The pragmatics of semiosis and linguisation
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2025-3-1
- Pages
- 7-29
Abstract
A hermeneutical interpretation of Goethe’s Faust’s attempt to interpret the meaning of the Gospel word λόγος, the first three verses of the Gospel of John, and the first three verses of the book of Genesis is proposed. The analysis of these hermeneutical constructions makes it possible to relate them—as well as the phenomenon of genesis itself—to the author’s model of recursion with inversive switching. The next step is to use this model to interpret and understand the pragmatic moment as the active beginning of meaning-making and communication. The radical expansion of pragmatics extends it beyond the bounds of semiotics proper, enabling it to be conceived as a virtually boundless sphere of human action—or more broadly, of universal agency. In this capacity, the expanding sphere of effective meaning-making is no longer reducible to practices and analytical rules of working with discrete signs. This requires their methodological and terminological distinction. Accordingly, the study of extended semiosis becomes a matter of emerging semiosics, and the principles and rules of combining discrete signs into complete statements become familiar semiotics. A similar need has emerged in contemporary linguistics: the need to distinguish between the expanded use of linguistic capacities for pragmatically motivated communication—or languaging—and the more narrowly defined traditional models of text and utterance construction based on normative lexicons and formal grammars. The article contains a sketch of the main approaches to the study of verbalisation and the formation of the corresponding scientific traditions.