Dead Waves and Scars: History, Culture and Language

Abstract

This paper discusses the main problems concerning the contribution of linguistics to history. In particular, it is about the interdisciplinarity of language problems, the relationality and processuality of linguistic material and the non-ontological nature of the referent. It is also about narration as a hermeneutic model, the relationships between niche and language, linguistic and cultural diversity as a normal state and the linguistic traces of an otherwise inaccessible history. The discussion draws on numerous examples from Romance linguistics and other fields.