Routledge Advances in Communication and Linguistic Theory – serie

The present book is a collection of scholarly reflections on the theme of humanism from an integrational linguistic perspective. It studies humanist thought in relation to the philosophy of language and communication underpinning it and considers the question whether being a ‘humanist’ binds one to a particular view of language. The contributions to this volume explore whether integrational linguistics, being informed by a non-mainstream semiology and adopting a lay linguistic perspective, can provide better answers to contentious ontological and epistemological questions concerning the humanist project – questions having to do with the self, reason, authenticity, creativity, free agency, knowledge and human communication. The humanist perspectives adopted by the contributors to this volume are critical insofar as they start from semiological assumptions that challenge received notions within mainstream linguistics, such as the belief that languages are fixed-codes of some kind, that communication serves the purpose of thought transfer, and that languages are prerequisites for communication.

This book is a collective volume bringing together scholars who share an interest in linguistics from an integrational point of view and in developing new directions for future scholarship.Integrational linguistics invites us to rethink the theoretical and methodological premises of general linguistics by drawing on a different conception of the sign and by recognizing the creativity that human communication requires. Some chapters are concerned with concepts like the sign, contextualization, activity, and integration. Although being core concepts developed by the founder of integrational linguistics, Roy Harris, they have arguably remained underdeveloped in Harris’ writings and thus call for further clarification and investigation. Other chapters are concerned with the notions of the self and the social, experience and interaction, with questions about individual agency and will, and human sociality and social organization, which all occupy a central position in integrational theory. Finally, remaining chapters focus on how scriptism and the language myth have influenced our way of thinking about communication in a broad sense.This edited collection will be of interest to a multidisciplinary readership comprising those engaged in study, teaching, and research in the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, the arts, education, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, psychology, and semiotics.

Language plays a central role in human life. However, the term ‘language’ as defined in the language sciences of the 20th century and the traditions these have drawn on, have arguably, limited our thinking about what language is and does. The two inter-linked volumes of Thibault’s study articulate crucially important aspects of an emerging new perspective shift on language - the Distributed Language view – that is now receiving more and more attention internationally. Rejecting the classical view that the fundamental architecture of language can be localized as a number of inter-related levels of formal linguistic organization that function as the coded inputs and outputs to each other, the distributed language view argues that languaging behaviour is a bio-cultural organisation of process that is embodied, multimodal, and integrated across multiple space-time scales.Thibault argues that we need to think of human languaging as the distinctively human mode of our becoming and being selves in the extended human ecology and the kinds of experiencing that this makes possible. Paradoxically, this also means thinking about language in non-linguistic ways that break the grip of the conventional meta-languages for thinking about human languaging. Thibault’s book grounds languaging in process theory: languaging and the forms of experience it actualizes is always an event, not a thing that we ‘use’. In taking a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, the book relates dialogical theories of human sense-making to the distributed view of human cognition, to recent thinking about distributed language, to ecological psychology, and to languaging as inter-individual affective dynamics grounded in the subjective lives of selves. In taking this approach, the book considers the coordination of selves in social encounters, the emergent forms of self-reflexivity that characterise these encounters, and the implications for how we think of and live our human sociality, not as something that is mediated by over-arching codes and systems, but as emerging from the endogenous subjectivities of selves when they seek to coordinate with other selves and with the situations, artefacts, social institutions, and technologies that populate the extended human ecology.The two volumes aim to bring our understanding of human languaging closer to human embodiment, experience, and feeling while also showing how languaging enables humans to transcend local circumstances and thus to dialogue with cultural tradition. Volume 1 focuses on the shorter timescales of bodily dynamics in languaging activity. Volume II integrates the shorter timescales of body dynamics to the longer cultural-historical timescales of the linguistic and cultural norms and patterns to which bodily dynamics are integrated.

