Reasserting the bedrock of personal experience: a semiological defense of anthropocentric linguistics

Abstract This article critiques the rise of posthumanist linguistics and emphasizes the need to reaffirm an anthropocentric perspective grounded in personal linguistic experience. Posthumanist approaches (weirdly) expand the boundaries of linguistic inquiry, incorporating non-human actors, artefacts, the dead, and spectral entities, while challenging traditional notions of language. Adopting a posthumanist stance shifts the focus away from the uniquely reflexive and experiential dimensions that make language inherently human. Drawing on Roy Harris’ integrationism (Harris 1996. Signs, language and communication . London & New York: Routledge, 1998. Introduction to integrational linguistics . Oxford: Pergamon) and the radical indeterminacy of signs in both form and meaning (Harris 2009a. Integrationist Notes and Papers 2006–2008 . Gamlingay: Bright Pen), this paper champions a lay-oriented approach to human communication that rejects metaphysics and theoretical abstraction, instead viewing communicational activities as semiologically integrated. By analyzing posthumanist paradigms, including animal linguistics and ghostly voices, the article points to the conceptual and epistemological limitations of decentering human agency in favor of language-as-assemblage and language-as-distributed ontologies. Accordingly, this paper calls for reclaiming language studies as a discipline that recognizes the profound complexity of human sign-making, anchoring linguistic inquiry in everyday semiological experience.