The Historical-idiomatic Variational Space Between Communicative Immediacy and Communicative Distance and the Individual Level of Language

Abstract

The model of the historical-idiomatic variational space between communicative immediacy and communicative distance (h-i VS I-D model) outlined by Peter Koch and Wulf Oesterreicher in 1990 is one of the most valuable theoretical contributions that German romanistics has made to general linguistic theory. Built on two important theoretical distinctions formulated by Eugenio Coseriu – the distinction between the universal, historical and individual levels of language and the differentiation between the diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic dimensions of intralinguistic historical variation –, its reception has, in many cases, been made regardless of Coserian linguistic theory; Hence, it has not always been realized that the differentiation between the historical and the individual level, as well as the conception of the h-i VS I-D model as a model of expressive knowledge and, therefore, of the individual level of language, are indispensable if a correct and truly productive interpretation of the model is to be achieved. This is precisely the purpose of the present paper: to lay the foundations for a correct interpretation of the h-i VS I-D model in the light of a purely Coserian reading of Koch and Oesterreicher's proposal. To this end, three of the most recent criticisms of the h-i VS I-D model are specifically discussed: (i) the questioning of the decision to grant the same theoretical status to the three types of diasystematic variation (diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic), (ii) the discussion of the legitimacy of conferring gradual marks to the phenomena of the diatopic dimension, and (iii) the controversy over the place that should correspond to the standard variety in the continuum between communicative immediacy and communicative distance.