Symbol and Language

Abstract

The task of this chapter is to construct a theory of language in which it will be possible to place the symbol. The symbol requires a context and it is precisely this context that language provides. Because the study of language can avoid neither the problematic of intended meanings implicit in the usage of language, nor the issue of the concretization of language articulated by a human subject, we shall examine the manner in which a phenomenological theory of consciousness may influence a theory of language. Finally, as we have already pointed out, the symbol ought to be considered as a distinctive phenomenon with its own rubrics and properties, but within a linguistic context.