Towards a Holo-semiotic Framework for the Evolution of Language

The chapter develops the view that a global semiotic lens spanning biology and culture (thus addressing the phenomenal and emergent processes of life generally) is a particularly vital non-dualistic frame for inquiry into the evolution of language. It is further suggested that such inquiry, in its turn, may prove critical to navigating beyond long-standing epistemological divisions between biological and cultural studies, and affirming the perspectival salience of a semiotic theory of life. With respect to this view, a "holo-semiotic" framework (with roots in the global semiotic tradition of Thomas Sebeok) is developed wherein the object of the evolutionary emergence of language is approached and located within a semiotic coevolutionary complex of physio-anatomical force-relations (kinesio-/eco-semiotic) whereby a capacity for symbolical insight (anthroposemiotic) could phenomenally emerge out of biological impulse (bio-/ zoo-semiotic). Based in the logic of a holo-semiotic model of language evolution, it will be argued that evolutionary semiotic processes hinge crucially on the inherent role that mimesis (as a principle function of semiosis and primary [iconic] mode of information transmission) plays in both culture and biology-in its social imitative sense and in its biological replicative and adaptive senses.