Adaptation theory and the study of philosophy of language

Adaptation theory and the study of philosophy of language

In the 20th century, the linguistic turn of western philosophy brought about the rapid development of philosophy of language, and language became the core issue of philosophical thinking. So, what are Adaptation Theory and Linguistic Philosophy Analysis?

Since ancient times, philosophical problems have been inextricably linked with language problems. Since the linguistic turn of philosophy, language has become the theme of philosophy. The discussion on philosophy of language reflects that the existence of philosophical thought is inseparable from language for a moment, because the object of thought and the process of thought itself must rely on language to be transformed into something that others can grasp. Wittgenstein thinks that all philosophy is "a criticism of language". It can be seen that the analysis of language and linguistic phenomena is the common feature and task of linguistics and philosophy of language. "The two are not only not alienated from each other, but also interdependent and mutually reinforcing." Philosophy has entered the field of language, and taking language as the object of philosophical research or trying to solve philosophical problems through linguistic analysis has become a new bright spot in academic research, which has opened up new ideas for pragmatic research and philosophical research. Visorun's Adaptation Theory shows the interdisciplinary nature of pragmatics from the perspective of * * *, indicating that today's linguistic research not only exports ideas to other humanities, but also draws rich nutrition from other disciplines (especially philosophy). Based on adaptation theory, this paper analyzes and discusses the philosophical significance of language in order to promote the development of pragmatics and philosophical research.

First, the theory of language adaptation.

The theory of linguistic adaptation was put forward by vers-chueren, secretary-general of the International Pragmatics Society, in his book New Interpretation of Pragmatics 65438-0999, based on Darwin's evolutionary epistemology and the actual situation of human language communication. Language adaptation theory is a theory about human language communication behavior and cognition. Taking the choice and sequence of language as an opportunity, it describes various phenomena of human language use, explains the psychological mechanism and process of human language communication and the role of society, culture and cognition in it, and reveals the essence of language use. According to Adaptation Theory, the process of language use is a process of constantly choosing languages. This selection process is dynamic and based on three characteristics of language (variability, negotiation and adaptability). Variability means "a language has a series of possibilities to choose from"; Negotiatability means that "all choices are not made mechanically or strictly according to the relationship between form and function, but on the basis of highly flexible principles and strategies"; Adaptation refers to "allowing language users to change flexibly from optional items to meet the needs of communication". These three features of language are interrelated, among which adaptability is the main feature. This paper expounds the use of language from four aspects: contextual adaptation, structural object adaptation, dynamic adaptation and the degree of consciousness in the process of adaptation. Adaptation theory fully considers social and cultural factors when dividing contexts, and divides contexts into linguistic contexts and communicative contexts. The former refers to various means selected according to contextual factors in the process of language use, while the latter includes language users, physical world, social world and psychological world. In short, the choice and adaptation of language is essentially "language is one of a series of adaptation phenomena in the interaction between human beings and their living environment". Adaptation theory causes people to rethink the essence of language, deepens people's understanding and understanding of the essential attributes of language, and inspires us to think philosophically about human survival and development while choosing and using language.

