Beyond the Opposites: Philological and Cognitive Aspects of Linguistic Polarization

Zusammenfassung

The philological interest in the conceptual phenomenon of polarity is unquestionable. Although this is particularly remarkable in the lexicon of the languages through antonymy, from the standpoint of speech, beyond the limits of particular systems, the antithetic polarity shows a dual scheme in which it is possible to oppose terms that are not semantically related in language, within certain contextual conditions. After reviewing the interaction of systematic and discursive planes where these relationships are exhibited, taking into account their interest for semantic and textual studies, as well as the problems of both approaches, we summarize here some neurocognitive data on language processing and various types of evidence pointing to a new interpretation of the principle of contrast, which emerges from the lexical units and transcends the textual level, allowing to create a unique link between these two dimensions.