Exploring the nature of possible relationships between Integrational Linguistics and Southern Epistemologies, this volume examines various ways in which Integrational Linguistics can be used to support the decolonizing interests of Southern Epistemologies, particularly the lay-oriented nature of Integrational Linguistics that Southern Epistemologies find productive as a ‘positive counter-discourse.’ As both an anti-elitist and antiestablishment way of thinking, these chapters consider how Integrational Linguistics can be consistent with the decolonial aspirations of Southern Epistemologies. They argue that the relationship between Southern Epistemologies and Integrational Linguistics is complicated by the fact that, while Integrational Linguistics is critical of what it calls a segregationist view of language, i.e., ‘the language myth,’ Southern Epistemologies in language policy and planning and minority language movements find the language myth helpful in order to facilitate social transformation. And yet, both Integrational Linguistics and Southern Epistemologies are critical of approaches to multilingualism that are founded on notions of ‘named’ languages. They are also both critical of linguistics as a decontextualized, and institutionalized extension of ordinary metalinguistic practices, which at times influence the prejudices, preconceptions and ideologies of dominant western cultures.This book will prove to be an essential resource for scholars and students not only within the field of integrational linguistics, but also in other language and communication fields, in particular the dialogic, distributed, and ecological-enactive approaches, wherein integrational linguistics has been subjected to scrutiny and criticism.

Exploring the nature of possible relationships between Integrational Linguistics and Southern Epistemologies, this volume examines various ways in which Integrational Linguistics can be used to support the decolonizing interests of Southern Epistemologies, particularly the lay-oriented nature of Integrational Linguistics that Southern Epistemologies find productive as a ‘positive counter-discourse.’ As both an anti-elitist and antiestablishment way of thinking, these chapters consider how Integrational Linguistics can be consistent with the decolonial aspirations of Southern Epistemologies. They argue that the relationship between Southern Epistemologies and Integrational Linguistics is complicated by the fact that, while Integrational Linguistics is critical of what it calls a segregationist view of language, i.e., ‘the language myth,’ Southern Epistemologies in language policy and planning and minority language movements find the language myth helpful in order to facilitate social transformation. And yet, both Integrational Linguistics and Southern Epistemologies are critical of approaches to multilingualism that are founded on notions of ‘named’ languages. They are also both critical of linguistics as a decontextualized, and institutionalized extension of ordinary metalinguistic practices, which at times influence the prejudices, preconceptions and ideologies of dominant western cultures.This book will prove to be an essential resource for scholars and students not only within the field of integrational linguistics, but also in other language and communication fields, in particular the dialogic, distributed, and ecological-enactive approaches, wherein integrational linguistics has been subjected to scrutiny and criticism.

This book explores the reflexivity of language both from the perspective of the lay speaker and the linguistic analyst. Linguistic inquiry is conditional upon linguistic reflexivity, but so is language. Without linguistic reflexivity, we would not be able to make sense of everyday linguistic communication, and the idea of a language would not be conceivable. Not even fundamental notions such as words or meaning would exist. Linguistic reflexivity is a feature of the communication process, and it essentially depends on situated participants and time. It is a defining characteristic of the human language but despite its obvious importance, it is not very well understood theoretically, and it is strangely under-researched empirically. Throughout history and in modern linguistics, it has mostly either been taken for granted, misconstrued, or ignored. Only integrational linguistics fully recognizes its specifically linguistic implications. However, integrational linguistics does not provide the necessary methodological basis for investigating linguistic phenomena empirically. This catch-22 situation means that the goal of the book is twofold: one part is to explore the reflexivity of language theoretically, and the other part is to propose an applied integrational linguistics and to implement this proposal in practice.

Language plays a central role in human life. However, the term "language" as defined in the language sciences of the 20th century and the traditions these have drawn on, have arguably limited our thinking about what language is and does. The two inter-linked volumes of Thibault’s study articulate crucially important aspects of an emerging new perspective shift on language—the Distributed Language view—that is now receiving more and more attention internationally. Rejecting the classical view that the fundamental architecture of language can be localised as a number of inter-related levels of formal linguistic organisation that function as the coded inputs and outputs to each other, the distributed language view argues that languaging behaviour is a bio-cultural organiation of process that is embodied, multimodal, and integrated across multiple space-time scales. Thibault argues that we need to think of human languaging as the distinctively human mode of our becoming and being selves in the extended human ecology and the kinds of experiencing that this makes possible. Paradoxically, this also means thinking about language in non-linguistic ways that break the grip of the conventional meta-languages for thinking about human languaging. Thibault’s book grounds languaging in process theory: languaging and the forms of experience it actualises is always an event, not a thing that we "use". In taking a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, the book relates dialogical theories of human sense-making to the distributed view of human cognition, to recent thinking about distributed language, to ecological psychology, and to languaging as inter-individual affective dynamics grounded in the subjective lives of selves. In taking this approach, the book considers the coordination of selves in social encounters, the emergent forms of self-reflexivity that characterise these encounters, and the implications for how we think of and live our human sociality, not as something that is mediated by over-arching codes and systems, but as emerging from the endogenous subjectivities of selves when they seek to coordinate with other selves and with the situations, artefacts, social institutions, and technologies that populate the extended human ecology. The two volumes aim to bring our understanding of human languaging closer to human embodiment, experience, and feeling while also showing how languaging enables humans to transcend local circumstances and thus to dialogue with cultural tradition. Volume I focuses on the shorter timescales of bodily dynamics in languaging activity. Volume II integrates the shorter timescales of body dynamics to the longer cultural–historical timescales of the linguistic and cultural norms and patterns to which bodily dynamics are integrated.

