Biolinguistics and biosemiotics

Winfried Nöth

pp. 151-168

in: Ekaterina Velmezova, Kalevi Kull, Stephen J. Cowley (eds), Biosemiotic perspectives on language and linguistics, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

The paper surveys the fields of biolinguistics and biosemiotics, outlines their domains of common interest, and discusses the differences between their research programs. It shows that the two interdisciplines have developed in parallel, carry a similar academic prestige, overlap in their scope of topics of inquiry, and have common roots in the history of evolutionary and genetic biology. Whereas biolinguists restrict themselves to the study of language, biosemioticians are interested in the study of organisms in general, wherefore the biosemiotic research program is closely associated with theoretical biology. The differences are not only differences between the general and the specific but also between theoretical foundations. Biolinguistics has its foundation in Chomsky's linguistics, in particular in his "Minimalist Program", and it has a high interdisciplinary interest in neurolinguistics, genetics and the behavioral and brain sciences. Biosemiotics, by contrast, is founded on a research program that extends semiotics to a theory of sign processes in culture and nature. The paper concludes with considerations about the influence of Peirce's semiotics on Chomsky's biology of language.

Cited authors

Peirce Charles Sanders