L’épistémologie de Hjelmslev : Entre métalangage et opérations

Signata

卷:4

关键词: meta-language;    epistemology;    methodology;    diachrony;   

DOI  :  10.4000/signata.676

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In natural languages the metalinguistic function is realized in two principal ways: as paraphrase or metalanguage. We will demonstrate that, between these two kinds of constructions, it is only by metalanguage that it is possible to describe objects.This paper proposes an archeology of doing in order to establish the operations that are accomplished to lead a description. The starting point to reconstruct this relation between metalanguage and methodology is a letter that Ferdinand de Saussure writes to Antoine Meillet. In this correspondence, Saussure shows a complementary way to the terminological one. By indicating a failure on the metalinguistic field, he suggests to supplement an epistemology of metalanguage by an epistemology of doing. Some years later, Hjelmslev improve the saussurian position, by integrating to the metalanguage the procedures and the operations. Despite its logic implanting, the theory of Danish linguist remains one of these uncommon theories that proposes a reflection on the methodological status of semiolinguistics. Prolegomena’s author doesn’t limit his intervention to introduce the rules to construct a metalanguage, but he integrates it by the operations that are necessary to accomplish the description. In this paper, however, we propose a critic to the metalanguage system given in Hjelmslev’s most famous book. Instead of a static typology, we defend here the diachronic dimension of metalanguage. We observe that, since its birth, semiotics constructed an articulation of evolutionary analysis categories of its metasystem. Any application must be measured with this network of categories. So, following Hjelmslev, we propose of metalanguage a diachronic and applicative definition, which is, at the same time, more realistic. If semiotics has two axes, the system and the process, metasemiotics must be characterised by the same opposition: on one hand by a metasystem, as an historical stock of models and categories; on the other hand, by a metaprocess, as a set of operations that direct different steps of the application. On this basis, for each examined theory, we compare different descriptive theories to indicate the existence of an operational time for the application. So we can distinguish different modes of existence of the object during the description. Finally, we show that the application procedure requires some other adjustments between theory and object. The applications, ultimately, test the descriptive power of the theory: there adjustments are nothing else than different modes of adequacy of metalanguage to the object. If the adequacy operation has some impacts on the metasystem articulation, this is because the singularities, which are found in the object, can be generalised to other objects or extended to other classes of objects. This reflection ends by some observations about logic governance of the adequacy and by a typology of figures derived from these models: the inexperienced, the competent, the expert and the innovator.The union between metalinguistic and operative approach — as it was observed throughout this paper — let us in front of a final question: if the attention to the semiotic practice depends on the procedure, the unity of semiotics, at least

【 授权许可】

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