Linguists and their speakers

At first glance, the object of linguistics ‘language’ seems to be a clear, separate object. In the history of linguistics however different concepts of language have been proposed which are dependent on the model concerned. Together with the concept of language, the concept of the speaker has changed from the ideal speaker to the individual speaker. The paper aims to describe some steps in this process of grasping language and the speaker in the history of modern linguistics. The present state of the art is characterized by the challenges posed by so-called ‘New Science’, i.e. post-Cartesian science. Integration instead of division and separation has become a core concept which inevitably has consequences for the conceptualization of language and the speaker. Reductive models need to give way to holistic approaches. The Mixed Game Model is sketched out as a holistic model which is capable of tackling the concept of ‘the integrational speaker’.