LINGUISTIC SYNERGETICS: ORIGIN, KEY CONCEPTS AND APPLICATION

Abstract

The article advances linguistic synergetics as a new interdisciplinary research approach to language studies. It starts with a brief outline of origin and development of synergetics that was to become the methodological basis of linguistic synergetics. Then the article covers application of synergetic principles to linguistic research with special emphasis laid on the two principal branches – synergetics of language and synergetics of speech. Finally, key concepts of synergetics useful for linguistic analysis are listed and regarded in detail. Synergetics is seen as a unified approach to various complex systems study that originated within sciences. It promotes integrity of methods elaborated in various disciplines and variety of models to represent complexity of organic and inorganic systems. Successful application of concepts and methods of the synergetic approach to the description of biological, physical, historic, social, and even economic phenomena has revealed similarity, if not universality of principles of evolution of complex systems. As a result, synergetics has made it possible to launch a wide variety of interdisciplinary interrelationships. Investigation of language within the synergetic paradigm is determined by features of language as an open self-organised synergetic system. Multidimensional ontology of language has made it possible to employ synergetic methodology in the various studies of language. At the present stage, linguistic synergetics includes the following two principal branches – synergetics of language and synergetics of speech. The main task of linguistic synergetics is to reveal, describe and explain the mechanism of the inner dynamic structure of a language using research principles of synergetics as a paradigm of complexity. Key concepts of linguistic synergetics include ‘a closed / open system’, ‘linearity / non-linearity’, ‘self-organisation’, ‘dissipation’, ‘order (control) parameters’, ‘fluctuations’ and ‘bifurcations’, ‘stability (equilibrium) / instability’, ‘an attractor’, ‘a fractal’.

Keywords

• синергетика
• лінгвосинергетика
• складні системи
• дисипативність
• нелінійність
• фрактальність
• самоорганізація
• параметр порядку