods. This emerging body of empirical evidence suggests that certain cognitive tasks can be moderately to significantly affected by the language a human group speaks. Despite these advances, linguistic relativity studies retain many assumptions from Classic Cognitivism—precisely those that 4E Cognition approaches reject. Can language, thought, and culture be safely dissociated in an experimental environment? Can the interaction of these elements be construed in a non-modular way? Could radically different understandings of mind and language reformulate the central questions of linguistic relativity?
Topics of Interest:
We welcome papers that engage with these and similar topics:
- Can language, thinking and culture be distinguished, theoretically and empirically, as constitutive elements of the human cognitive ecology? Should they be distinguished?
- What are the reasons for the relative neglect of linguistic diversity and relativity in post-cognitivist frameworks?
- Does linguistic relativity necessarily entail anti-realism, and how does this position relate to enactivist discussions on realism?
- Is enhancing ecological validity sufficient to overcome cognitivist biases in linguistic relativity research?
- Should linguistic relativity be reconceptualized as a "principle" (in line with Benjamin Whorf's original formulation) under post-cognitivist premises, before being operationalized as a "hypothesis"?
- Can linguistic relativity serve as a meeting ground for ecolinguistics and post-cognitivism? Can the notion of affordances unlock new empirical insights in linguistic relativity research?
- Are embodiment and linguistic diversity at cross purposes? Does the body act as a universal (cross-linguistic, cross-cultural) constraint on human cognition?
Contributors:
We are pleased to announce that the following scholars have already agreed to contribute to this special issue:
- Ludger van Dijk & Giulia Di Rienzo (University of Antwerp)
- Nara M. Figueiredo (Federal University of Santa Maria) & Elena Cuffari (Franklin & Marshall College)
- Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen (University of Southern Denmark)
- Adam Głaz (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University of Lublin)
- Alexander V. Kravchenko (Baikal State University)
- Nancy Salay (Queen’s University) & Stephen J. Cowley (University of Southern Denmark)
Contact Information:
Inquiries are very much welcome, please contact the Lead Guest Editor: Filippo Batisti, filippo...@unive.it
For the full version of the CFP and all the details on this Special Issue, please visit: https://link.springer.com/collections/ababdhaagi
We look forward to your contributions,
Filippo Batisti
Ulises Rodríguez Jordá