The symptomatic status of symptoms: pathological errors and cognitive approaches to language usage

Abstract

Pathological speech errors have not properly become either an empirical or theoretical field of inquiry. Although Pragmatics is basically interested in language usage and communication, not all language users and not every instantiation of face to face interaction are taken into account. I argue that the ruling out of “certain speakers/certain utterances” is intimately related to both the philosophical origin of Pragmatics and the grammatical bias present in its approach to language. Pathological anomalous utterances violate the very bases of the field: (1) the language user shows not to be in control of language – which collides with the notion of the subject as epistemic (2) it is difficult/impossible to attribute a grammatical description to such utterances. Therefore, the evaluation of their contextual dependency, their relevance or adequacy is barred. I claim that pathological errors can be handled within a linguistically based theoretical approach to the functioning of language which excludes considering the subject as an epistemic one.