Saturday, November 8th 2008. Indexicality

Indexicality
At the Crossroads of Language and Perception: the Deixis

Coordination: Perrine MARTHELOT

The concern for indexicality might appear as a technical point within philosophy of language. Yet, it does involve a relevant way to investigate the inscription of language in the world of perception. This conference will not deal with the traditional question of how language refers to the world: it will rather examine how, and to what extent, a world is required by the very existence of language. If one has to assume that speech always takes place in a given situation within the world, then one has to address to following issue: is indexicality limited to a restricted and specific part of our meaningful statements, or should it be assumed that language is, in fact, widely indexical? What is at stake, here, is a determination of the very limits and validity of this concept in its wider sense. What is implied is also an analysis of the connection between language and the world in this wider context.

In his Theory of Language, Karl Bühler has formulated the hypothesis that language might include a double-system: a deictic field, and a symbolic field. His investigation of indexicality has led him to focus on the deictic field, i.e. on the so-called “situations”. On that purpose, Bühler has examined in particular the different modes of the deixis (deixis ad oculus, anaphora, deixis ad phantasma). Ha has also investigated the specific way the “I” and the “now” are embedded in a situation. This conference will aim at an assessment of such a re-evaluation of the concept of field, namely by trying to confront Bühler’s work with more contemporary approaches to indexicality.