Integral linguistics from a cognitive semiotics perspective: metaphor between semiotic and pre-semiotic experience

In recent years, Eugenio Coseriu’s linguistic theory has been increasingly re-evaluated within contemporary debates, particularly for its ambition to offer a unified and coherent framework for understanding human linguisticity. This paper examines the theoretical tension between Coseriu’s perspective and cognitive-semantic approaches, which often isolate cognitive mechanisms from their intrinsic semiotic and linguistic grounding. A paradigmatic case is Conceptual Metaphor Theory and its subsequent developments, here taken as as a litmus test to highlight the divergence between two ultimately irreconcilable conceptions of language. Convinced of the need to recover a philosophically consistent conception of language that transcends the limitations of mainstream Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics, I will propose a new look on the dialogue already underway between Coseriu’s theory of language and Cognitive Semiotics – both sharing critical motives toward the dominant cognitive paradigm. The aim is not to portray Coseriu as a forerunner of Cognitive Semiotics –nor, even less, to formulate a “Coserian Cognitive Semiotics” – but rather to explore how Coseriu’s Integral Linguistics might enrich this emerging field, showing that a dialogue with Coseriu can illuminate key theoretical issues and provide fertile ground for rethinking language (and semiosis) as a philosophical object in its own right.