Linguistic Epistemology Research Articles

Diskurspoetik

This discourse linguistic short paper focuses on the heuristic concept of discourse poetics within a discourse linguistic framework. The goal is to integrate poetological considerations related to the concept of poeticity into the context of linguistic discourse analysis. From this standpoint, it explores the concept of poetics of knowledge, emphasizing the correlation between the specifics of linguistic expression and the epistemic objects they may refer to. Building upon this, discourse poetics that functions as a discourse linguistic epistemology is characterized by its focus on the poetic function of language use corresponding to the category of poeticity as a linguistic marker within discourse. It is assumed that linguistic phenomena falling under this category, can be observed and interpreted transtextually, using corpus pragmatic and hermeneutic approaches. This is illustrated by examples taken from the analysis of music discourses based on a corpus of 13,499 contemporary music reviews, previously presented by the author.

A Sociolinguist's Look at the “Language” in Large Language Models

Abstract Large language models (LLMs) work by training text-generating systems through the use of digitized corpora that make natural language available in datafied form for natural language processing. LLMs are rooted in these culture-specific, socio-historically conditioned understandings of language, inaugurated during the imperial age of national print cultures and further consolidated by computing culture itself. However, understanding languages as digital data sets whose patterns can be probabilistically reproduced is a simplistic reduction of an already reified linguistic epistemology. This article discusses the sociolinguistic implications of LLM design and implementation.

Le fonctionnalisme de Lévi-Strauss et son reste. Note sur l’historicité

This article explores the question of historicity in the anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss from the viewpoint of his relationship to the Jakobsonian functionalist epistemology of linguistics. Faced with the difficulties of contemporary anthropology in theorizing the structure/event couple (American diffusionism vs. English functionalism), Levi-Strauss finds resources in linguistic functionalism to think about the articulation between synchrony and diachrony in symbolic structures (kinship, totemic systems, mythology). Nevertheless, the concept of the symbolic unconscious that Levi-Strauss constructed on this basis implies a series of displacements of the functional framework which require further study.

THE RELIGIOUS LINGUISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRESENCE OF THE KINGDOM IN THE LIGHT OF SPEECH ACT THEORY: CHRISTIAN ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS

This article presents a novel Biblical ethical hermeneutic approach that emerges from an understanding of the presence of the kingdom of God in the Biblical text. The approach is predicated upon the use of speech act theory (abbreviated as SAT) in relation to ‘kingdom language’ in the Biblical text. The approach shows how the notion of kingdom language, as God’s divine activity, is elicited in the contemporary Christian’s life by allowing it to operate beyond the world of the Biblical text. In other words, this approach establishes a Biblical-ethical hermeneutic bridge be-tween the text (and its context) and the context of contemporary readers of the text. The alternative linguistic epistemology in SAT considers the principle of the kingdom of God in the past (locution level), the present (illocutionary level) and the future (perlocutionary level). The dynamic equivalences of the past, present and future of the kingdom of God based on an SAT approach to the Biblical text can inform Christian ethical theory and moral action in the present world. It can also provide a new moral sensibility in relation to God’s sovereignty and the respon-sibility of Christians in contemporary society.

«ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ МОМЕНТ» В РАЗРАБОТКАХ Г.П. МЕЛЬНИКОВА: К ПОСТАНОВКЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ

The aim of the present article is the experience of constructing the linguistic epistemology of the theoretical developments of G.P. Melnikov in the context of the discussion of the foreign philosophy of science about the influence of E. Husserl’s ideas on structural linguistics. The idea of the article was suggested by the international scientific internship “General and Particular Methodology of Philological Science” from 03.04.2017 to 08.04.2017, as well as some generalizations published in the collective mono-graph “The Systemic View as the Basis of Philological Thought” (2016). Linguistic research methods (description, observation) are transferred to the scientific text as material for the reconstruction of the “phenomenological moment” as a conceptual structure. The article analyzes three lines: the initial internal determinant of the desired construct in the methodology of linguistics, the current external determinant of formal coincidence in some parameters, and the current internal determinant of the evaluation of GP. Melnikov’s own constructions in correlation with a certain epistemological system. The conclusion, which is made in the proposed work, concerns the recognition of G.P. Melnikov, the presence of a phenome-nological moment in the “systemology” he deduced.

