Language: An Introduction

by Louis Hjelmslev, Francis J. Whitfield (Translator)

Studie dánského lingvisty, představitele kodaňského strukturalismu podává přístupnější formou autorovu originální teorii jazyka, tzv. glosématiku, uloženou v jiných autorových dílech. Jde o teorii, jež chápe jazyk jako svébytnou strukturu, v níž každá složka je určována svými vztahy ke složkám ostatním i celku a jež požaduje vytvoření adekvátní metody zkoumání tohoto složitého "systému systémů". Cílem jazykovědy má tedy podle autora být metoda, která umožňovala univerzálně popsat jazyk, tj. vytvoření tzv. metajazyka. Studie zahrnuje tyto kapitoly: Jazykové funkce, Genetická příbuznost jazyků, Jazyková stavba a jazykový úzus, Tvoření znaků, Jazykové rodiny,Základní jazyky,Typologická příbuznost jazyků, Typy jazykové stavby, Typy jazykového úzu, Jazyková změna, Stupně jazyka.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction, Semiotics, Philosophy

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Louis Hjelmslev (Copenhagen, 1899-1965) is the author of a theory of language called glossematics, which inspired a great number of European semioticians. As a linguist, he was part of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen and was influential in the rapid development of scientific structuralism in the 1930s.

Semiotics has taken a great many concepts from him, some of which were theorized by Ferdinand de Saussure and then refined by Hjelmslev, including semiotics, expression, content, form, substance and usage. To these he added certain concepts specific to glossematics, such as neutral (term), complex (term), connotative (semiotic), metasemiotic, norm, and matter or text.

His work is not easy to understand, and this is due as much to the unstable editorial and philological context as it is to the highly abstract nature of the theory and the formalized presentation of his writings. That does not make it any less essential for anyone who wants to learn about the theoretical dimension of semiotics

Reviews

[Andrew]

Hm, so instead of going right into the Prolegomena as my old frenemies Deleuze and Guattari would probably have recommended, I went for the volume designed for the Danish layman. So as a result, it's got parts that sound like a freshman linguistics seminar, and other parts that constitute a bold (for the time, at least) iconoclastic vision of what linguistics could be, and of the first rumblings of semiotics before it joined with postcolonialism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory to form the Captain Planet of the academic discourse. Also, it's a clear influence on Chomsky's concept of syntax, which makes me wonder why I've heard Hjelmslev name-checked by French poobahs but not from academic linguists. Anyone got an idea?