scholarly journals From Saussure to sociology and back to linguistics: Niklas Luhmann’s reception of signifiant/signifié and langue/parole as the basis for a model of language change

Semiotica ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (207) ◽  
pp. 327-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Erik Zeige
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Original Writings ◽  
Relevant Aspect ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Linguistic Description ◽  
Linguistic Abstraction ◽  
Speech Events

AbstractThe article highlights a semiotically relevant aspect of Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems: its reception of the Saussurean dichotomies signifiant/signifié and langue/parole. Luhmann’s position is weighted against the Cours as well as Saussure’s original writings, sampling their approaches to form, meaning, the sign’s two-sidedness, and the relation of linguistic structure and speech events. Ultimately, the article proposes a social ontology of linguistic abstraction in line with general semiology that explains the motility of language through communication, thereby accounting for variability and optionality. It also indicates as to how the theoretical framework can feed into a model of linguistic description.

Criticality: How Changes Preserve Stability in Self-Organizing Systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (11) ◽  
pp. 1613-1629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Accard
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
System Theory ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Self Organized Criticality ◽  
New Treatment ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Self Organizing

Self-organizing systems are social systems which are immanently and constantly recreated by agents. In a self-organizing system, agents make changes while preserving stability. If they do not preserve stability, they push the system toward chaos and cannot recreate it. How changes preserve stability is thus a fundamental issue. In current works, changes preserve stability because agents’ ability to make changes is limited by interaction rules and power. However, how agents diffuse the changes throughout the system while preserving its stability has not been addressed in these works. We have addressed this issue by borrowing from a complex system theory neglected thus far in organization theories: self-organized criticality theory. We suggest that self-organizing systems are in critical states: agents have equivalent ability to make changes, and none are able to foresee or control how their changes diffuse throughout the system. Changes, then, diffuse unpredictably – they may diffuse to small or large parts of the system or not at all, and it is this unpredictable diffusion that preserves stability in the system over time. We call our theoretical framework self-organiz ing criticality theory. It presents a new treatment of change and stability and improves the understanding of self-organizing.

scholarly journals A Dynamic Network Approach to the Study of Syntax

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Diessel
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Model Building ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Dynamic Network ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Network Approach ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Network Analyses

Usage-based linguists and psychologists have produced a large body of empirical results suggesting that linguistic structure is derived from language use. However, while researchers agree that these results characterize grammar as an emergent phenomenon, there is no consensus among usage-based scholars as to how the various results can be explained and integrated into an explicit theory or model. Building on network theory, the current paper outlines a structured network approach to the study of grammar in which the core concepts of syntax are analyzed by a set of relations that specify associations between different aspects of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge. These associations are shaped by domain-general processes that can give rise to new structures and meanings in language acquisition and language change. Combining research from linguistics and psychology, the paper proposes specific network analyses for the following phenomena: argument structure, word classes, constituent structure, constructions and construction families, and grammatical categories such as voice, case and number. The article builds on data and analyses presented in Diessel (2019; The Grammar Network. How Linguistic Structure is Shaped by Language Use) but approaches the topic from a different perspective.

Reframing Habermas’s colonization thesis: Neoliberalism as relinguistification

2020 ◽  
pp. 136843102097078
Author(s):  
Roderick Condon
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Social Systems Theory ◽  
The Way

While the critique of neoliberalism, as the form of contemporary capitalism, has been advanced from Marxian and Foucauldian perspectives, it has had limited attention from the perspective of Critical Theory. Largely unrecognized is the suitability of the theory of reification for this critique, specifically, Habermas’s version. This article reconsiders Habermas’s colonization thesis as the basis for a critical theory of neoliberalism, refining its theoretical framework to deepen its critical diagnosis. Against the dismissal of the system–lifeworld concept, a novel critique is advanced to suggest its original elaboration fell confusedly between two versions of social systems theory. Drawing from late developments, the scheme is reinterpreted as distinguishing two forms of communication in capitalist society: delinguistified and linguistic. This opens the way to reframe and communicatively transform colonization as relinguistification; that is, the translation of monetary coding into ordinary language such that communicative action is distorted from within by reifying concepts.

