Text semiotics: Between philology and hermeneutics – from the document to the work

Abstract

For over a century, the increasing separation between philosophical hermeneutics, which has moved away from texts, and philology, tempted by positivism, may have caused regret. Formal and cognitive linguistics have developed partial models, thus abandoning the historical comparative methodology characteristic of cultural studies to such an extent that they have lost contact with philological and hermeneutical issues. In contrast, corpus linguistics has developed a digital philology, and is confronted with the hermeneutics of software output. But a text model must still be developed that reflects not only textual semiosis (as a normed pairing between content and expression) but also the poles of Viewpoint (genetic and hermeneutic) and Guarantee (as much for content, in terms of legitimacy, as for expression, in terms of authenticity). This will allow the articulation of internal and external linguistics (as pragmatics cannot), and also the reconciliation of philology and hermeneutics, mediated by text semiotics. As the document is a philological concept, the text a linguistic concept, and the complete work the object of hermeneutics, textual semiosis is the ideal way to understand and describe the articulation between these levels of objectivity and the disciplines attached to them.