Why the renewed interest in linguistics in modernism and postmodernism?

1. Why the renewed interest in linguistics in modernism and postmodernism? By: Martina Angelini, Jessica Palladini, Valentina Indri, Chiara Venturini, Mara Nardelli

2. LINGUISTICS is the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of grammar, syntax and phonetix. Specific branches of linguistics include sociolinguistics, dialectology… • Previuos decades of XIX century • Late decades of XIX century (1880-1900) • First decades of XX century (1900-1930  Modernism) • From 1950 on (Postmodernism) HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

3. Previousdecadesof XIX century • Traditional novel; • Charles Darwin; • The self-made man; • The principle of autority; • Faith in progress; • Capitalism and industrialization; • Charles Dickens; • The third person omnicient intrusive narrator;

4. Late decades of XIX century (1880-1900) • The myth of progress and the idea of a self-made man; • Religious crisis: man felt lost, no refernce points; • Philosophical crisis (F. Nietzsche): necessity of meaning after the loss of God ( “God is dead”);

5. First decades of XX century (1900-1930  Modernism ) • Cosmopolitanattitude; • New paradigms in the conceptofspace and time (Albert Einstein’s theoryofRelativity); • The idea ofsimultaneityoftime (Henry Bergson the presentis in ourconsciuosnessas the sum ofourpastmemories and future expectations  William James); • The discoveryof the unconscious ( Sigmud Freud ); • Meaningis the objectof a QUEST; • The nature of the humanbeingacrosstime ( Antropology  myths and rituals ); • Linguisticstriestofind out the true nature ofmeaning ( aribitraryrelationshipbetweenSIGNIFIER-SIGNIFIED )  meaningissomethingconventional; • Carl Jung “ The PsichologyofUnconscious”  racialmemory;

6. From 1950 on Postmodernism • The crisis of the principle of authority; • There is NO ABSOLUTE TRUTH; • Interest in LANGUAGE and LINGUISTICS; • People give up the SEARCH FOR TRUTH; • Crisis of Capitalism and the idea of a finite unique self; • No meaning  meaning is always differed ( Jaques Derrida ); • Intertextuality; • Metafiction;

7. F. De Saussurehismostimportant work is: “Cours de linguistique générale”  steptowrdsstrutturalism • LANGUE: social movement of language and communication. It must put together things that are understood by everybody. This language is constituted by a code of structure and rules that applies to everyone. • PAROLE: individual moment of language, which everyone has to use the code of the language to express his point of view.

8. The signifier and signified can not be separated: as Saussure says, they are like two sides of one sheet. But while being inseparable, the relationship between the two is arbitrary: it is demonstrated by the fact that, in order to express the same meaning (for example, sister), the different languages ​​use different signifiers (sister in Italian, soeur in French, and so on ). • SIGNIFIER:it is what the sign expresses • SIGNIFIED: it is the means to express the signifier (the acustic image) SIGN

9. J. Derridà • Derridà is the founder of deconstruction as a method of textual analysis applicable to all writing from phylosophy to licteracture; • Decostruction becomes the basic premise of postmodernism ; • This word was taken from the main work of j. derrida “of grammatology” to indicate that comunication is characterized by uncertainty. In addition in his opinion there is no connection between a word (the signifier) and the object to which it’s referred (the signified);

10. CONCLUSION: In conclusion it is possible to say that there is a renewed interest in the language as it is relevant to note that the same words placed in different contexts can assume other meanings.