Subject collection: Linguistics (2,773 titles, 1967–2015)

"For the colonized person, objectivity is always directed against him" (Frantz Fanon). Colonized persons do not live on what we call (or used to call) the "colonies" alone. In general, objective reality, or the "facts of life", are very different depending on the kind of life you can afford. This goes for language as well; and it explains both the title of this book, and gives it its "raison d'être". It deals with power in language, and asks: Who is really in command when we use "our" language? And why does it make sense to talk about a language of power (or lack of it)? The powerful are the colonizers, the colonized are the powerless, in language as in geopolitics. Colonizers and colonized alike, however, are subject to the social and economic conditions prevailing in society and therefore, a thorough analysis of these conditions is a must for any socially-oriented theory of language use.

In "What is Meaning" (1903) the author elaborates on the fundamental tenets of her theory of sign, to which she gave the overall term ‘significs’. One of the main obstacles to an adequate theory of meaning, in Lady Welby’s opinion, is the unfounded assumption of fixed sign meaning. "There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the Sense of a word, but only the sense in which it is used – the circumstances, state of mind, reference, ‘universe of discourse’ belonging to it. The Meaning of a word is the intent which it is desired to convey – the intention of the user. The Significance is always manifold, and intensifies its sense as well as its meaning, by expressing its importance, its appeal to us, its moment for us, its emotional force, its ideal value, its moral aspect, its universal or at least social range."
This facsimile of the 1903 edition of "What is Meaning" is accompanied by an essay on "Significs as a Fundamental Science" by Achim Eschbach, and "A Concise History of Significs" by G. Mannoury.

This monograph deals with the ‘aboutness’ of language. First, the sense in which language ‘is about’ or ‘reflects’ both reality and a mental picture of reality is turned into a cornerstone of a reflectionist or ‘Speculative Grammarian’ semantics and pragmatics. Second, the ‘Speculative Grammar’ idea is made concrete in a logico-linguistic account of the way language ‘is about’ the whole of reality as well as about certain fractions of it. Third, the reflectionist perspective is used for a universalist account of the way speech acts ‘are about’ their subjects, topics, and foci.

The present bibliography suggests that there has been a constant flow of publications which survey the discipline of linguistics in its various stages of development. It attempts to offer a comprehensive coverage of general accounts of the history of linguistic thought in the western world over the last 150 years.