LANGUAGE AS THE OBSERVER’S WORLD AND THE WORLD AS THE OBSERVER’S LANGUAGE: TOWARDS AN EXPERIENTIAL APPROACH TO LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA

Beyond doubt, one of the main concerns of linguistics is an understanding of the generative mechanisms underlying language behavior and speech production. The article offers a synthetic view on the epistemological problem of the observer as a cognitive agent and languager constructing his/her own world in language and his/her own language in the world (Merleau-Ponty). With reference to the lingvophilosophy of radical constructivism and enactivism, the author makes a case against the objectivist, realist and representationalist stances popular in mainstream linguistics. It is claimed that objectivity is the linguistic illusion of the observer which emerges through abstractions and reflections wherein perceptual objects become ‘as-if perceptual’ (cf. Vaihinger ‘Als ob reality’), i.e. reference frames re-presenting (substituting) this or that empirical material. Any sensorimotor interaction may become part of the observer’s experience to generate imaginative material in cognitive operations and operations upon the results of these operations. Language is thus a condition for the existence of the observer: it is emotive experience construction from the sensory material in and through abstractions and reflections. Outside or beyond this experience the observer as a subject and subject-matter does not make sense. This is why semantics, concepts and meanings of words, can be considered as a human’s way and domain of acting all in one.