Bringing speakers back in? Epistemological reflections on speaker-oriented explanations of language change  

Oleh:

Deumert, Ana

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 25 no. 1 (2003), page 15–76.
Topik: Language change; Philosophy of action; Sociolinguistic theory; Structuration theory
Fulltext: 25_01_Deumert.pdf (386.12KB)

Isi artikel

From the late 1980s historical linguists have repeatedly criticised autonomous, systeminternal historical linguistics and emphasised the need to incorporate human agency and intentionality into our explanations of language change, a concern most clearly articulated in sociolinguistic approaches to language history. The article evaluates the ways in which speaker agency has been conceptualised in these discussions and critically reviews the explanatory status of traditional ‘belief–desire’ models of action in the light of evolutionary, neuropsychological and sociological contributions to the question of human agency. Considering the generally accepted definition of language as a collective structure, the article discusses further whether explanations should invoke individuals (‘methodological individualism’) or collectives (‘methodological holism’) as the agents of linguistic change. It is suggested that Giddens’s theory of structuration, which attempts to overcome the dichotomy of individualism vs. holism and to disassociate agency from individual intentionality, is a useful starting point for future theorising. While speaker-oriented approaches to language change are an important part of the explanatory inventory of historical linguistics, not all linguistic changes are equally amenable to explanations in terms of speaker agency. It is argued that there is a cluster of areas (grammaticalisation and reanalysis, language contact, native theories of language as well as standardisation) which should feature prominently in the field of socio-historical linguistics The great psychological questions are being raised once again — questions about the nature of mind and its processes, questions about how we construct our meanings and our realities, questions about the shaping of mind by history and culture. Jerome Bruner (1990) Acts of Meaning One of the problems of being human is that it is rather hard to look at humans with an unprejudiced eye. Susan Blackmore (1999) The Meme-Machine

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