Linguistic material (i.e., sounds, words) is subject to change. Such changes might be related to the instrumental or the ritual stance proposed in bifocal stance theory (BST), a relation not explicitly expressed in the target article. For example, the need to accomplish a specific communicative goal may drive a specific change or innovation in the language system that would be based on the instrumental stance. On the other hand, a language user's desire to affiliate with group members may promote conventionalized communicative expressions based on the ritual stance. In the following, we expand on how BST might be able to link linguistic research to research in cultural evolution and social psychology.

Linguistic research has shown that analytically composed words or phrases contrast with opaque and holistic forms. This contrast is exemplified in the English past tense (Pinker, Reference Pinker1998). Here, the regular past tense (e.g., “Googled”) contrasts with the irregular past tense (e.g., “slept,” not “sleeped”). Regular word formation can be associated with the transparent communicative goal to express an action that occurred in the past. The goal is transparent because regular past tense forms accomplish “end-goals via potentially knowable causal pathways”, as expressed in Jagiello and colleagues' theory. This “knowable causal pathway” is the symbolic language rule to suffix -ed to verbs, a rule that also applies to verbs that are newly added to the language (“to Google” → “he Googled”). From a BST perspective, regular forms are therefore related to an instrumental stance. By contrast, irregular verbs (e.g., “slept”) do not undergo symbolic rule application; as such, there might not be a “knowable causal pathway” to that goal (i.e., the past tense form). The holistic nature of irregular forms therefore brings them closer to a ritual stance. The regular/irregular distinction is not the only one to possibly align with the instrumental versus ritual stance. It seems that all complex words without “knowable causal pathways” to their current form (e.g., ancient “thou” instead of “you”) are more likely to be associated with ritual language, and thus, with the ritual stance. This also seems to apply to formulaic use of Latin (in Catholic tradition) and Old Church Slavonic (in Orthodox tradition) with forms not necessarily transparent regarding their meaning or origin.

If indeed processes related to the ritual stance are opaque and refer to holistic entities, independent evidence for the aforementioned linguistic parallel stems from research on analytical versus holistic ways of thinking (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, Reference Nisbett, Peng, Choi and Norenzayan2001). There, differences in cognitive processing are culture-specific with a broad distinction between analytical (combinatorial) and holistic (gestalt) thinking. These distinctions have specific repercussions for the respective cultures and societies. Notably, there is no strict dichotomy between Western and East Asian cultures based on these differences, but rather, language is a moderating or even predicting factor in these relations (Rhode, Voyer, & Gleibs, Reference Rhode, Voyer and Gleibs2016). Rhode et al. (Reference Rhode, Voyer and Gleibs2016) suggested that the more pronounced holistic attentional bias in Korean compared to Chinese speakers depended on language rather than on culture. As BST proposes that the ritual stance relates to processes without a “knowable causal pathway” to a goal, holistic thinking seems to parallel the ritual stance, rather than the instrumental stance; however, depending on the goal to be achieved and depending on whether this goal is defined by language or by culture, the instrumental stance could theoretically also align with holistic thinking.

Differences within the language expressed by regular/irregular or analytic/holistic word forms also relate to differences in language-inherent resilience, akin to the relative stability of language representations. Frequent, irregular forms seem to be particularly resistant to language change (Lieberman, Michel, Jackson, Tang, & Nowak, Reference Lieberman, Michel, Jackson, Tang and Nowak2007). Frequently used irregular forms are thus resilient to both regularization and forgetting. Lieberman et al. (Reference Lieberman, Michel, Jackson, Tang and Nowak2007) note that less frequent irregular forms are more likely to disappear or to be replaced by a regular form. BST might offer functional explanations for these phenomena. Frequently used irregular forms are conventionalized and their similarity to their historic roots demonstrates high copying fidelity, that is, transmission of linguistic material with relatively little change between older and more recent stages in linguistic history. As such, these forms better align with the ritual stance. At the same time, if irregular forms oppose the instrumental needs of a community (e.g., if a rule rather than a form conventionalizes), then these communities may readily dispense with these forms (and past tense forms altogether). This is evidence in the progressive loss of past tense (preterite) forms in younger German speakers (Fischer, Reference Fischer2018). This, in turn, could mean that resilience within the language system may have repercussions for language users.

Language representations correlate with language use within language communities (Behrens, Reference Behrens2009). Language use is one aspect of constructing social identity (Tajfel & Turner, Reference Tajfel and Turner1979), whereby holistic thinking may further promote the strength of social identity (White, Argo, & Sengupta, Reference White, Argo and Sengupta2012). Holistic cultures with an interdependent self-construal face threats “by activating and embracing their belonging to multiple groups.” Analytic thinking cultures with an independent self-construal, on the other hand, focus on “protecting the individual self” (White et al., Reference White, Argo and Sengupta2012, p. 252). Further, as Charbonneau (Reference Charbonneau2020) concludes, faithful copying is inextricably linked to resilience processes. Thus, collective resilience processes in holistic cultures might be tightly knit to social identity. There, the ritual stance provides a relation to high-fidelity transmission of linguistic and extra-linguistic conventions, in turn fostering group coherence. Social identity theory and collective resilience processes therefore appear to be highly dependent on the two stances proposed by BST and need further attention in future studies to predict the resilience of threatened communities or even endangered languages.

In sum, extending BST to linguistic evolution, the cognitive architecture of language representations and social aspects of language use seems to be a fruitful endeavor for the cross-fertilization of interdependent research fields and traditions. It has the potential to promote not only interdisciplinary research but also more integrated views on cultural and linguistic diversity and how linguistic changes may relate to collective resilience.