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Article published In:
Integrating dialogue
Edited by Răzvan Săftoiu and Adrian Pablé
[Language and Dialogue 8:1] 2018
► pp. 84–101

Abandoning the simple by disintegrating the sign?

Semiological reflections on Edda Weigand’s (meta)theory

| University of Hong Kong

In this comparative paper I suggest that linguistic theories need to be discussed in terms of the metatheoretical presuppositions sustaining them. In view of Edda Weigand’s rejection of the linguistic sign and her critique of Roy Harris’ integrational linguistics for failing to abandon the sign as its working concept and not adopting a holistic model that accounts for the complexity of human communication, I will argue that the key to understanding linguistic theories is semiology, including tacitly assumed – since ‘commonsensical’ – beliefs about what constitutes ‘language’, ‘a language’ and ‘communication’ (i.e. the metatheory). I will further argue that methodological considerations are not the primary domain of semiology. This paper is designed (i) as an integrational critique of Weigand’s conception of human communication as intentional and intersubjective and (ii) as an affirmation that linguistic indeterminacy concerns both form and meaning.

Keywords: (linguistic) sign, indeterminacy of form and meaning, metatheory, intersubjectivity, Harris vs. Weigand
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Harrisian object of study: communication
  • 3.The Weigandian object of study: dialogic interaction
  • 4.Harrisian and Weigandian semiologies compared
  • 5.Afterword: humanizing linguistics?
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00006.pab
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Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Linell, Per
2018. Dialogism is an integrationism. Language and Dialogue 8:2 ► pp. 306 ff. DOI logo
Orman, Jon
2018. Theorising the untheorisable. Language and Dialogue 8:1 ► pp. 102 ff. DOI logo
Pablé, Adrian
2019. Integrating the (dialogical) sign: or who's an integrationist?. Language Sciences 75 ► pp. 72 ff. DOI logo
Weigand, Edda
2018. The theory myth. Language and Dialogue 8:2 ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo

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