Tom 69 (2018): Zeszyt 1 (June 2018)

The article deals with the ways philosophers and linguists reflect the topic of discourse. In the first part, the conception of the discourse as the theoretical construct is characterized. The next parts are devoted to discourse analyses as they were developed by linguists, semioticians and philosophers in the sixties and seventies. The works of Emil Benveniste, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are put in the foreground. As for Foucault’s archeological method, this attempt to find rules of the autonomous discourse led to an impasse. The last part of the article draws the research line of the critical discourse analysis and shows its philosophical inspirations.

In the presented paper we try to reconstruct Roland Barthes’ journey from the strict linguocentrism (i.e. logocentrism and phonocentrism) to the fact that even though the word and image find themselves in one semiotic space and might be under certain circumstances in a complementary relationship or work together to achieve the very same aim, at the same time, the images (and especially analogical images) always contain something which can’t be wholly translated into words.

The aim of the paper is to defend the idea that, from the semantic point of view, predicates of personal taste behave in communication like ordinary indexical expressions (pronouns, demonstratives, etc.). It means that they express different semantic contents relative to relevantly different contexts of utterances. This is a consequence of the claim that “tasty” (which is our paradigm example of a predicate of personal taste) and “tasty for (someone)” (where “someone” is a placeholder for an agent) express the same, or very similar, semantic contents relative to the same context of utterance. Now this idea can be challenged by pointing to certain communicative phenomena, such as disagreements about matters of personal taste. It is argued, however, that there is an explanation of taste disagreements that is compatible with the indexical nature of predicates of personal taste. Moreover, it is shown that an explanation along these lines is rather natural because it seems to be necessitated by communication-based evidence.

The aim of this paper is (1) to briefly define the essence of integrationist semiology/linguistics (especially in Roy Harris’ works – e.g. Harris 1981, 1984, 1998a) and to present a set of basic methodological beliefs that can be considered as a principal critique of traditional (so called segregationist) linguistics / semiology. Among the most important integrationist beliefs are the non-privilege of linguistic acts in human communication (the principle of contemporality), contextualism (the sign form is not independent of the sign substance) and the inseparability of rules from their application. On this basis the paper (2) outlines the basic aspects of integrationist convictions about the relationship between the sign and the text and their comparison with Rastier’s (2015) interpretative semantics. In conclusion (3) the article discusses one current form of the philosophy of language (Pettersson, 2017) that is – to a certain extent – based on integrationism. Overall, the paper attempts to draw attention to the fact that integrationist theory in many cases provides an adequate critical reflection of traditional semiological/linguistic methodology, but in a closer look it shows that it cannot offer a robust theoretical alternative.

The study of the relationship between language and culture has recently found an interesting source of inspiration in the theoretical-methodological basis of cognitive linguistics and ethnolinguistics. The paper draws on this resource, especially on the findings of J. Bartmiński’s Ethnolinguistic School of Lublin and the theory of culturally key words by Anna Wierzbicka, and following the previous ethnolinguistic research of Czech Christmas, it focuses on the image of the Christmas giver Ježíšek in contemporary Czech (private and public) discourse. This image has been reconstructed based on the analysis of language data and culturally significant texts dealing with the Ježíšek topic, and also based on a survey conducted among Czechs on social networks. The objective of the analysis is to contribute to the formulation of the so-called cognitive definition connected to the Ježíšek conceptualization, and to identify some of its aspects.

Drawing on the ideas of many pragmatically based philosophers of language and linguistics, the author proposes a conception of command of language with regard to linguistic cultivation of language users. His approach to the problem may be summarized in the sentence that the cultivation of the mother tongue is adequate when it is in harmony with communicative rationality that originated from the fact that human beings are behavioural-actional creatures. The main point is that the rationality of communication is based on the function of the intention-emergent-mechanism; that is, we are in natural linguistic state if the working of this mechanism is not disturbed. The cultivation of command of language can only be successful as the developing of the natural linguistic state when the requirement of the natural coordination of the behavioural and actional linguistic competence remains in force, in other words, it is necessary to take into consideration that for the natural command of language is responsible the interplay of the not-knowledge-based grammatical disposition and the language knowledges.

The study deals with interactional stylistics viewed as a discipline based on its own pragmatic potential (while consideration has been given to addressee and to speech comprehensibility and clarity even earlier). This pragmatic potential in its developed form represents, in the context of contemporary methodology of humanities, a contribution to restructuration of stylistics. The discipline, viewed from this point, receives a new function: to observe and interpretationally explain, firstly, the meaning of interactions between agents in the observed communication acts and, secondly, the effect that this interaction brings. In the centre of interactional stylistics is the human (anthropocentrism), who through his communication acts negotiates about the contents of interactions, regarding own interests, as well as cultural, social and historical conventions. The meaning of used expressions and the overall sense of such interactions thus emerge in the context of communicational events, based on the communication subjects’ coping with surrounding reality through assimilation and accommodation.

Our contribution is based on an assumption that the ability to conduct a dialogue is determined by a complex of linguistic and non-linguistic predispositions. In the forefront of our considerations there is a question we have identified as a dialogue (dialogic) competence. Dialogic competence in our perception consists of three core components: an organisational part of dialogue and its corresponding conversational competence, a pragmatic part and ability to cooperate, and finally a social part of dialogue and empathy or maintaining the accommodation-assimilation proportion in a dialogue. In the frame of these components, we suggest research issues for interactional stylistics that could provide a base of knowledge useful for application areas as well as social practice when cultivating the dialogic competence.

The contribution deals with the degree of unity, complexity, intensity and their relatedness to the dispositional experience within linguistic investigation. Contemporary research strategies in linguistics testify to the liberalization of language and to the effort to re-evaluate the previous attitudes to the linguistic canon. A considerable role within formulating the theories about linguistic changes is played by the ability to identify the natural basis of the common thought of the ordinary users of language, by their public opinion concerning language, their voice of naturalness, their ability – as well as the strength – of their prejudices, but not to elevate/promote/raise the particular mistakes into the role of changes. A thorough theory of the identification or of the definition of linguistic changes and of the dynamism in language should be able to question also its own discourse and view it within the perspective of the phenomenal idea of R. Barthes “Do not do what I say but what I do”.