Language plays a central role in human life. However, the term "language" as defined in the language sciences of the 20th century and the traditions these have drawn on, have arguably limited our thinking about what language is and does. The two inter-linked volumes of Thibault’s study articulate crucially important aspects of an emerging new perspective shift on language—the Distributed Language view—that is now receiving more and more attention internationally. Rejecting the classical view that the fundamental architecture of language can be localised as a number of inter-related levels of formal linguistic organisation that function as the coded inputs and outputs to each other, the distributed language view argues that languaging behaviour is a bio-cultural organiation of process that is embodied, multimodal, and integrated across multiple space-time scales. Thibault argues that we need to think of human languaging as the distinctively human mode of our becoming and being selves in the extended human ecology and the kinds of experiencing that this makes possible. Paradoxically, this also means thinking about language in non-linguistic ways that break the grip of the conventional meta-languages for thinking about human languaging. Thibault’s book grounds languaging in process theory: languaging and the forms of experience it actualises is always an event, not a thing that we "use". In taking a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, the book relates dialogical theories of human sense-making to the distributed view of human cognition, to recent thinking about distributed language, to ecological psychology, and to languaging as inter-individual affective dynamics grounded in the subjective lives of selves. In taking this approach, the book considers the coordination of selves in social encounters, the emergent forms of self-reflexivity that characterise these encounters, and the implications for how we think of and live our human sociality, not as something that is mediated by over-arching codes and systems, but as emerging from the endogenous subjectivities of selves when they seek to coordinate with other selves and with the situations, artefacts, social institutions, and technologies that populate the extended human ecology. The two volumes aim to bring our understanding of human languaging closer to human embodiment, experience, and feeling while also showing how languaging enables humans to transcend local circumstances and thus to dialogue with cultural tradition. Volume I focuses on the shorter timescales of bodily dynamics in languaging activity. Volume II integrates the shorter timescales of body dynamics to the longer cultural–historical timescales of the linguistic and cultural norms and patterns to which bodily dynamics are integrated.

Linguists routinely emphasise the primacy of speech over writing. Yet, most linguists have analysed spoken language, as well as language in general, applying theories and methods that are best suited for written language. Accordingly, there is an extensive 'written language bias' in traditional and present day linguistics and other language sciences. In this book, this point is argued with rich and convincing evidence from virtually all fields of linguistics.

Linguists routinely emphasise the primacy of speech over writing. Yet, most linguists have analysed spoken language, as well as language in general, applying theories and methods that are best suited for written language. Accordingly, there is an extensive 'written language bias' in traditional and present day linguistics and other language sciences. In this book, this point is argued with rich and convincing evidence from virtually all fields of linguistics.

When linguistics was first established as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century, it was envisaged as an essentially historical study. Languages were to be treated as historical objects, evolving through gradual but constant processes of change over long periods of time. In recent years, however, there has been much discussion by historians of a 'linguistic turn' in their own discipline, and, in linguistics, integrationist theory has mounted a radical challenge to the traditional notion of 'languages' as possible objects of inquiry.Language and History develops the integrationist critique of orthodox linguistics, while at the same time extending its implications to the field of history. By doing so, it throws light on what is now recognized by many historians to be a 'crisis' in their own discipline. Underlying the post-modernist scepticism about traditional forms of historiography, the integrationist approach reveals a more deep-seated problem concerning the interface between philosophy of history and philosophy of language. With chapters from a range of leading international contributors, Language and History represents a significant contribution to the developing work of the integrationists.