Second, adaptation theory and philosophy of language

In the 20th century, the linguistic turn of western philosophy brought about the rapid development of philosophy of language. Many philosophers put the study of language at the center of solving philosophical problems, and language has become the core of philosophical thinking. Heidegger linked language with ontology and regarded language as the essential attribute of adults. He said that "language is the world of human beings and the habitat of existence". Wittgenstein believes that "imagining a language is called imagining a way of life". Gadamer also endowed the status of language ontology, and advocated that people owned the world by language. Only entering the world of language is their world, and only entering the life of language is their life. People, language and the world are inseparable. He believes that "language is a free and changeable ability of human beings in use." For people, language itself is changeable because it prepares various expressions for the same thing. Therefore, Visorun defines his theory of language adaptation as "a comprehensive view of language phenomena related to the use of various human behaviors from the perspective of cognition, society and culture as a whole", which has profound significance. First of all, as a pragmatic theory, the phenomenon of language use studied by language adaptation theory is inseparable from various forms of human activities; The expressive function of language can only be generated, developed and completed if it is embedded or anchored in these activities. This view at least reflects the views of anthropology, philosophy and semiotics on the nature of language. It can be said that the theory of language adaptation has strong biological, semiotic, anthropological and philosophical implications from the beginning. This is an important feature that distinguishes it from other pragmatic theories. Malinowski, a British anthropologist, believes that language, as a form of activity, can only play its pragmatic function if it is embedded in human cooperative activities. Therefore, in order to study the meaning and function of language, we must take these cooperative activities of human beings as a form of language activities. Anthropologists' thinking on language problems is consistent with philosophers' observation and research on the process of language use. The language game theory put forward by Wittgenstein in his later thinking about language (meaning) includes two parts: "language and the activities in which language weaves". As a part of language game activities, language use is woven in it and plays its role. Morris's semiotic theory further deepens Malinowski's and Wittgenstein's views on pragmatic meaning. In Morris's system, pragmatics studies the relationship between symbols and their interpreters (later users). Secondly, Visorun holds that the theory of linguistic adaptation is "a comprehensive view of linguistic phenomena from the perspective of cognition, society and culture as a whole". As a theoretical perspective to observe the use of language, "overview" embodies Visorun's unique understanding of the nature of pragmatics, but its constituent elements have profound semiotic and philosophical origins. When Morris defined pragmatics as the study of the relationship between symbols and symbol interpreters, he further believed that pragmatics studied the life characteristics involved in the process of symbol expression, that is, all psychological, biological and social phenomena in the process of symbol action. On the philosophical level, Wittgenstein put forward language games to explain the dynamic process of word meaning generation, thus drawing the view that "meaning is usage" and putting forward "life form" to explain the ontology of meaning generation. In a word, Visorun believes that the use of language is inseparable from human life as a whole: they both influence and adapt to each other. The reason why language is so is that it adapts to human life, and the reason why human life is so comes from its adaptation to the process of language use. This is the basic essence of linguistic adaptation theory.

Thirdly, the philosophical thought contained in the theory of adaptation.

Linguistic Adaptation Theory breaks through the bottleneck problem of forgetting language and talking about language function for a long time, which makes language problems return to language itself, innovates the research of Linguistic Adaptation Theory and shows a new way of pragmatic research. Specifically, Visorun's Adaptation Theory contains the following philosophy of language:

1. evolutionary epistemology. Visorun's new interpretation of pragmatics tries to answer the following two questions: how does language contribute to human survival and life? What contribution have you made? Human life and human society are a process of gradual evolution. To explore the role of language in this process, we must explore how and why language is used, and how it is similar to the evolution of human society and life. According to Darwin's Origin of Species, organisms must go through two processes in the process of evolution: natural selection and adaptation. Choice is the means, and adaptation is the purpose and result. The concept of "adaptation" was first seen in the theory of biological evolution. In biology, adaptation refers to the process of self-adjustment of organisms to the environment, and it is the response of organisms to the natural selection paradigm in order to survive. In evolutionary epistemology, this view is extended to human behavior, psychology and social culture, and is used to explain human learning, the use and development of language and the growth of scientific knowledge. Evolutionary epistemology holds that human cognitive activity is to solve problems in order to survive, and its purpose is to increase scientific knowledge. Human behavior and social culture are one of the results of this adaptation. In the investigation of language use, Visorun accepted Darwin's theory of evolution, that is, the thought of choice and adaptation. It is considered that the psychology of optimization in language use is very similar to that of natural selection. Since choice is common in language use, it is also common to conform to nature. The essence of language adaptation is "language is one of a series of adaptation phenomena in the interaction between human beings and their living environment".

