The speaking subject in Jerzy Bartmiński’s Linguistic Worldview Program: A Cognitive Grammar perspective

Abstract

The paper examines the concept of the speaking subject, the key term of Jerzy Bartminski’s Linguistic Worldview Program (LWP), from the point of view of Ronald Langacker’s theory of Cognitive Grammar. We propose to characterize the dynamic, open nature of Bartminski’s speaking subject in terms of Langacker’s notion of conceptualizer, a hybrid category consisting of the speaker and the hearer, between whom the discursive negotiation of meaning takes place. It is assumed that the model applies to all types of discursive interaction involving all kinds of spoken and written discourse, including literary works. In order to be able to account for the meaning negotiation process in discourse, we propose to use Ronald Langacker’s theory of the Current Discourse Space (CDS) combined with the Storyworld Possible Self model (SPS) as developed by María-Ángeles Martínez in her analysis of literary texts.