This book demonstrates the relevance of an integrational linguistic perspective to a practical, real-world need, namely the learning of languages. Integrational linguistics’ shunning of both realist and structuralist theories of language, its commitment to an unwavering attention to the perspective of the language user, and its adherence to a semiology in which signs are the situated products of interactants interpretive behaviour, mean that it radically reconceptualizes language learning and language teaching. Detractors have implied that IL is so ‘philosophical’ or ‘theoretical’ an exercise that it has no useful bearing on the practical problems of language learning. These papers refute that misconception by demonstrating how an IL stance can help disentangle the conflicting considerations and contradictory assumptions that arise in a host of language teaching situations: first, second- and foreign-language classrooms in a diversity of settings (including India, Australia, the United States, and Hong Kong), with different age-groups of students, whether the focus is on speech or writing, and in more informal settings.

This book re-examines the old debate about the relationship between rationality and literacy. Does writing "restructure consciousness?" Do preliterate societies have a different "mind-set" from literate societies? Is reason "built in" to the way we think? How is literacy related to numeracy? Is the "logical form" that Western philosophers recognize anything more than an extrapolation from the structure of the written sentence? Is logic, as developed formally in Western education, intrinsically beyond the reach of the preliterate mind? What light, if any, do the findings of contemporary neuroscience throw on such issues? Roy Harris challenges the received mainstream opinion that reason is an intrinsic property of the human mind, and argues that the whole Western conception of rational thought, from Classical Greece down to modern symbolic logic, is a by-product of the way literacy developed in European cultures.

The basic claim of this book is that for 2000 years and more the western tradition has relied on two very dubious assumptions about human communication: that each national language is a unique code and that linguistic communication consists in the utilization of such codes to transfer messages from mind to mind.

This book demonstrates the relevance of an integrational linguistic perspective to a practical, real-world need, namely the learning of languages. Integrational linguistics’ shunning of both realist and structuralist theories of language, its commitment to an unwavering attention to the perspective of the language user, and its adherence to a semiology in which signs are the situated products of interactants interpretive behaviour, mean that it radically reconceptualizes language learning and language teaching. Detractors have implied that IL is so ‘philosophical’ or ‘theoretical’ an exercise that it has no useful bearing on the practical problems of language learning. These papers refute that misconception by demonstrating how an IL stance can help disentangle the conflicting considerations and contradictory assumptions that arise in a host of language teaching situations: first, second- and foreign-language classrooms in a diversity of settings (including India, Australia, the United States, and Hong Kong), with different age-groups of students, whether the focus is on speech or writing, and in more informal settings.

This book re-examines the old debate about the relationship between rationality and literacy. Does writing "restructure consciousness?" Do preliterate societies have a different "mind-set" from literate societies? Is reason "built in" to the way we think? How is literacy related to numeracy? Is the "logical form" that Western philosophers recognize anything more than an extrapolation from the structure of the written sentence? Is logic, as developed formally in Western education, intrinsically beyond the reach of the preliterate mind? What light, if any, do the findings of contemporary neuroscience throw on such issues? Roy Harris challenges the received mainstream opinion that reason is an intrinsic property of the human mind, and argues that the whole Western conception of rational thought, from Classical Greece down to modern symbolic logic, is a by-product of the way literacy developed in European cultures.

Aims to reorient the study of language by taking into serious consideration the perspective on linguistic matters taken by lay speakers themselves, as a response to the now inescapable conclusion that traditional linguistic theory, with its focus on revealing 'the facts of language in general', cannot handle the necessary indeterminacy of what is said and understood.

The basic claim of this book is that for 2000 years and more the western tradition has relied on two very dubious assumptions about human communication: that each national language is a unique code and that linguistic communication consists in the utilization of such codes to transfer messages from mind to mind.

This book deals with the need to rethink the aims and methods of contemporary linguistics. Orthodox linguists' discussions of linguistic form fail to exemplify how language users become language makers. Integrationist theory is used here as a solution to this basic problem within general linguistics. The book is aimed at an interdisciplinary readership, comprising those engaged in study, teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, philosophy, sociology and psychology.