On the hierarchy of naturalness principles in inflectional morphology

1993 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max W. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Prague School

1. This article proposes a criticism and elaboration of the theory of Natural Morphology as it relates to inflection and to inflectional change. The theoretical framework I start from is that set out at length in Mayerthaler (1981/1988), Wurzel (1984/1989), Dressler (1987) and Kilani-Schoch (1988). The concept of naturalness involved here combines Prague School notions of markedness (see Andersen, 1989) with more recent typological approaches and a semiotic framework which derives from the work of C. S. Peirce. The goal of naturalness theories in historical linguistics is to identify some constraints on language change (for example, on sound change, analogy and grammaticalization) which are, broadly speaking, functionally motivated, that is, motivated by the nature of human psychology or of human communication. Naturalness theories offer an approach to explanation of Weinreich, Labov & Herzog's (1968; 102, 186) actuation problem. Among other things, Natural Morphology proposes explanatory principles and constraints for analogy.

On the goals, principles, and procedures for prescriptive grammar: Singular they

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Theoretical Linguistics ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Prescriptive Grammar

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the goals of prescriptive grammar and the causes and consequences of the rift between prescriptive and theoretical linguistics. It also proposes a principle for guiding prescriptive recommendations in the future as well as a theoretical framework and procedure for predicting the consequences of prescriptive recommendations. The procedure illustrates a hypothetical prescription: the substitution of singular they for prescriptive he. Projected benefits the prescription include neutral connotation, naturalness, simplicity, and lexical availability. Projected costs include covert and overt referential ambiguity; partial ambiguity; conceptual inaccuracy; loss of precision, imageability, impact, and memorability; bizarreness involving certain referents and case forms; distancing and dehumanizing connotations; unavailability of the ‘he or she’ denotation; potentially disruptive and long-lasting side effects on other areas of the language. Procedures are also illustrated for determining the relative frequency of such costs and benefits and for estimating the relative disruptiveness of the costs normal language use. Implications of the data for several issues general interest to linguistics and psychology are explored. (Ambiguity, language change, prescriptive grammar, theoretical linguistics, language planning, pronouns, neologisms.)

scholarly journals Mentalization, embodiment, and narrative: Critical comments on the social ontology of mentalization theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 458-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Køster
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interactional Perspective

Recently, mentalization theory has risen to fame as a theoretical framework emphasising social cognition as a key issue in its approach to psychopathology and psychotherapy. In this article, I review and criticise the social-ontological assumptions made by mentalization theory, arguing that, in spite of a strong interactive focus, it remains fundamentally rooted in a Cartesian ontology, overlooking embodied, expressive, enactive, and sociocultural dimensions of social cognition. Furthermore, since mentalization theory was originally developed as a framework for understanding Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), I offer a reinterpretation of the issue of social cognition reported in BPD from a more embodied and interactional perspective. Contrary to the received view, I suggest that issues of social cognition in BPD should not necessarily be seen as a partial or total inability to mentalize, but rather as a hypersensitivity to expressivity resulting in what I suggest we understand as acts of disnarration.

scholarly journals Clinic Stories Possible Learning from Drug Addiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Drug Addiction ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Chemical Dependency ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Psychoactive Substances ◽  
Chemical Substances ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

Search for a theoretical framework that answers cultural, social and anthropological questions about man, using complements to live as a being-in-the-world, based on the psychoanalytic clinic. Investigate whether the use of narcotics is individual or a result of social issues that drive the subject to use psychoactive substances. Analyze the clinical structures linked to the use of these substances. To investigate the relationship between fractures with the law and chemical dependency, and religion/ spirituality, establishing links between clinical structures in drug addiction and society. As objectives: to investigate the issues with the Father’s Law and the use of chemical substances. Relate cultural and social systems linked to addictions; seek individual and family assumptions, perhaps social, that elucidate the necessary search for a complement/drug.

scholarly journals Hybridity, Adaptive Peacebuilding and Complexity

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
Cedric de Coning ◽  
Lawrence McDonald-Colbert
Keyword(s):  
Iterative Process ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Complexity Science ◽  
The Self ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Culture History ◽  
Learning And Adaptation

AbstractComplexity science provides us with a theoretical framework for understanding how complex social systems lapse into violent conflict, and how they can prevent, or recover from conflict. For a peace process to become self-sustainable, resilient social institutions need to emerge from within, i.e. from the culture, history and socio-economic context of the relevant society. International actors can assist and facilitate this process, but if they interfere too much, they will undermine the self-organising processes necessary to sustain resilient social institutions. Adaptive Peacebuilding navigates this hybrid peacebuilding dilemma with an adaptive methodology where peacebuilders, together with the communities and people affected by the conflict, actively engage in a structured process to sustain peace and resolve conflicts by employing an iterative process of learning and adaptation. A complexity informed approach to hybrid peacebuilding aims to safeguard, stimulate, facilitate and create the space for societies to develop resilient capacities for self-organisation.

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