Medieval Literacy, Linguistic Theory, and Social Organization
Brian Stock
Boethius, attempting to convey the sense of Greek text an increasingly Latin culture, oversimplified original. Roughly equating linguistic and material communication, he likened imposition meaning onto words impressing emperor's profile imperial coin. A piece money, argued, is not only a metal object; it also medium exchange which represents value another thing. Likewise, verbs nouns are physical sounds but conventions established for purpose signifying what understood in mind.1 Some six centuries after Boethius's untimely death 525/26, Peter Abelard was write his own set commentaries on Aristotle and, while adhering many fundamental tenets, use Peri ermeneias, together with Porphyry, Priscian, others, as basis theory language preoccupied medieval thinkers down William Occam. fact proposed something similar Saussure's distinction between langue parole2-that is, Aristotelian terms, logic meaning, by individual usage among speakers, capacity speaking, along its phonetic acoustic properties. Abelard's unique contribution this have explored both abstract concrete character signification reshaped traditional thinking universals incorporate ideas. In this, anticipated Saussure later Wittgenstein. contemporary Boethius may be called formalist, approach (which, should noted, changed over time) lies somewhere spectrum formalism functionalism.3
New Literary History