The question “What is language?” underlies and has preoccupied the most diverse schools of philosophy and language sciences. From the viewpoint of philosophy, language provides a privileged vantage point from which to consider the medial space between thought and the world. Thus, it puts on display unique human phenomena such as the logos, reference, speech acts, or the various linguistic devices constructing and expressing power relations (such as interpellation). For linguistics, the major conundrum language presents lies in the discrepancy between language’s profound plurality and its apparent unity, i.e. the alleged existence of one cohesive linguistic mechanism enabling linguistic competence. In fact, whereas language most often appears to us as multiplicity and difference—the multitude and variety of languages, words, sounds, syntactic systems or morphological regularities—both our intuition and sheer biological evidence allow us to treat it as a unitary object: Language with a “capital L.” In everyday life, however, we encounter more often the “language” through which we communicate (le langage) than the theoretical abstraction “Language” (la langue) with its grammatical rules and its universal dimensions. Thus the relationship between these different manifestations of language—in form of langage or langue—is a source of constant tension between philosophy, theoretical linguistics and the social sciences interested in language (such as communication sciences, critical discourse analysis, or the various branches of applied linguistics and education sciences). The more we delve into the different traditions of knowledge studying linguistic phenomena and their nature, the more convoluted and stimulating grows the question “What is language?”.

This seminar will introduce participants to texts by philosophers, grammarians and linguists (mostly from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty‑first centuries). We will focus on some of the classic issues that have attracted linguists, philosophers and sociolinguists and extract their various answers to the question “What is language?”.

Course requirements include full attendance in seminar meetings (5%); readings and active participation in class (5%); a presentation in class (or alternatively, submission of a reading report) (20%,); and the submission of a final seminar paper (70%, in either full or short format). Instructor approval of a short research proposal must precede submission of the seminar paper.