Phenomenology and linguistics Simone Aurora & Patrick Flack Università degli studi di Padova Central-European Institute of Philosophy, Prague * simoneaurora86@hotmail.it flack@sdvigpress.org Although it is not difficult to track reflections on the theory and practice of the language sciences within the phenomenological corpus from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger or Derrida via authors such as Adolf Reinach, Karl Buhler, or Gustav Špet the relation between phenomenology and linguistics has rarely been taken as the subject of detailed analyses. For instance, one finds but few explicit discussions of this topic, such as Rozalija Šor's «Expression and Signification : The Logicist Trend in Linguistics» (1927, translated for this issue), Hendrik Pos's «Phenomenology and Linguistics» (1939), John Verhaar's «Phenomenology and Present-Day Linguistics», Ernst Wolfgang Orth's «Philosophy of Language as Phenomenology of Language and Logic» (both 1973) or, more recently, Jean-Claude Coquet's Phusis et Logos. Une Phénoménologie du langage (2007) and Jordan Zlatev's «Phenomenology and Cognitive Linguistics» (2010). In the majority of historiographies of linguistics or in the rare studies * Correspondence: Simone Aurora Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia, Psicologia Applicata (FISPPA) Università di Padova, I-35139 Padova, Italy; Patrick Flack Central-Eurpean Institute of Philosophy Charles University, U Kříže 8, Praha CZ-15800, Czech Republic. Metodo Vol. 4, n. 2 (2016)
8 Simone Aurora & Patrick Flack on the philosophy and epistemology of the language sciences, moreover, one will struggle to find anything more than passing mentions to the work either of Husserl or of any other phenomenologist. A notable exception to this rule is constituted by a line of research that can be traced back to two pioneering works published by Elmar Holenstein in the 1970s 1 and which aims to show the existence of a theoretical and historical filiation both between phenomenology and structural linguistics and, more specifically, between Husserl s philosophy and the works of Roman Jakobson and the Prague Linguistic Circle. The main assumption here is that phenomenology and structuralism emerged as pan-european and interdisciplinary paradigms and, far from representing conflicting or alternative schools, developed within a wide and complex network of mutual influences at the beginning of the 20 th Century. 2 After years of neglect, this approach has regained both vigour and traction and has led to the publication of a significant number of studies, 3 of which the present issue is in many ways a continuation. As a result of this new research, a number of historical and theoretical focal points have emerged in the relationship between phenomenology and linguistics almost all of which are explored in the present volume. The first of these is the seminal role of Husserl's Logical Investigations. As evidenced by authors such as Špet, Pos, or Derrida, 4 by the above-mentioned studies of Holenstein, by our own work and by the articles by Rozalija Šor, Filippo Silvestri, Simona Cresti, and Manuel Isaac in this issue, Husserl's text served as a crucial starting point for gaining new insights into fundamental problems of linguistics such as the nature of the linguistic sign, the scope and uses of a pure grammar, the inter-subjective basis of meaning in mutual understanding, or the relations between linguistic expression, ideal signification and empirical object. 1 HOLENSTEIN 1976a; 1976b. 2 Cf. SÉRIOT 1999, ESPAGNE 2014. 3 E.g. BURDA 2001, SONESSON 2012, AURORA 2015, STAWARSKA 2015, FLACK 2016, etc. 4 POS 1939, ŠPET 1914, DERRIDA 1967. Metodo vol. 4, n. 2 (2016)
Phenomenology and Linguistics 9 A second aspect of the relation between phenomenology and linguistics is its deep imbrication in «Russian Theory», 5 i.e. the original context of Russian and Soviet thought in the Humanities in the first decades of the 20 th Century. Jakobson's or Špet's theoretical debt to Husserl constitute the most obvious manifestations of this Russian connection. But, as Šor's and Emanuel Landolt's articles in this issue show, Russian inputs go well beyond these two authors. On the one hand, the reception and interpretation of Husserl in Russia was less than straightforward, inscribed as it was in a wider process of reappropriation of the psychologistic traditions of German philosophy. On the other hand, this productive reception and the vast intellectual horizon that it involved was also conducive after WWII to other, more hermeneutic approaches to a phenomenology of the language sciences, such as that of Vladimir Bibikhin. The third focus of recent research on phenomenology and linguistics is a critical re-reading of Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale and its instrumentalisation in historiographies of linguistics and structuralism. 6 As is made clear in the articles by Beata Stawarska and Lei Zhu, the mainstream view of Saussure as having expunged the speaking subject from his model has for a long time constituted the biggest obstacle to a rapprochement between linguistics and what is often seen as a science of subjectivity, phenomenology. The two strategies for a re-appraisal of Saussure are on display in this issue: Stawarska's philological re- and de-construction of our canonical reading of Saussure, and Zhu's invocation of Merleau-Ponty as the concrete exemplification of a successful conceptual meeting of phenomenology and (Saussurean) linguistics. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology itself represents a further focal point of the relation between phenomenology and linguistics. Merleau-Ponty's interest in the problem of language and his close involvement with structuralism (Saussure, Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss) are well-known. What the insistent references to his work by Stawarska, 5 ZENKIN, 2004. 6 Cf. SALVERDA 1991, DAYLIGHT 2011, STAWARSKA 2015. Metodo Vol. 4, n. 2 (2016)
10 Simone Aurora & Patrick Flack Zhu, as well as Martin Thiering & Johan Bloomberg and Antonino Bondi, David Piotrowski & Yves-Marie Visetti reveals, however, is the extent to which Merleau-Ponty's thought is connected with linguistics or semiotics themselves, i.e. not only with language as an object, but with its treatment and conceptualisation in the language sciences. Also, that connection is doubly significant, since it involves not only Merleau-Ponty's debt to the concepts and insights of linguistics or semiotics, but the conceptual potential of his ideas for the further development of those disciplines. A fifth and final aspect discussed in this issue is a recently emerged concern over the relationship between phenomenology and cognitive linguistics. In their articles, Thiering & Bloomberg and Cresti turn their attention to specific topics (space, vagueness) whose linguistic treatment, they argue, can greatly benefit from a joined, cognitive and phenomenological approach. Revealingly, Husserl's Logical Investigations and Merleau-Ponty's work both figure prominently as the phenomenological points of references in these articles. In summary, this issue of Metodo provides a relatively exhaustive historical overview of the interactions between phenomenology and linguistics. In doing so it also addresses topics such as, among others, the nature and structure of language, the relationship between linguistic structure and lived experience or between language and mind, the historical connections that link phenomenology to linguistic research, theories of meaning and semantic forms and epistemological reflections on linguistics from a phenomenological point of view. Metodo vol. 4, n. 2 (2016)
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12 Simone Aurora & Patrick Flack universitaires de France. SONESSON, G. 2012. «The foundation of cognitive semiotics in the phenomenology of signs and meanings». Intellectica, 58, 207-39. STAWARSKA, B. 2015. Saussure's Philosophy of Language as Phenomenology: Undoing the Doctrine of the Course in General Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ŠOR, R. 1927. «Vyraženie i značenie (Logističeskoe napravlenie v sovremennoj lingvistike)». Učenye zapiski RANION, 98-110. VERHAAR, J. 1973. «Phenomenology and Present-Day Linguistics». In Natanson, M. Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ZENKIN, S. 2004. Russkaja teorija : 1920-1930-e gody. Moskva: RGGU. ZLATEV, J. 2010. «Phenomenology and Cognitive Linguistics». In Schmicking, D., Gallagher, S. Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Dordrecht: Springer, 415-43. Metodo vol. 4, n. 2 (2016)