Language plays a central role in human life. However, the term ‘language’ as defined in the language sciences of the 20th century and the traditions these have drawn on, have arguably, limited our thinking about what language is and does. The two inter-linked volumes of Thibault’s study articulate crucially important aspects of an emerging new perspective shift on language - the Distributed Language view – that is now receiving more and more attention internationally. Rejecting the classical view that the fundamental architecture of language can be localized as a number of inter-related levels of formal linguistic organization that function as the coded inputs and outputs to each other, the distributed language view argues that languaging behaviour is a bio-cultural organisation of process that is embodied, multimodal, and integrated across multiple space-time scales.Thibault argues that we need to think of human languaging as the distinctively human mode of our becoming and being selves in the extended human ecology and the kinds of experiencing that this makes possible. Paradoxically, this also means thinking about language in non-linguistic ways that break the grip of the conventional meta-languages for thinking about human languaging. Thibault’s book grounds languaging in process theory: languaging and the forms of experience it actualizes is always an event, not a thing that we ‘use’. In taking a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, the book relates dialogical theories of human sense-making to the distributed view of human cognition, to recent thinking about distributed language, to ecological psychology, and to languaging as inter-individual affective dynamics grounded in the subjective lives of selves. In taking this approach, the book considers the coordination of selves in social encounters, the emergent forms of self-reflexivity that characterise these encounters, and the implications for how we think of and live our human sociality, not as something that is mediated by over-arching codes and systems, but as emerging from the endogenous subjectivities of selves when they seek to coordinate with other selves and with the situations, artefacts, social institutions, and technologies that populate the extended human ecology.The two volumes aim to bring our understanding of human languaging closer to human embodiment, experience, and feeling while also showing how languaging enables humans to transcend local circumstances and thus to dialogue with cultural tradition. Volume 1 focuses on the shorter timescales of bodily dynamics in languaging activity. Volume II integrates the shorter timescales of body dynamics to the longer cultural-historical timescales of the linguistic and cultural norms and patterns to which bodily dynamics are integrated.

In recent years a set of challenging questions have arisen in relation to the status of animals; their treatment by human beings; their cognitive abilities; and the nature of their feelings, emotions, and capacity for suffering. This ground-breaking book draws from integrational semiology to investigate arguments around the rights of certain animals to be recognized as legal persons, thereby granting them many of the protections enjoyed by humans. In parallel with these debates, the question of the legal personality of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has moved to the forefront of legal debate, with entities such as robots, cyborgs, self-driving cars, and genetically engineered beings under consideration. Integrationism offers a framework within which the wider theoretical and practical issues can be understood. Law requires closure and categorical answers; integrationism is an open-ended form of inquiry that is seen as removed from particular controversies. This book argues that the two domains can be brought together in a challenging and productive synthesis. A much-needed resource to examine the heart of this fascinating debate and a must-read for anyone interested in semiology, linguistics, philosophy, ethics, and law.

This book is a collective volume bringing together scholars who share an interest in linguistics from an integrational point of view and in developing new directions for future scholarship.Integrational linguistics invites us to rethink the theoretical and methodological premises of general linguistics by drawing on a different conception of the sign and by recognizing the creativity that human communication requires. Some chapters are concerned with concepts like the sign, contextualization, activity, and integration. Although being core concepts developed by the founder of integrational linguistics, Roy Harris, they have arguably remained underdeveloped in Harris’ writings and thus call for further clarification and investigation. Other chapters are concerned with the notions of the self and the social, experience and interaction, with questions about individual agency and will, and human sociality and social organization, which all occupy a central position in integrational theory. Finally, remaining chapters focus on how scriptism and the language myth have influenced our way of thinking about communication in a broad sense.This edited collection will be of interest to a multidisciplinary readership comprising those engaged in study, teaching, and research in the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, the arts, education, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, psychology, and semiotics.

This book looks at a long-standing question about "meaning" and the human experience — specifically, why meaning seems easy to recognize but hard to fully explain, especially from the perspective of integrationism.Fang’s book pins down the fundamentals of Roy Harris’s integrational linguistics and explores the relation between the nature of meaningfulness and human condition – the given features of human beings and human activities. The book rebuilds the main ideas behind the integrationist philosophy, placing them in the tradition of neo-Kantian, Fichtean phenomenology and existentialism. Fang also uses research from psychology, focusing on human-centred and developmental studies, to strengthen the arguments.The chapters review different theories of meaning, attributing the insurmountable obstacles encountered by the depersonalized – systemic, formalist, and decontextualized – approaches to their problematic philosophical presuppositions. The book also points to earlier thinkers who had important insights into language and communication, supporting an integrationist view of meaning.The text further pinpoints the foundations of meaning and its philosophical implications within the human context. It explains the vital importance of personalized and contextualized factors, and explores feasible ways of including those factors in theorizing to ultimately conclude that the nature of meaning is embedded in what we are as human beings.This book is a valuable read for anyone interested in integrationism, language theory, or the deeper questions about how meaning works.