University multilingualism: a critical narrative from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa

This article offers a narrative of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, from the prism of the duality of language as a co-modality (with people, protest, policy and practices) for constituting the institution in whole or in part and as a reflection of its co-modalities. For its framing, the narrative eclectically draws on language politics and policy, a grammar of multilingual landscapes and the epistemology of linguistics. Besides contributing to a historiography of university language policies, the narrative has implications for language policy analysis.

Eugenio Coseriu y Esa Itkonen: Lecciones de filosofía de la lingüística

This paper aims to provide a methodical image of the scientific-philosophical positions held by Eugenio Coseriu and Esa Itkonen, two scholars who share the same view about the ontology of language and its consequences for the methodology and epistemology of linguistics, but whose contributions are rarely put side by side. It is not easy to gain access to Coseriu’s epistemological stance since his opinions are scattered across many different works. For this reason my main purpose will be to introduce his position through a systematic comparison to the very similar scientific-philosophical assumptions which Itkonen has exhibited and defended in a more comprehensive and exhaustive way. In order to achieve a proper understanding of Coseriu’s and Itkonen’s epistemological convictions, it will be previously necessary to define the domains of philosophy of science and philosophy of linguistics and to characterize the two divergent streams we find inside this metatheoretical domain of research. Subsequently, from the hermeneutic or phenomenological point of view shared by Coseriu and Itkonen, I will discuss what kind of (scientific) explanation is to be expected from human sciences, and I will consider the relationship between the subject and the object of research that exists in this kind of sciences. Conclusively, I will also examine to what extent for both Coseriu and Itkonen this relationship determines the specific epistemic act we make use of in disciplines such as linguistics (namely, intuition), and also the necessity to differentiate them from natural sciences, where observation prevails.

Linguistic epistemology and the notion of monolingualism

This article sets out to understand why monolingualism is taken to be the ‘norm’ in linguistic inquiry, from sociolinguistics to formal linguistic theory. I will take the position that comparing instances of multilingualism to so-called monolingualism is an unfair and inevitably inaccurate comparison since, among other variables, the social environments and access to input of multilinguals compared to monolinguals is most often different (Cruz-Ferreira 2006; Edwards 2004). I will also attempt to demonstrate that even so-called monolinguals have access to a variety of grammars related to different registers of speech and, therefore, are not truly monolingual in the sense that they possess one monolithic grammatical competence. Taken together, the present discussion questions both the default status of monolingualism as well as the functional adequacy of the term ‘monolingualism’.

Los cambios intermodélicos en los programas de investigación idealista de la lingüística

La reflexión epistemológica sobre la Lingüística posee un componente sincrónico, la Filosofía de la ciencia lingüística, y un componente diacrónico, la Historiografía de la Lingüística, en la que se realizan dos tipos de análisis sobre el cambio en los programas de investigación: 1, el cinemático, describiendo las entidades involucradas en los cambios y los tipos y formas de los mismos; y 2, el dinámico, identificando las causas y factores desencadenantes del cambio. Mientras el análisis opositivo se centra en el primero, intentando precisar la identidad del cambio, el acercamiento lineal, centrado en el segundo, pretende estudiar la problemática de la continuidad a través de la ruptura. Es lo que hacemos en este trabajo, acercándonos linealmente al paradigma idealista de la Lingüística desde Platón hasta la Filosofía de la ciencia de tradición Feyerabendiana.

A heterogeneidade dos estudos da linguagem e o ensino de língua materna (Do que falam os lingüístas

The purpose of this text is, from the perspective of epistemology of linguistics, to discuss some aspects of the relations between the linguistics and the teaching of mother tongue. Themes as science of language, scientific knowledge and the formation of the researcher and his/her relations with the teaching of mother tongue, the formation of the teacher and the place of grammar tradition in the teaching of mother tongue are discussed. In general terms, arguments are built in favour of the validity of different points of view of the study of language, bearing in mind the need of thinking the teaching of mother tongue based on the conception of language that entails the heterogeneity. Key words: teaching of mother tongue, grammar of Portuguese, epistemology of linguistics.

