Signs, Mind, and Reality: A Theory of Language as the Folk Model of the World

As the culmination of many years of research, I have developed Semiotic Linguistics, a new linguistic discipline, which I present in this book. The domain of Semiotic Linguistics is human language conceived of as a folk model of the world. By a folk model of the world we mean that every language is a particular conventionalized form of the representation of the world imposed on all the members of a language community by the social need to have a common instrument of communication. The folk model of the world is in fact a collective philosophy unique to each language. As intermediaries between man's thought and the world, languages function as different forms of the perception of the world by man's thought, every language is both a communicative and cognitive form of thought. Semiotic Linguistics is neither a philosophy of language nor a new series of general discussions of the relation of language to thought. Semiotic Linguistics is a technical inquiry into the intrinsic mechanism of language as opposed to thought. The technical question central to Semiotic Linguistics is this: What are the laws of the intrinsic mechanism of language as an intermediary between man's thought and the world?