Norma linguística na teorização de Eugenio Coseriu

Abstract

This master’s dissertation investigates the concept of linguistic norm widely known in the field of linguistics and tributary to the Romanian linguist Eugenio Coseriu. With this objective and with the aid of the method of linguistic historiography, it analyzes this concept, highlighting its sources, motivations and describing the way in which the author reworks it from his disagreement with Ferdinand de Saussure’s language and speech dichotomy. Coseriu stablishes the notion of norm as a link between the Saussurean dichotomy, defining it as a system of obligatory accomplishments, of cultural impositions, which varies according to the community. Therefore, norm is conceived as the collective realization of the system, while speech is the individual and concrete realization of the norm. Thus, Coseriu redefines the language and speech dichotomy in the tripartite concept system, norm and speech as an attempt to overcome the limitations of Saussurian theorization. The most notorious theoretical debate in the process of re-elaboration of this concept is the one Coseriu establishes with Saussure, but a not so apparent and little publicized motivation arises from Coseriu’s contact with Louis Hjelmslev’s schema/system, norm and use distinctions. In addition to highlighting Coseriu’s sources for the re-elaboration of the concept of norm, this dissertation seeks to answer why Coseriu recovers and re-elaborates a concept that Hjelmslev himself had already abandoned and rejected. As this dissertation shows, Coseriu not only recovers and re- elaborates the concept of norm, but makes it a key concept of his linguistic theory and for which he will always be remembered.