What is the role of language in social interaction? What does language
bring to social encounters? We argue that language can be conceived of as a tool for
interacting minds, enabling especially effective and flexible forms of social coordination,
perspective-taking and joint action. In a review of evidence from a broad range of
disciplines, we pursue elaborations of the language-as-a-tool metaphor, exploring four
ways in which language is employed in facilitation of social interaction. We argue that
language dramatically extends the possibility-space for interaction, facilitates the profiling
and navigation of joint attentional scenes, enables the sharing of situation models and
action plans, and mediates the cultural shaping of interacting minds.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When author Nicholas Carr began researching his book on whether the Internet is ruining our minds, he restricted his online access and e-mail and turned off his Twitter and Facebook