Du contact entre les langues au clivage dans la langue. Vers une anthropologie renouvelée*

Abstract

The major aim of this paper is to offer an account of some results of investigations on language contact. I also aim at deconstructing the notion of ‘language contact’ going beyond the notion of ‘contact’. I attempt to analyze contact inside a language rather than contact between languages. This is reflected in the term ‘splitting’, as a way of approaching a new set of issues and breaking new grounds. My empirical base lies beyond an exocentric view whose objective is to capture the essence of mixed languages or the dynamics of multilingual situations . I take an endocentric stance, focused on the construction of signs and the process of construction of meaning within the general space of signification. My further objective is to propose a new dynamic view of semiotics , closely linked to the notions of boundary, system and representations as they are, reconditioned and simultaneously resulting from a predetermined analytic process. This has a potential of coming close to a Humboldtian perspective on the dynamic of languages, and of language.