Total Speech - Michael Toolan

Units, rules, codes, systems: this is how most linguists study language. Integrationalists such as Michael Toolan, however, focus instead on how language functions in seamless tandem with the rest of human activity. In Total Speech, Toolan provides a clear and comprehensive account of integrationalism, a major new theory of language that declines to accept that text and context, language and world, are distinct and stable categories. At the same time, Toolan extends the integrationalist argument and calls for a radical change in contemporary theorizing about language and communication.
In every foundational area of linguistics-from literal meaning and metaphor to the nature of repetition to the status of linguistic rules-Toolan advances fascinating and provocative criticisms of received linguistic assumptions. Drawing inspiration from the writings of language theorist Roy Harris, Toolan brings the integrationalist perspective to bear on legal cases, the reception of Salman Rushdie, poetry, and the language of children. Toolan demonstrates that the embeddedness of language and the situation-sensitive mutability of meaning reveal language as a tool for re-fashioning and renewal.
Total Speech breaks free of standard linguistics’...

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Sommaire:
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. On Inscribed or Literal Meaning 24
2. Metaphor 56
3. Intentionality and Coming into Language 98
4. Further Principles of Integrational Linguistics, or, On Not Losing Sight of the Language User 140
5. Relevance in Theory and Practice 181
6. Repetition 226
7. Rules 271
References 323
Index 335...