Journal Article

The role of linguistic perspectives in the language description

Sebők, Szilárd

2024

Overview

The paper discusses the language of linguistic description (metalanguage), in particular the question of how the language of description can influence the language that is the object of the description. I approach the topic from the aspect of the use of linguistic terms and their personification. I summarize the results of my three previous case studies, in which I tracked the formulations associated with the selected terms. I focused on the actions that, according to the literal understanding of the formulations, are performed by the terms. Based on these case studies, I concluded that the more frequently a term is used, the more likely it is that it will “perform” an activity and, if this happens, the further away they go, the more their “competencies” expand, i.e. they perform progressively more complex acts. I have characterized this phenomenon as the perspective through which we view linguistic reality through terms (the perspective of the term), and in contrast to it, I have presented the speaker’s perspective, through which linguistic reality is perceived from the perspective of everyday speakers. I have pointed out that the perspective of the term can affect the description of language in a way that shifts the linguist’s attention from the real behaviour of speakers to the “behaviour” of abstract linguistic entities.

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Subject: abstraction / language description / metalanguage / personification / perspective