“Socrates thrice mortal”: reexamining Coseriu’s triad of primary discourse finalities from the perspective of an integral text typology (original) (raw)

2021, Carlos Garatea Grau and Jorge Wiesse Rebagliati (eds.), Marta Fernández Alcaide (coord.), ACTUALIDAD Y FUTURO DEL PENSAMIENTO DE EUGENIO COSERIU. Estudios de teoría del lenguaje, descripción lingüística, dimensión textual y lingüística peruana, Sevilla: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, pp. 222-248

The paper takes as a starting point one of Coseriu’s favourite examples for pointing out the autonomy of textual sense: the utterance “Socrates is mortal” lends itself to three radically different paths of sense-construction, according to whether it is part of a syllogism, a warning to Xanthippe, or a poem. Traceable back to Aristotle, the “scientific” (/apophantic), the “pragmatic” and the “poetic” (/aesthetic), represent three basic finalities of speech, announced as such in Coseriu’s work as early as 1948. It is argued that the triad of finalities, properly interpreted in the framework of integral linguistics, pertains not to the universal level of speech in general (Level I), but to the level of text/discourse (Level III), where it delineates a primary layer of text-typological Gestaltung, and can thus provide the basis for constructing an integral typology of genuine texts in a functional perspective. The analysis of the triad also pursues a necessary correlation with Humboldt’s “poetic” and “prosaic” modes of discourse, as well as a necessary differentiation from the ‘universes of discourse’ of science, daily experience and art.