hal-05510264 Language Contact, Cognitive Circularity and “WE”

The issue of ‘language contact’ has been widely explored from the perspectives of em- pirical description and theoretical development, as well as from sociolinguistic, soci- etal and cognitive angles. I would like to broach the subject from a different view, to deepen reflections of an epistemological and methodological order, building on my “distanced” (but empirically grounded) examination of language contact and semi- otic dynamics (Nicolaï, 2011, 2017a, 2017b). Several notions will be further explored and specified here, such as: givens, constructs, historicity and WE. The goal is to structure research trajectories by highlighting both the relative relativity of our epistemic un- derstanding and the extent of our subjectivity in context. On this basis, positions can be taken, most notably on the possible circularity of the hypotheses we posit. General learnings can be gleaned from these elements for grasping language contact, the dy- namics driving their transformation, as well as general processes for ascribing mean- ing and developing significance, which in the end converge with current hermeneutic approaches and enactive views.