The schizophrenics speech – an interface between Text Linguistics and Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In this work we elaborate a critical review of language characteristics that have been highlighted in the areas of Text Linguistics and Psychoanalysis concerning the conceptuation of the schizophrenics speech. The studies we carried out followed two lines. On one hand, they tried to reinforce the hypothesis that the psychotic discourse was incoherent. In order to do so they relied on linguistic formalism, especially the concepts of competence and performance found in Chomsky, and pragmatics, with Grice’s conversational principles. On the other hand, they tried to prove that the psychotic discourse was coherent, taking into consideration the maintenance of topic and the digression postulated by the Interational Sociolingistic approach and its model of face to face interaction.