Bøger af Jesús Gerardo Martínez del Castillo

In 2001 I made a first interpretation of Whorf's theory in the book Benjamin Lee Whorf y el proceso de intelección, Universidad de Almería. The book that I now present wants to go back to what I studied in 2001 and wants to enrich this study on Whorf by relating Whorf's theory to philosophy and to the linguistics of the twentieth century, the linguistics of linguistic competence. In Whorf's work, which is composed of eighteen studies published in different journals, we can establish a before and an after in 1941: before 1941 Whorf was an anthropologist who studied exotic languages, and since 1941 Whorf presents himself as a philosopher of language. Whorf's discovery of philosophy was gradual. Whorf's philosophy came indirectly from the hand of the theosophist doctrine, a doctrine that came to put into practice Kant's transcendental philosophy: a priori knowledge, a method of study of knowledge that has its justification in its own concept, is prior to experience because it is only the fruit of reason. A priori knowledge is opposed to a posteriori knowledge, knowledge that comes after experience.

In questo articolo voglio svelare il vero concetto di significato sia per Coseriu che per Ortega y Gasset. Voglio conoscere il concetto di significato creato dal parlante nell'atto linguistico in statu nascendi. Coseriu studia il linguaggio e quindi il significato in tre momenti: quando il singolo parlante crea il linguaggio e quindi il significato, il senso; quando il singolo parlante usa le sue conoscenze precedenti per creare il significato nell'atto linguistico, il significato virtuale e potenziale; e il significato già realizzato che appartiene al linguaggio astratto, il significato storico o il significato di una lingua particolare. Ortega y Gasset studia ciò che chiama il dire all'interno dell'atto linguistico e l'etimologia all'interno del linguaggio astratto. Sia il significato che il detto rivelano il comportamento verbale del singolo parlante nel contesto idiomatico (Coseriu), che include il concetto di modo di pensare e il concetto implicito del modo di essere delle cose (Ortega y Gasset).

In this paper I want to unravel the real concept of meaning for both Coseriu and Ortega y Gasset. I want to know the concept of meaning created by the speaker in the linguistic act in statu nascendi. Coseriu studies language and therefore meaning in three moments: when the individual speaker creates the language and therefore the meaning, the sense; when the individual speaker uses his previous knowledge to create the sense in the linguistic act, the virtual and potential meaning; and the already realized meaning that belongs to the abstract language, the historical meaning or the meaning of a particular language. Ortega y Gasset studies what he calls the saying within the linguistic act and the etymology within the abstract language. Both meaning and saying reveal the verbal behavior of the individual speaker in the idiomatic context (Coseriu) which includes the concept of the way of thinking and the implicit concept of the way of being of things (Ortega y Gasset).

To study language, linguists will usually have to consider language as an object. As a matter of facts, a language is nothing but a series of forms, contents, units, rules, procedures, attitudes, beliefs and ideas offered to speakers as members of a speech community (=a language). Because of this, a language, any language, bears with it lots of attitudes beliefs and ideas constituting different modes of thinking with implicit modes of conceiving things, modes of being of things, and modes of saying involved with the many circumstances speakers may be involved in at any time in their history in the world. Since linguists are at the same time speakers and linguists they will probably accept those series of forms, contents, units, rules, procedures, attitudes, beliefs and ideas as the only modes of thinking, modes of being of things, and modes of saying. This attitude by linguists may not consider that those modes of thinking with the implicit modes of being of things and modes of saying are proper of their historic language. On the other hand, linguistic expressions, at the level of tests, are determined with the modes of knowing and known worlds in vogue in their speech community.

The intellective analysis of language and linguistic facts consists in analysing the mental process of the creation of meanings to discover the intellective operations producing speech in the human conscience of speakers. Language is nothing but the sheer relationship of creation collaboration and participation between an ¿I¿ who creates concepts and ideas mentally representing them in objective symbols and a ¿Yoü who interprets, both relieving each other in their respective roles, in dialogos (¿¿¿-¿¿¿¿¿ =by means of logos=both thinking and saying) when words reverberate. The nature of adjectives must be defined in terms of the different types of meaning they convey, the parameters having prompted the formation of them, and the modes of thinking implicit. This book is based on the conclusions drawn in my book, Significado y conocimiento. La significación de los adjetivos subjetivos, Granada Lingvistica 2002.

In this book I want to make different syntheses of Coseriüs theory convinced that his theory is not only a theory about language but the philosophy of someone who focused his life on that aspect he considered the radical reality of what to be a human subject is. For Coseriu, to be a man, that is, to be a human subject, is to be someone determined by speaking. A man is el ser hablante, the speaking subject. His instrument to devise and develop his theory is determining, an intellective instrument for interpreting the exclusive and excluding fact of the human activity of speaking. For Coseriu, the study of language must be based on el saber originario, the competence human subjects have before speaking, the knowledge they have for interpreting their reality as human subjects living in the world they created in participation and collaboration with others in history. His theory thus is hermeneutics, the interpretation of the human life in the period of history they live. Language thus constitutes the defining fact of humans.