Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio

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Vol. 21, n. 1/2027: Emergence and Language

Editors: James Miller (Durham University), Erica Onnis (Cusano University)

Emergence is broadly understood as the appearance of genuinely novel and therefore irreducible properties, structures, and behaviours arising from the interaction of simpler components.

Despite being a central topic in philosophy of science and metaphysics, its implications for philosophy of language and linguistics remain comparatively underexplored. However, the linguistic dimensions seem to offer compelling and philosophically rich instances of emergent phenomena: the evolutionary origin of natural languages; the emergence of grammar and linguistic structures; that of meaning and creativity; that of social and institutional facts through linguistic acts and their inscription. These phenomena are cases in which something genuinely new comes into being through complex historical, linguistic, cognitive, and/or social processes and makes a difference to the world.

This issue of the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio invites original contributions investigating the relationships between emergence and language. The issue aims to bring together work in philosophy of language and linguistics, philosophy of science, aesthetics, complexity science, metaphysics, and social ontology.