Linguistic turn
The linguistic turn (English: the linguistic turn ) - also known as " language- critical turn ' ," said analytical turn " or" turn to language " - refers to efforts especially since the beginning of the 20th century in philosophy, literature and linguistics, linguistic forms of communication more closely investigate. This research focus took numerous representatives of these subject areas, but the effects were also made in most other humanities and social sciences. The term " linguistic turn " was coined by Gustav Bergmann and was known by 1967, edited by Richard Rorty same anthology.
Philosophical Foundations
As a " language-related turn" in philosophy is called a development mainly of the 20th century, associated with an increased devotion to language, ie the use and meaning of utterances, accompanied. Many representatives of the linguistic turn had to examine the research program, not " things in themselves ", but to analyze the linguistic conditions, as spoken of things. One can maintain a parallel to that of Kant for this turn: Kant's " Copernican revolution " was associated to describe not things in themselves, but conditions to recognize them, which lie in the structure of reason. In place of metaphysics as first philosophy structures of the mind (Latin mens ), which is why some authors speak of a " mentalist paradigm " among representatives of the linguistic turn of a " linguistic paradigm ": experience is always mediated first language.
An illustrative example of the turn to language provides the meta-ethics of George Edward Moore. It is not the nature of good is being discussed, but that of the linguistic expression "good": Counts this word to the words, which recommend actions or prescribe (so-called prescriptive terms)? Or is it descriptive ( " descriptive " )? Withheld " to help people in need, is good," a duty or an act of evaluation? Or perhaps a description: Emergency relief has beneficial effects? Moore distinguishes two ways of speaking in such a way that descriptive statements never a conclusion would be allowed to prescriptive statements ( " naturalistic fallacy "). Because in this kind of analysis is not individual questions of normative ethics are discussed, but the statement ways in the discussion of ethical questions themselves are analyzed, it is called " meta-ethics ". The increase of publications on meta-ethics is time approximately parallel to the turning to the language at all.
Occasionally, is given to the inter alia, pursued by Moore research program as " conceptual analysis " of two from another, which also provide methodological language at the center: the " linguistic analysis " or normal language as follow Ryle or Austin, and the " formalist " which Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein pursued. All three research programs are usually described as phased important part of the so-called currents of analytic philosophy.
Bergmann himself had his speech from a linguistic turn va based on Moore and Wittgenstein, and in this sense, the linguistic turn was always a term of analytical philosophy. Philosophy Historical representations found this world of ideas but then also looking back in completely different contexts. In the field of French philosophy could, for example, about Roland Barthes or Ricoeur be brought to the idea of a " semiotic turn", and in the German intellectual history of the great philosophy of language tradition of Hamann, Humboldt, Herder, Dilthey as " hermeneutics " of Gadamer was administered. In any case, other currents of modern philosophy emphasize the importance of linguistic mediation, including, for example, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau -Ponty, the philosophical anthropology of Ernst Cassirer or the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.
The impact on the humanities
The linguistic turn in the narrow sense may be generally considered as a continuation and application of the linguistic turn to the field of culture and the humanities. The focus is on the understanding that all knowledge must follow the logic of language always and thus the linguistic structure provides both the prerequisite and the limit of the knowable. Language is no longer seen only as a neutral medium of communication, but as obeying certain rules of discourse within which statements of any kind are only possible at all. Ultimately, the view of the radical representatives of the " linguistic turn ", and the non- linguistic phenomena in the narrower sense by the discursive rules of the language are structured and indecipherable as text.
To examine the logic of language, especially the linguistics and the newly established discipline of semiotics ( theory of signs ) were used. The results of this research were then transferred to other areas such as literature, science, or anthropology. The principal reasons for the breakthrough of the linguistic turn in the humanities were the products resulting from such structuralism and post-structuralism works. Known representatives include Claude Lévi -Strauss, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco and Jacques Derrida.
The view of the linguistic turn to the phenomenon language is not quite the " common sense " - and not what the philosophers have long believed about the language to know. The conventional notion According function words such as labels namely: There is first the real chair, then the mental image ' chair ' ( the signified ), then the word " chair " ( the signifier ).
By 1915 could show the contrast Geneva linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the signifier is not " images" of the signifieds are, but that meaning is based rather on an internal differentiation between the signifier itself. Language is a tendency autonomous system which is linked to the signified by him only arbitrary ( arbitrary ). Saussure is both an influential founder of modern linguistics, as well as a pioneer of structuralism, semiotics, and thus the linguistic turn.
The impact on the social sciences
Latest in the 1980s attacked the paradigm shift of the linguistic turn over on social sciences such as history or sociology. Under the influence of postmodernism and post-structuralism, there was a move away from the claim to discover historical truths and hard "facts." They turned instead to the discourse, only be articulated within the social truths and facts. As a pioneer of this approach can apply Michel Foucault and the history theorist Hayden White. In their result, many new questions and methods were encountered, such as the new cultural history, historical anthropology, the micro-history as well as the women 's and gender history in the context of gender studies.
The literary critic Hayden White analyzes the problem of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory and describes how narrative structures guide the understanding of each reconstruction of history and manipulate it. According to White, subject to any presentation of historical contexts poetological categories. Historiography, he says, is necessary narrative, even when it pretends to not be. Elfriede Müller and Alexander Ruoff summarize the results of its analysis as follows: " If you tell story, to interpret it necessary due to the way in which to structure their individual data. "