Language Contact, Cognitive Circularity and “WE”

What is it about?

The issue of ‘language contact’ has been widely explored from the perspectives of empirical description and theoretical development, as well as from sociolinguistic, societal and cognitive angles. I would like to broach the subject from a different view, to deepen reflections of an epistemological and methodological order, building on my “distanced” (but empirically grounded) examination of language contact and semiotic dynamics (Nicolaï, 2011, 2017a, 2017b). Several notions will be further explored and specified here, such as: givens, constructs, historicity and WE. The goal is to structure research trajectories by highlighting both the relative relativity of our epistemic un- derstanding and the extent of our subjectivity in context. On this basis, positions can be taken, most notably on the possible circularity of the hypotheses we posit. General learnings can be gleaned from these elements for grasping language contact, the dynamics driving their transformation, as well as general processes for ascribing meaning and developing significance, which in the end converge with current hermeneutic approaches and enactive views.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Research on language contact is now a well established field. Basic intuition tells us that what is generally meant by ‘contact’ is not perceived on the phenomenal level as a primary fact since, by definition, for ‘contact’ to happen, there must be elements which are not yet in contact! Whether such ‘contact’ is identified as a phenomenon or as a concept, it always entails (an entering into) relations between entities, the homogeneous status of which can only supposed and/or inferred. This notion of contact is thus developed by the actors of communication (ordinary speakers and/or language descriptors) and is recognized for all practical purposes. For example, in order to analyze linguistic phenomena, to theorize and build knowledge, or for purposes of an entirely different order to do with social, symbolic, political dynamics. Thus through these links to empiricism and the distance which its recognition entails— including through description—what is denoted by ‘contact’ refers at once: - to the positive status of a phenomenal manifestation which entails its under- standing in the framework of ‘phenomenologies’ - to a theoretical status, the vocation of which is, on one hand, to structure the conceptual level enabling the description and analysis of what can be subsumed under the term ‘contact’, and, on the other hand, to develop the related methodological tools, - to an epistemological status which tends to include this type of study among processes of establishing knowledge which we develop implicitly or explicitly.