The Autonomy of Language. Process and System. Linguistic Theory and Empiricism

Abstract

In the first chapter of OSG Hjelmslev lays great stress on the autonomy of linguistics amidst other sciences. For a long time language used to be considered as the key that could open the door to the system of human thought, it was a means to get to know something outside language itself, the “means to a transcendent knowledge, not the goal of an immanent knowledge” (OSG p. 6). Thus, the theory of speech sounds became pure physics or physiology and the theory of signs pure psychology, logic or ontology. The danger of overlooking language itself in these studies was the greater as language wants to be overlooked, its natural tendency is to be a means, not an end, and it is only by artifice that the searchlight can be directed on the means itself of obtaining knowledge.