What is translation? What is a sign? This book answers these questions and gives a critical review of how the West has been theorising translation, in terms of theorising the sign, a ‘unit’ of our communication.From the promotion of servitude to the craving for creativity, the suspicious conceit of ‘equivalence’ to the new-fangled notion of ‘untranslatability’, the concept of translation as a one-off, specialised process that takes place between human languages to one of translation as a ceaseless happening which goes beyond languages and humans –this book dives into these popular discourses on translation, one by one, and unveils the underlying assumptions about the sign. What should a sign mean? Does the sign stand in for something in reality, something in our mind, or does it not stand for anything at all? How do we identify and share the same form of signs? How do we communicate via signs? These are the questions everyone has to answer, whether they know it or not, when they conceptualise translation. This book also proffers a refreshing take on translation, stemming from the integrational theory of the sign, as founded by Roy Harris.This book provides a theory of translation based on a theory of the personal, integrational sign that will hopefully illuminate readers’ own experience with translation and with sign-making. It is a book for students of linguistics, semiotics and translation, as well as lay sign-makers and translators alike.

In recent years a set of challenging questions have arisen in relation to the status of animals; their treatment by human beings; their cognitive abilities; and the nature of their feelings, emotions, and capacity for suffering. This ground-breaking book draws from integrational semiology to investigate arguments around the rights of certain animals to be recognized as legal persons, thereby granting them many of the protections enjoyed by humans.In parallel with these debates, the question of the legal personality of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has moved to the forefront of legal debate, with entities such as robots, cyborgs, self-driving cars, and genetically engineered beings under consideration. Integrationism offers a framework within which the wider theoretical and practical issues can be understood. Law requires closure and categorical answers; integrationism is an open-ended form of inquiry that is seen as removed from particular controversies. This book argues that the two domains can be brought together in a challenging and productive synthesis. A much-needed resource to examine the heart of this fascinating debate and a must-read for anyone interested in semiology, linguistics, philosophy, ethics, and law.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book explores the reflexivity of language both from the perspective of the lay speaker and the linguistic analyst. Linguistic inquiry is conditional upon linguistic reflexivity, but so is language. Without linguistic reflexivity, we would not be able to make sense of everyday linguistic communication, and the idea of a language would not be conceivable. Not even fundamental notions such as words or meaning would exist. Linguistic reflexivity is a feature of the communication process, and it essentially depends on situated participants and time. It is a defining characteristic of the human language but despite its obvious importance, it is not very well understood theoretically, and it is strangely under-researched empirically. Throughout history and in modern linguistics, it has mostly either been taken for granted, misconstrued, or ignored. Only integrational linguistics fully recognizes its specifically linguistic implications. However, integrational linguistics does not provide the necessary methodological basis for investigating linguistic phenomena empirically. This catch-22 situation means that the goal of the book is twofold: one part is to explore the reflexivity of language theoretically, and the other part is to propose an applied integrational linguistics and to implement this proposal in practice.

The present book is a collection of scholarly reflections on the theme of humanism from an integrational linguistic perspective. It studies humanist thought in relation to the philosophy of language and communication underpinning it and considers the question whether being a ‘humanist’ binds one to a particular view of language. The contributions to this volume explore whether integrational linguistics, being informed by a non-mainstream semiology and adopting a lay linguistic perspective, can provide better answers to contentious ontological and epistemological questions concerning the humanist project – questions having to do with the self, reason, authenticity, creativity, free agency, knowledge and human communication. The humanist perspectives adopted by the contributors to this volume are critical insofar as they start from semiological assumptions that challenge received notions within mainstream linguistics, such as the belief that languages are fixed-codes of some kind, that communication serves the purpose of thought transfer, and that languages are prerequisites for communication.

Aims to reorient the study of language by taking into serious consideration the perspective on linguistic matters taken by lay speakers themselves, as a response to the now inescapable conclusion that traditional linguistic theory, with its focus on revealing 'the facts of language in general', cannot handle the necessary indeterminacy of what is said and understood.