Digital Semiotic Resources as Distributed Cognitive Systems: A Triadic Framework for Cross-cultural Pragmatics

Digital communication technologies reconfigure the patterns of cross-cultural pragmatic interactions through distinctive multimodal affordances, algorithmic mediation, and asynchronous patterns. This study extends Kecskes’s socio-cognitive approach by integrating distributed cognition theory, the 4E cognitive framework, and cognitive adaptability theory to construct a triadic framework comprising three interactively coupled subsystems: cognitive adaptation, pragmatic strategy, and cultural schema. The framework conceptualizes digital semiotic resources as constitutive components of distributed cognitive systems. Empirical analysis of 10,012 question-answer units from Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conferences (March 2021 to May 2025) reveals: virtual removal testing shows that excluding digital semiotic resources leads to 122.47% decline in system performance (p < .001), confirming their constitutive cognitive status; functional complementarity peaks at moderate resource usage levels (0.356), exhibiting an inverted U-shaped distribution; variance decomposition indicates users’ influence on technology (14.65%) far exceeds technology’s influence on users (1.03%), forming an approximately 14:1 asymmetric causal relationship. S-curve modeling (R² = 0.85) identifies logistic growth patterns of cognitive integration, with Bayesian changepoint detection subdividing the evolutionary process into four phases: exploration, integration, optimization, and internalization. Context sensitivity systematically moderates subsystem coupling strength, with effects in high-sensitivity contexts reaching 4.8 times those in low-sensitivity contexts. The findings advance theoretical transformation from binary frameworks toward triadic systems and develop operational measurement indicators for abstract concepts. Evidence from diplomatic discourse as a “least likely case” provides compelling support for the pervasive cognitive constitutiveness of digital semiotic resources.