Brian Friel and the Scene of Writing: Reading Give Me Your Answer, Do!

Brian Friel's thoroughgoing concern with the nature of language has been attributed to several factors: his need to investigate the means of his own art; his political and cultural investment in a language inextricably bound up with Ireland's colonial history; and the impact on his work of Martin Heidegger's and George Steiner's views on language. In Friel's oeuvre, language is the field where all the practices that constitute the social totality and the self take place, so that narratives and discourses about ourselves and the world are constituted by language. Within this context of Heideggerian linguistic epistemology, Friel focuses on a language that is inventive, unstable, and speculative in its relation to reality, a sense of language as a slippery, ambiguous, and polysemous signifying system fully investigated in another of Friel's principal sources, George Steiner's After Babel (1975). Written language specifically is always defined by virtue of its untrustworthiness in conveying the reality to which it refers, a situation that has led to the conclusion that in Friel's work, "[w]riting and failure go hand in hand". The scripting of reality leaves a lot to be desired, since each act of writing leaves something that escapes writing. The "same" event is approached from different perspectives, constructing various contradictory, provisional, or interested narratives, a theme illustrated in several of Friel's plays, including Living Quarters (1977), The Aristocrats (1979), and Making History (1988).

Philosophie et langage. A propos de Jean Bollack et du Centre de Recherche philologique de Lille

Classical scholarship has determined our image of classical texts that it edited and explained. What can it afford to our understanding of language? Purpose of this paper is 1) to situate philology among the sciences of language 2) to present the critical hermeneutic of Jean Bollack 3) through few examples from different authors of the Centre de recherche philologique (on Heraclitus and Hesiod above all) and 4) to sketch some problems concerning the epistemology of linguistics and the relations between philology and philosophy.

XXth-century theories of language: an epistemological diagnosis

This article id intended as a study in the methodology and epistemology of linguistics, a field which developed out of theoretical linguistics in the past thirty years.Meth­odology and epistemology (or philosophy) 1 of linguistics can be subsumed underthegeneral domain of "philosophical linguistics" (cfr. Kasher - Lappin 1977), whichalsoincludes a theory of meaning and reference, a theory of linguistic (or, moregenerallysemiotic) communication, and - in some cases - a formalization of linguisticsubsys­tems. The specific contribution of methodology and epistemology of linguistics liesinthe definition of the object of linguistics, in the determination and justification of itsre­ search techniques, in the appreciation of its results with respect to a broader field ofin­ vestigation, in the reflection on the nature, status, and variability of approaches tolan­ guage.

On the legitimation of metapragmatics: A case study in the epistemology of linguistics

La legitimation du metapragmatique, une approche illegitime selon la theorie traditionnelle, est surtout l'occasion d'exposer une reflexion epistemologique sur la conduite de la recherche linguistique, la condition de validite d'une theorie et la necessite d'elaborer de nouveaux parametres pour une future metascience des disciplines linguistiques.

Synonymy and the epistemology of linguistics

In Word and Object, Quine argues from the observation that ‘there is no justification for collating linguistic meanings, unless in terms of men's dispositions to respond overtly to socially observable stimulations’ to the conclusion that ‘the enterprise of translation is found to be involved in a certain systematic indeterminacy’. In this paper, I propose to show (1) that Quine's thesis, when properly understood, reveals in the situation of translation no peculiar indeterminacy but merely the ordinary indeterminacy present in any case of empirical investigation; (2) that it is plausible that, because the subject of inquiry is language, we are in a better position with respect to such empirical indeterminacies than we are in other areas of investigation; (3) that, in any case, Quine's arguments are impotent, for they are either contradictory or incoherent; and (4) that Quine is led to his radical conclusions because he confuses a trivial and unexciting indeterminacy, which does obtain, with the striking in...