O acordo entre cognição e cultura na noção de categorização de Umberto Eco em Kant e o ornitorrinco

Abstract

This Masters thesis aims to analyze how the Italian semioticist Umberto Eco treats the theme of categorization, in order to point out possible contributions to the studies of that cognitive mechanism within the cognitive sciences and, above all, cognitive linguistics. Among Eco’s vast intellectual production, this study focuses on the analysis of the book Kant and the platypus (1998 [1997]), as this work comprises a number of essays dealing with cognition and language, which, directly or indirectly, discuss categorization. Considering the nature of the object of this research, this thesis is fundamentally a qualitative theoretical-interpretative work (CRESWELL, 2013; SILVA, 2020; ECO, 2014c). The organization of the steps that compose the methodological procedures is inspired by the content analysis (BARDIN, 2011), for the object of study in this research is fundamentally a text. In conformity with those research characteristics, the methodological procedures used in this study include literature review, Ginzburg’s (1989) indiciary paradigm and software of qualitative analysis of texts (Iramuteq® ). Based on that methodology, and aiming the proposed general objective, this work examines different conceptions of cognition, of category and of models of categorization, in order to identify and describe the theoretical-epistemological view of the focused author. Throughout the first part of the analysis, the main theoretical constructs of Umberto Eco’s cognitive semantics are presented and explained. In the second part, an approximation between the Italian author’s reflections in the book analyzed and the theoretical and methodological tenets of an ecocognitive approach to language (DUQUE, 2015; 2018). In conclusion, evidence such as a common phenomenological theory grounding, a shared given importance to the bodyenvironment relationship, the consequent highlighting of semantics as integrated with pragmatics and the account of meaning’s adaptability/malleability to different situations, supports that the cognitive semantics delineated by Umberto Eco in the work studied and the eocognitive approach share affinities.