Language, intersubjectivity and the origins of meaning

pp. 284-297

in: Donn Welton, The origins of meaning, Berlin, Springer, 1983

Abstract

There is a moment in phenomenology which is an originary rendering of the world, a creative description of that which only becomes fully visible in the process of speaking or writing. This moment is simultaneously a recovery of the significance which things possess and a centering of what remains peripheral in naive experience, a centering of language. The language which is centered, however, is not rote speech but that discourse which turns against itself in order to bespeak that world which we will discover.