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From Pragmatics to Dialogue
Edited by Edda Weigand and Istvan Kecskes
[Dialogue Studies 31] 2018
► pp. 29–44

Humboldt, Bhartrihari, and the dialogic

Drawing on the work of von Humboldt (1963, 1997, 1999) and the 5th century BCE Indian Grammarian Bhartrihari (1971), this essay sketches how dialogue is neither a special-use of language nor a specific mode of pragmatics, but forms instead the primordial character of all language. When the study of language is restricted to Saussure’s bifurcated paradigm, the ontologically basic character of dialogue is concealed. In what follows, I will first briefly sketch a history of ancient Indian linguistics and its influence on European linguistics, then briefly review Saussure’s bifurcated conceptions of langue and parole, and then illustrate several ways that Bhartrihari and Humboldt saw language as, at heart, dialogic.
Keywords: communicative consciousness and praxis, dialogue, Indian philosophy of language, interlistening, intersubjectivity, linguistics, pragmatics, speech, speaking, and listening
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Indian philosophy of language
  • 3.Humboldt’s context
  • 4.Saussure and language use
  • 5.Dialogical language
  • 6.Dialogical thought
  • 7.Conclusion: Dialogical world-making
  • References
Published online: 5 October 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.31.03lip
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