LINGUISTICS IN MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

In order to answer to this question, the reader analyzed: Why did linguistics studies develop between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20° century? In order to answer to this question, the reader analyzed: The context Writers, and thinkers that analyzed linguistics

The context In Great Britain A crisis of values during the end of the 19 th century In Great Britain Puritanism Darwinism Utilitarism Break: the Competition A crisis of values

The human being had got no points of reference A crisis of values Darwinism: Theory of natural selection. God didn’t create human race: No reference points, the most importante existential crisis ever recorded Religious crisis, F. Nietzsche: “God is dead” Economis crisis: Marxism offered and optimistic view for the future, Utilitarism and capitalism; it offered wealth for rich but poverty for the remaining of the population The human being had got no points of reference

Semiotic, linguistics and modernism The modernist philosophic paradigm can be expressed as the following: search for the truth, a Quest Writing: permits the analysis, the development of new ideas and objectivity Linguistics became important because, through the way man speaks, thinkers that studied linguistic can understand how the man himself behave. Look for an understanding of the self in the context of the world/society through the study of language. Idea of author Idea of subject

Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure(1857 – 1913) Jacques Derrida(1930 – 2004) Linguistics explains how the world works: meaning is the result of a construction

Ferdinand de Saussure Language is a system of signs, a semiotic system; Synchroinic language: meaning is unstable and is constructed through difference, binary pairs; Signs are the unions of the signifer and the signified

Jacques Derrida Developed Saussure’s ideas There’s no link between the signifier and the signified; Once a text is written it ceases to have a meaning until a reader reads it; There is nothing but the text and that it is not possible to construct something ab nihilo.

In conclusion Why did linguistics studies develop between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20° century? After the period of depression in Great Britain during the end of the 19th century, the human being lost all his points of reference. In order to search a balance, linguistic became important because the study of the way man speaks and his relationship with texts and the signifier can make himself conscious of his identity and the relationship with reality.

Credits Cisilino Stefano Mongera Enrico Talian Lorenzo Zanutta Riccardo