coThe APPLICATION OF STRUCTURALISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LINGUISTICS

The key concept of this article is to investigate the application of structuralism,in addition for presenting a theoretical material that helps in understanding the literary text in general and poetic in particular. This is by standing at the most important principles that have been set in order to analyze the structure of the text, know its system, andreveal the relationships that interact within it and the levels that fall within its framework. Including the concepts that establish to deal with and enter it.Perhaps I find a strong and fruitful cooperation between linguistis and structural critics in crystallizing the concepts ofthe text and uncovering the features and dimensions of its structure, and the methods used to enter such a structure.

Linguistics, philosophy of

Although related to issues in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of linguistics is a largely distinct topic, being concerned not so much with language itself but with the character and significance of scientific theories about it, for example, with the ontology of linguistic entities, and with whether linguistics is properly regarded as a branch of psychology or as of a kind of mathematics. The work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jacobson initiated interest in many of these topics, leading to the structuralist movement in Continental Europe, but it was the work of Noam Chomsky that later sparked the cognitive revolution in Anglo-American philosophy and psychology. Chomsky argued that linguistics should not be concerned with the actual performance of speakers, but instead with the underlying system of rules that was responsible for the competence to produce and understand those utterances. Calling attention to a stunning array of data, he went on to argue that linguistic theory should be concerned with the innately specified system that enabled young children to acquire that competence so effortlessly in a remarkably short time. This claim he linked to the tradition of philosophical Rationalism, according to which substantial portions of human knowledge are not obtained from experience, as Empiricists had maintained, but are largely innate. These and related claims have occasioned important exchanges with a number of philosophers about the foundations of language and mind.

Philosophy of Linguistics

This chapter is an enquiry into the goals and methods of linguistics, with the aim of understanding both the specifics of the discipline and the relationships between linguists’ take on the methodology of their field and general principles of philosophy of science. The first part highlights linguistics as an inquiry into language, as opposed to languages. The second part describes the shift from structural linguistics to generative grammar as a paradigm shift, involving major changes in both what is studied and how it is studied. The next section focuses on the empirical import of contemporary linguistics, discussing standards of explanation and prediction, as well as confirmation and refutation of linguistic hypotheses. The last part introduces linguistic universals, what they are and how they may be identified and explained, thus making explicit the connection with the goal of understanding not only the variety of languages but the faculty of language.

Pragmatics and philosophy: In search of a paradigm

There is no doubt that pragmatic theory and philosophy of language are mutually relevant and intrinsically connected. The main question I address in this paper is how exactly they are interconnected in terms of (i) their respective objectives, (ii) explanans – explanandum relation, (iii) methods of enquiry, and (iv) drawing on associated disciplines. In the introductory part I attempt to bring some order into the diversity of use of such labels as philosophical logic, philosophical semantics, philosophical pragmatics, linguistic philosophy, or philosophy of linguistics, among others. In the following sections I focus on philosophical pragmatics as a branch of philosophy of language (pragmaticsPPL) and the trends and theories it gave rise to, discussing them against the background of methodology of science and in particular paradigms and paradigm shifts as identified in natural science. In the main part of the paper I address the following questions: How is pragmaticsPPL to be delimited?How do pragmatic solutions to questions about meaning fare vis-à-vis syntactic solutions? Is there a pattern emerging?and, relatedly,What are the future prospects for pragmaticsPPL in theories of natural language meaning? I conclude with a discussion of the relation between pragmaticsPPL and functionalism, observing that contextualism has to play a central role in functionalist pragmatics at the expense of minimalism and sententialism.

From Structure to Machine: Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of Linguistics

This paper aims to consider the main features of the philosophy of linguistics proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, which emerges from the criticisms directed at what in A Thousand Plateaus they call ‘postulates of linguistics’. The paper focuses on the transition from the Saussurean concept of system and from the connected notion of structure to Deleuze and Guattari's concept of machine. More precisely, the purpose of the paper lies, on the one hand, in showing in which sense Deleuze and Guattari claim that language is not a ‘structure’ but a ‘machine’ and why, accordingly, they maintain that the mentioned ‘postulates of linguistics’ must be refused; on the other hand, the paper represents an attempt at placing Deleuze and Guattari's position in the context of contemporary linguistics.