Call for Papers

Res per nomen 2: Reference, Consciousness and the Speaking Subject

Res per nomen is a research programme within CIRLEP (Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Language and Thought), a Reims University research group where linguists and philosophers jointly study the issue of reference in language, i.e. the necessary link between discourse and our experience. How can we take the outside world into account in the study of language and thought? This question has often been dismissed in 20th century linguistics, sometimes deliberately, for example by Saussure and Bloomfield, who insisted that language should be first studied as a system of signs, leaving the study of meaning and reference to future times. Other theories simply ignored reference or outsourced it to logic and mathematics. But can the study of language really do without the basic fact that when we speak, we speak of something, and that this something should be accounted for somehow by the theory. Yet how can reference be introduced into linguistic theory in its own right and not as an afterthought in a way that can shed some light on our use of language?

The 1st Res per nomen conference in May 2007 tried to put reference back on the linguist's agenda and a selection of about thirty-five papers by authors from twelve countries in French and in English was published in Res per nomen 1: Taking Stock of Reference in Language (2009). The conclusion was that mainstream analytical philosophy could not supply a satisfying answer. The core view of that tradition is that words have meaning because objects have beings: natural objects such as trees, artefacts such as bicycles and mental states such as love do have some sort of ontological reality, and it follows that naming them is a meaningful enterprise. The semantic content of words is therefore the reality they name, and assembling words to think and speak is a way of assembling reality by proxy. Yet the ontological existence of things is not only a given; it is also generated by language, which provides a framework indicating what actually exists and how we can speak about our experience. This means that that we are more determined by language and community than the Platonic and Cartesian tradition would have it, and this is why the point if view defended here is largely based on Wittgenstein and Peirce. We are basically members of a community which largely shapes us into what we are. Therefore to understand language and thought, linguists and philosophers should take a more anthropological view of our being: this was the subject of the 2nd Res per nomen conference in 2009 and of Res per nomen 2: Reference, Language and Anthropology (2010)

Res per nomen 3 will be held in May 2011. We shall carry on studying all aspects of reference in language, but with a special interest in consciousness, the ego, subjectivity and the speaking subject. How is the I referred to? How does the ego act in discourse? Consciousness is at the heart of philosophy, particularly within the Cartesian tradition, which has produced a very individualistic view of mankind according to which we are absolute singularities who decode the world and language and encode what we mean to say. The community is then nothing but a contractual agreement between individuals, and this is the gist of Rousseau's Social Contract. Such views have trickled down to common sense: remember Mrs Thatcher's stance that "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families" (31st of October 1987). Can we formulate another more anthropological view where human beings are essentially considered as the product of a linguistic and cultural community and not stand-alone entities with a sui generis existence, forever reconstructing the world and social relations? What consequences would such a view have on the study of language and thought? These are but a few of the themes which might be discussed at Res per nomen 3. Of course, all other aspects of reference in language are most welcome too.