Memoria y creatividad lingüística. Una nueva perspectiva sobre el papel de la imaginación en el cambio lingüístico

Abstract

This essay takes it departure from the following idea: if one accepts that memory is the space where knowledge of language (grammar) and the making of sense (discourse) converge —indeed that it is the place where what we know and what we can think meet—, the relationship between linguistics tradition (norm) and language-change (creativity) can be studied from the point of view of both imagination and the cultural tensions that surround the expression of meaning. Moreover, as the use of grammar rules depends on the categorization processes, and the last cannot be separated from images because they are conceptual processes, here the belief that memory is an archive is questioned, and the figure that presents it as a scenic construction takes its place. Furthermore, this scenic construction organizes the images in a multifarious way that takes its symbolic value from a given form of life. This conception takes over the saussurian idea of language change as motivated by memory as the imagination place.