The Discovery of Plurilingualism in Giambattista Vicos Sematology

Springer, Matthias : The Discovery of Plurilingualism in Giambattista Vicos Sematology. 6es Assises européennes du plurilinguisme, Universität Cadiz, 09. - 12.11.2022.

Abstract

In his “New Science”, Giambattista Vico presents a sematology that can be read as an early theory of plurilingualism. Although he rejects the particularism of single-language semantics, he recognizes that it is only through these that a view of the great whole, the universal, becomes possible. The fundamental cognitive-semantic grasp of the world through language is the transversal that passes through all languages. Only in the particulars of the semantics of a language does the view of the universal open up and the world, which is foreign in itself, can be understood. This deprives a national-particular understanding of language that one language is sufficient to grasp the world its basis, as well as the ethnocentric assumption that only the view of the world through one's own language is the only true and valid one. In Vico's understanding, the semantics of every language opens up the view of the diversity of the world. This does not mean, however, that the more languages one speaks, the more worlds one knows, as linguistic relativist approaches claim. On the contrary, each additional language opens up the universality of the world a little more; only through diversity does one gain an ever better, more precise, more complete picture of the world that is foreign in itself, whose foreignness is reduced through multilingualism. Vico's philosophy of language is the foundation of an early "linguistic turn" in cultural studies. Cognitive semantics such as prototype semantics can be connected to it, as well as Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of language or Karl Eibl's evolutionary-biological perspective on the relation of culture and language. Francois Jullien's critique of cultural identity and his proposal of dialogue in several languages to appropriate foreign cultural resources that societies in one world have developed and provide to humanity can also be related to Vico. Thus, Vico can not only be read as the founder of a theory of plurilingualism in which the universality is suspended in the diversity of individual phenomena, but in his rejection of nationalism and ethnocentrism as well as his emphasis on the cognitive-semantic function of language, he can be seen as the mastermind of a European identity based on plurilingualism.

• Dokumententyp: Konferenzbeitrag (Vortrag)
• Keywords: Plurilingualism; Culture; Epistemology; Sematology
• Fakultät: Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften > Department 1 > Deutsch als Fremdsprache
• Themengebiete: 400 Sprache > 400 Sprache
• Sprache: Englisch