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<p>In a process-ontological perspective, I consider some aspects of the ways in which human languaging enables persons to operate on and to actualize and de-actualize the modal potentials of their world. I examine Johanna Seibt’s notion of functional individuals to show how some aspect of the world can be selected and differentiated and thus located in some region of space-time by a particular linguistic (or other) operation. Rather than referring to an already given and present actuality, utterances actualise and situate functional individuals to varying degrees of definiteness, specificity, realness, and so on in occasions of languaging and in texts. Wordings enable and scaffold de-coupled intentional-semantic registration that coordinate selves and the functional individuals that populate their world. With reference to the nominal group and criteria of Thinghood, I consider concrete particulars and functional stuffs in relation to the capacity of our languaging to activate selective aspects of the modal potentials of the processes that we encounter in the world. This requires a process-ontological account of the world on which and in which we act in and through languaging. Languaging functions to sensibilize us to different aspects of the modal potentials that it activates.</p>
</abstract>

In a process-ontological perspective, I consider some aspects of the ways in which human languaging enables persons to operate on and to actualize and de-actualize the modal potentials of their world. I examine Johanna Seibt’s notion of functional individuals to show how some aspect of the world can be selected and differentiated and thus located in some region of space-time by a particular linguistic (or other) operation. Rather than referring to an already given and present actuality, utterances actualise and situate functional individuals to varying degrees of definiteness, specificity, realness, and so on in occasions of languaging and in texts. Wordings enable and scaffold de-coupled intentional-semantic registration that coordinate selves and the functional individuals that populate their world. With reference to the nominal group and criteria of Thinghood, I consider concrete particulars and functional stuffs in relation to the capacity of our languaging to activate selective aspects of the modal potentials of the processes that we encounter in the world. This requires a process-ontological account of the world on which and in which we act in and through languaging. Languaging functions to sensibilize us to different aspects of the modal potentials that it activates.

Mastering Languaging and Extending our Agency in and through the Virtualities of Languaging: The Interplay of Causes and Constraints in Actualising the World

Linguistic Frontiers

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

In a process-ontological perspective, I consider some aspects of the ways in which human languaging enables persons to operate on and to actualize and...

Mastering Languaging and Extending our Agency in and through the Virtualities of Languaging: The Interplay of Causes and Constraints in Actualising the World

Published Online: Oct 26, 2023

Page range: 10 - 49

Received: Feb 01, 2023

Accepted: Apr 01, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/lf-2023-0016

Keywords
Deixis, concrete particulars, distancing, functional individual, languaging, modal potential, process ontology, real patterns, self-object pole, stuffs, sensibilization

© 2023 Paul J. Thibault, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Mastering Languaging and Extending our Agency in and through the Virtualities of Languaging: The Interplay of Causes and Constraints in Actualising the World

Published Online: Oct 26, 2023

Page range: 10 - 49

Received: Feb 01, 2023

Accepted: Apr 01, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/lf-2023-0016

KeywordsDeixis, concrete particulars, distancing, functional individual, languaging, modal potential, process ontology, real patterns, self-object pole, stuffs, sensibilization

© 2023 Paul J. Thibault, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
Deixis, concrete particulars, distancing, functional individual, languaging, modal potential, process ontology, real patterns, self-object pole, stuffs, sensibilization