Unamuno’s Views on Language: A Critical Assessment

Unamuno was trained as a philologist and held two language-related Chairs at the University of Salamanca. He not only devoted many of his essays to linguistic questions, but raised linguistic issues in essays ostensibly devoted to other topics. Such was his passion for words that he placed language at the heart of the many subjects that interested him: religion, philosophy, history, culture, identity, love, imagination, dreams… Even thinking itself he considered to be language-driven. Is this view of the role of language really sustainable? Or did Unamuno’s creative view of language run away with him? This essay gives a succinct account of the intimate connection which Unamuno established between language and various subjects, including the emotions, and then goes on to offer a critique of Unamuno’s linguistic theory, ending with a brief explanation of Unamuno’s idiosyncratic stance.