ECOS DO LEGADO COSERIANO: EXPLORANDO O CONCEITO DE NÍVEL UNIVERSAL DA LINGUAGEM
ECHOES OF THE COSERIAN LEGACY: EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF UNIVERSAL LEVEL OF LANGUAGE

Summary/Abstract: Echoes of the Coserian Legacy: Exploring the Concept of Universal Level of Language. This article investigates the mobilization of Eugenio Coseriu’s concept of the universal level of language in a sample of five academic studies (Faur, 2009; Willems, 2016; Schrott, 2021; Ruiz and Alegría, 2021; and Vucheva, 2012), taking into account the incomplete state of the discipline of general speaking, as repeatedly acknowledged by Coseriu himself. These works resort to the notion of the universal level in two main ways: as a “universality thermometer” — employed to assess the generality of certain linguistic phenomena — and as a theoretical source of inspiration for the formulation of new conceptual frameworks. It is observed, however, that these mobilizations are accompanied by an involuntary suppression of the underlying issue regarding the absence of a fully constituted linguistic discipline capable of addressing general speaking. I conclude that the appropriation of the notion of the universal level of language without reference to Coseriu’s unfinished project contributes to the perpetuation of this epistemological gap. I thus advocate for the task of revisiting Coseriu’s legacy in order to gather and systematize the scattered information on the universal level of language, thereby laying the groundwork for the constitution of a Linguistics of General Speaking.

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