Knowledge and Linguistic turn in Sociology

The course is developed in two phases. Initially, it refers to the epistemological rupture that occurs with the relativization of the concept of rationality and objectivity of scientific theories, which at the same time indicates the inevitable asymmetries and discontinuities that characterize the development of the sciences. In these first lectures, definitions are given and the relationship between science and epistemology is examined, the view of the social construction of reality is discussed and the aspects of an interpretive foundation of the social sciences are presented. In this context, special reference is made to texts that support both a "strong" and a "weak" program of the Sociology of Knowledge, as well as contemporary versions of a New Sociology of Knowledge. At a second level, reference is made to the modern sciences of knowledge (Cognitive Sciences), mainly in how the various cognitive functions are performed, to the extent that they are responsible for the rendering of meaning and the development of forms of communication. The course then approaches issues concerning the "linguistic turn", which in a later period meets the interest of interpretive sociology, as the study of language is not limited to its structural elements, as structuralist linguistics supports, but extends to the semantic content of intersubjective relations, as a creative social and ultimately communicative phenomenon that occupies an important place in the daily social life of people.