From word studies to philosophy of language: the evolution of linguophilosophical doctrines in Russia

Abstract

The article provides a conceptual analysis of the evolution of linguo-philosophical teachings in Russia. The main research methods used in the article are comparative-historical, which allows to establish the historical identity in philosophi-cal teachings about language and difference be-tween them, as well as cultural-historical inter-pretation and textual analysis. The author distin-guishes the two main stages in the evolution of linguo-philosophical teachings in Russia: 1) wordo¬logy (slovologiya) and 2) philosophy of language, he describes the peculiarities of every stage and their development. The wordological stage, formed by the word-centric nature of the spiritual culture of Russia, is characterized by the idea of the word as a way of understanding and representing the world, a specific expression of the national self-awareness. Russian thinkers of the first stage insisted on the conciliar nature of language, regarded language as a way of anthro-pological-existential understanding of the world, a means of passing the spiritual experience of the people, they stressed the ontological nature of language, believed that the word is an archetype of culture. The stage of the philosophy of langu-age is regarded as marked by a new approach to solving the most important methodological prob-lem of the relationship between language and thinking. Russian thinkers of the second stage focused on studying the linguistic nature of hu-man communication, its sociological, psychological and other aspects related to the functioning of language in society. It is concluded that phi-losophy of language is an interdisciplinary disci-pline, which is necessary to study – along with the history of linguo-philo¬so¬phical teachings – to properly solve some to¬pical philosophical, eth-nocultural, socio-psy¬cho¬¬¬logical and linguistic problems.