The embodiment of language: sign function and semiotic threshold

  • Filomena Diodato
Parole chiave: Embodied cognition, Enactivism, Semiotic threshold, Sign function

Abstract

In the last decades a deep revision of Saussure’s conception of language has shed some new light on the nature of language and its double essence, confirming the inadequacy of the ‘dichotomies’ by which his theory has been vulgarized, especially out of Europe. In a renewed Saussurean philosophy of language, Saussurism is no longer ascribable to an extreme culturalism, nor probably is Structuralism. Indeed, if one rethinks the dialectic between the faculté du langage, the langue and the parole, and then refocuses the notion of sign function and of semiotic threshold, Saussure’s theory and its structuralist implications could as well suggest a non-reductionist perspective that could even venture to enhance the current theories of Embodied Cognition. This paper outlines some routes by which a profitable dialogue could be opened.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Bottineau, Didier (2010), Language and Enaction, in Stewart, John; Gapenne, Olivier; Di Paolo, Ezequiel A. (2010), Enaction. Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

Chomsky, Noam (2000), New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge MA.

Cimatti, Felice (2018), A Biosemiotic Ontology. The Philosophy of Giorgio Prodi, Springer, Berlin.

Cuffari, Elena C.; Di Paolo, Ezequiel A.; De Jaegher, Hanne (2015), «From participatory sense-making to language: there and back again», Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 14/4, pp. 1089-1125.

de Bruin, Leon C.; Kästner, Lena (2012), «Dynamic Embodied Cognition», Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences; 11, pp. 541–563.

de Bruin, Leon; de Haan, Sanneke (2012), «Enactivism and Social Cognition: In Search for the Whole Story», Journal of Cognitive Semiotics, 1, pp. 225-250.

De Mauro, Tullio (1982), Minisemantica dei linguaggi non verbali e delle lingue, Laterza, Roma-Bari.

De Palo, Marina (2010), «Le je, la phénomenologie et le discours. Bühler, Benveniste et Husserl», Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 20/1, pp. 155-165.

De Palo, Marina (2016), Saussure e gli strutturalismi. Il soggetto parlante nel pensiero linguistico del Novecento, Carocci, Roma.

Deacon, Terrence (1997), The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain, W. W. Norton & Company, New York-London.

Donald, Merlin (1991), Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.

Eco, Umberto (1976), A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington-London.

Eco, Umberto (1984), Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Macmillan, London.

Eco, Umberto (1988), «On Semiotics and Immunology», in Sercarz, Eli E.; Celada, Franco; Mitchison, N. Avrion; Tada, Tomio (1988), The Semiotics of Cellular Communication in the Immune System(NATO ASI Series / Cell Biology), Springer, Berlin, pp. 3-15.

Fadda, Emanuele (2011), Introduzione, in Fadda, Emanuele; Gallo, Giusy; Cristaldi, Luigi (2011), Saussure filosofo del linguaggio, Buonanno editore, Catania.

Fillmore, Charles J. (1985), «Semantic fields and semantic frames», Quaderni di semantica, 6, pp. 222-254.

Gallagher, Shaun (2017), Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Gallagher, Shaun; Zahavi, Dan (2008), The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, Routledge, London.

Gambarara, Daniele (2011), Per una filosofia del linguaggio e delle lingue, in Fadda, Emanuele; Gallo, Giusy; Cristaldi, Luigi (2011), Saussure filosofo del linguaggio, Buonanno editore, Catania.

Gambarara, Daniele (2012), «Strutturalisti senza saperlo? Saussure contro Saussure», Versus, 115 (2012).

Gibbs, Raymond W. (2005), Embodiment and Cognitive Science, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Hauser, Mark D.; Chomsky, Noam; Fitch, W. Tecumseh (2002), «The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?», Science, 298, pp. 1569-1579.

Hutto, Daniel D.; Myin, Erik (2017), Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

Itkonen, Esa (2008), The central role of normativity in language and linguistics, in Zlatev, Jordan; Racine, Timothy P.; Sinha, Chris; Itkonen, Esa (2008), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, John Benjamin, Amsterdam.

Johnson, Mark (1987), The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark (1980), Metaphors we live by, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark (1999), Philosophy in the flesh, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Lakoff, George (2008), «The neural theory of metaphor», in Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought, Cambridge University Press, pp. 17-38.

Logan, Robert K. (2007), The Extended Mind: The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind, and Culture, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Pennisi, Antonino; Falzone, Anna (2016), Darwinian Biolinguistics. Theory and History of a Naturalistic Philosophy of Language and Pragmatics, Springer, Berlin.

Saussure, F. de (1916), Cours de linguistique générale, Payot, Lausanne-Paris (Corso di linguistica generale, translated by T. De Mauro, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1967).

Shapiro, Lawrence (2011), Embodied Cognition, Routledge Press, New York.

Sonesson, Goran (2007), From the meaning of embodiment to the embodiment of meaning: A study in phenomenological semiotics, in Ziemke, Tom; Zlatev, Jordan; Frank, Roslyn M. (2007), Body, Language and Mind, Volume 1: Embodiment, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, pp. 85-127.

Thagard, Paul (2005), Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

Tomasello, Michael (2019), Becoming Human. A Theory of Ontogeny, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.

Varela, Francisco; Thompson, Evan T.; Rosch, Eleanor (1991), The Embodied Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

Zlatev, Jordan (2005), What's in a schema? Bodily mimesis and the grounding of language, in Beate Hampe, From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, pp. 313-342.

Zlatev, Jordan (2007), Embodiment, language, and mimesis, in Ziemke, Tom; Zlatev, Jor-dan; Frank, Roslyn M. (2007), Body, Language and Mind, Vol. 1: Embodiment, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, pp. 297-337.

Pubblicato
2020-08-17
Come citare
Diodato, F. (2020) «The embodiment of language: sign function and semiotic threshold», Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio. doi: 10.4396/SFL2019ESC03.
Sezione
Emozioni e Scienze cognitive