2. Dynamic concept of meaning. In 1930s and 1940s, the "language turn" in the history of western philosophy shifted people's attention from the nature and origin of cognition to the question of exploring the meaning of language. The problem of meaning has become the basis and core of the study of philosophy of language after the turn. Language is not only a communication tool and symbol, but also a way of human existence, a special existence or existence. At the same time, language is the product of human civilization, which appears with the appearance of human brain. To be exact, language, whether as an object tool or an ontology, or its natural or social attributes, is the product of the material organ of thinking, and thinking greatly affects the production of language and determines its meaning. Language, thinking and the world are interrelated, and * * * exists in the dynamic evolution system of meaning. Wittgenstein put forward "language game theory" and "meaning use theory" in his later work "Philosophical Research", which attributed meaning to the use of language in real life. The task of philosophy of language is to study the usage of everyday language, and the meaning of a word is its usage in language. His views not only laid the foundation for the analysis of language meaning by the later daily language analysis school, but also laid the foundation for the formation and development of pragmatics. Under his influence, Austin, Searle and others gradually studied meaning from a brand-new angle, and put forward the speech act theory, which regards language expression as a way of behavior. Later, Leech's politeness principle emphasized the study of speech use from a social perspective; The relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson emphasizes the study of speech use from a cognitive perspective. None of these studies can fully and effectively explain the whole picture of speech use. Wissollen hopes to change the tradition and get out of the predicament in this pragmatic study, so he accepts Darwin's evolutionary epistemology of choice and adaptation, borrows the "adaptation" view directly from Piaget's cognitive psychology, and draws on and innovates the speech adaptation theory in sociolinguistics. 1999 put forward the theory of pragmatic comprehensive adaptation in New Interpretation of Pragmatics. Visorun's concept of meaning absorbs the functionalism thought in daily language research to a great extent, and summarizes the characteristics of language meaning with negotiation and variability. At the same time, Vichy also inherited the functionalist view of language and dynamically investigated the dynamic function of language, which is consistent with his research goal of "functional correlation between language and other characteristics of human life". Adaptation theory embodies that language users constantly make appropriate choices of language content and form according to communication conditions in the process of verbal communication. Therefore, the process of language use is a process of constantly selecting languages. Meaning is constructed by language users through constant selection, interaction, negotiation and adaptation in the process of verbal communication. Therefore, Visorun's concept of meaning focuses on the appropriateness of language use, which is the fundamental difference between it and the previous concept of meaning. Visorun believes that language is not a closed and single static system, but a dynamic system that combines many factors such as cognitive world, human society and culture, showing openness and diversity. Meaning is generated and interpreted in dynamic choices, in diverse contexts and in an interactive network composed of communicators' different psychological cognition, thus realizing the adaptation between people and between people and the objective world. Vichy's adaptation theory fully embodies the view that language is choice, and exploring the meaning of language is an act of active choice and social construction.

3. Dynamic concept of context. Any verbal communication cannot be separated from a certain context. Communication itself is a dynamic process, in which the context will change accordingly. The process of communication is also the process of context construction. Morris put forward that pragmatics is to study the relationship between language phenomena and language users in the 1930s. However, looking at the previous studies on context, they failed to clearly point out the important role of communicators in language use. On the basis of predecessors' research, Visorun clearly put forward the adaptation framework of contextual relations centered on both sides of communication for the first time, pointed out the core position of language users in the context and the equal relationship between both sides of communication as the main body of verbal communication, and thought that context was a "people-oriented" concept; At the same time, from the perspective of adaptation, the essential attribute of context: dynamic generation is comprehensively discussed. That is to say, the context is not static, but produced in the process of using language by both parties, which is dynamically produced by the interaction between constantly activating factors and some objective things, and constantly changes with the development of communication process. Vickers pointed out that the essence of language adaptation is that "language is one of a series of adaptation phenomena in the interaction between human beings and their living environment". Language adaptation is not unidirectional, but bidirectional or multidimensional. Adaptation can be the adaptation of language to environment, the adaptation of environment to language, or both, or the mutual adaptation of communication subjects. It can be seen that the process of mutual adaptation between language and context is a continuous dynamic process. Therefore, the social dimension, cultural dimension and cognitive dimension of language adaptation are dynamic and constantly changing, and they are all the results of interaction. Therefore, Vichy regards dynamic adaptation as the core of his pragmatic adaptation theory. It can be seen that Visorun's dynamically generated context view has the philosophical connotation of Darwin's evolutionary epistemology. Choice and adaptation are the unity of opposites, choice is the means, adaptation is the purpose and the result. Vichy's dynamically generated context view focuses on the definite meaning and the implied meaning that can be inferred as definite meaning, but it contains many possibilities and cannot form a definite "meaning". It can be seen that language adaptation theory is a pragmatic theory based on anthropology, philosophy and semiotics, focusing on explaining the process of language use. It fully absorbs the pragmatic views of predecessors and the research results of related disciplines, and puts forward its own research perspective, research tasks and research topics. Visorun's pragmatic thought is reflected in his philosophical thinking on evolutionary epistemology, language and reality, and the relationship between human mind and language. He hopes to have a comprehensive understanding and reasonable explanation of pragmatic phenomena. Adaptation theory has injected new vitality into the pragmatics of verbal communication and opened up a new research space. But at the same time, we should also pay attention to the defects of language adaptation theory, that is, the problems and contents of the study are too vague and difficult to operate. Therefore, we suggest that when using Adaptation Theory to study language phenomena, we should not only understand the basic spirit of Adaptation Theory, but also consciously locate our research objects and contents. In addition, if we want to fully understand Adaptation Theory, we must reasonably grasp the internal relationship between pragmatic phenomena and philosophy in interaction.

;