disciplinary, interdisciplinary and postdisciplinary: changing disciplinary patterns in linguistics

• Published in: Muṭāliʻāt-i miyānʹrishtahʹī dar ʻulūm-i insānī Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1 - 24
• Main Authors: N. Fazeli, F. Koushki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Persian
• Published: Iranian Institute for Social and Cultural Studies 01.12.2016
• Subjects: applied linguistics; disciplinary; interdisciplinary; modernism; post-modernism; theoretical linguistics; transdisciplinary (post-disciplinary)
• ISSN: 2008-4641; 2008-4846
• DOI: 10.22035/isih.2017.243

The fundamental change in language research, which started with Saussure in the early twentieth century and led to the establishment of modern linguistics, restricted the said research within the so-called central part of language, i. e., the language system, without taking into consideration anything that was conceived as external to language as an autonomous system. In terms of its clearly-defined theoretical structure and subject, modern linguistics once again became an influential leading discipline in the humanities and social sciences. It achieved a great deal, but its achievements took place at the cost of isolating language from its environment and excluding the user of language and the context in which language is used from the scope of linguistic analysis. Although this stance has long been criticized by scholars who prefer to see language within a more extended context, it has generally been ignored by mainstream linguists who dominate linguistic circles. However, in the last few decades of the twentieth century, significant changes have taken place in linguistic studies. These changes have brought about a new era, the era of ″post-modern linguistics″, in which the theoretical foundations of modern linguistics are problematized and the way language is viewed and investigated is profoundly renewed. This article is written in a narrative form describing the linguistic change from modernism to postmodernism and in the course of this review it will become clear in which research perspective the two main linguistics directions (theoretical and applied) are located: disciplinary interdisciplinary and transdisiplinary? In other words what is the object of linguistics research?