Abstrakt: | The purpose of this book is to distinguish and describe the category of current
language. The author’s intention was also to consider the current character of language
as a principle of conceptualizing the world, as a way of thinking and interpreting human
reality, as a principle of subjects’ co-existence in the world of everyday life. In this world
spontaneous communication processes make the conscious techniques of stylistic choice
play a minor role while bringing to the foreground the non-consdous processes of
communicating the identity and speaking as “being-in-the-world”.
The category of current language is here described by four distinctive aspects that
are also constitutive of the language communication as a sodal action the goal of which
is intersubjective understanding and not reflection of reality:
1) Institutional aspect (connected with the opposition official-unoffidal) which is presented
here as a “language game of the normative” and a sodal “signal” disclosing
e.g. sincerity and authenticity in the conversation
2) Situational aspect including:
a) sodal equipment of persons participating in the communication process
b) distinguished events and (thematized) facts
c) casual relations, circumstances (both actual and historical)
d) intensions
e) pragmatical presuppositions
f) co-interpreted intentions
3) Interactional aspect i.e. mutual dependence of human subjects partidpating in the act
of communication; their activity consists of permanent defining and negotiating the
meaning of a given situation
4) Grammaticalization aspect which shows the interdependence of “language matter”
(its final outcome bdng the text), the communication channel and a defined
situation. Co-presence is the dimension of current language. Its source is conversation.
Current language reintroduces the most primitive form of language: its spoken form.
The reflexion on current language is therefore some sort of “anti-grammatology” based
on the assumption that language should be defined according to the model of speech
and not writing. Current language is a “wandering” category — it belongs to numerous
variants of language and depends on situation perceived by the subjects. Situation
determines the codes used and the level of grammaticalization which in turn
depends on the level of distance and asymmetry perceived by the participants of the
language act.
The description of current language as a cultural category does not limit itself to
distinguishing the principle of the existence of texts. The book describes the current
character of language as a set of features which began to dominate in contemporary
culture. One can see the origin of the process of enlargement or even expansion of
current language in the historical development of mass culture, in the social, political
and cultural transformation after the Second World War which diminished the importance
of a so-called “old intelligentsia” and created the “new intelligentsia”. Among
other factors are changes connected with mass communication and the creation of new
vehicles of mass information (e.g. Internet), transformation of literature and its social
function, the creation of advertising and persuasive communication in general. All
this caused the change of the whole constellation (previously conceived as static) of
languages within the national language. The author documents and discusses in detail
this process of expansion and its causes.
The book also gives the reader an extensive review of linguistic theories concerning
current language and its primary oppositions within the national language. This review
is set against the background of philosophical and sociological views concerning current
language and current, everyday communication. |