Theory of mediation

The theory of mediation, which is the principal referent of the research group of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Language Research (L.I.R.L.), is a theoretic model developed at Rennes (France) since the 1960' by Professor Jean Gagnepain, linguist and epistemologist. This model, whose principles Jean Gagnepain has methodically set forth in his three volume study On Meaning (Du Vouloir Dire), covers the whole field of the human sciences. One essential feature of the theory is that it seeks to find a kind of experimental verification of its theorems in the clinic of psychopathology. For this reason, the theory presents itself as a 'clinical anthropology'. The theory of mediation, which is the principal referent of the research group of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Language Research (L.I.R.L.), is a theoretic model developed at Rennes (France) since the 1960' by Professor Jean Gagnepain, linguist and epistemologist. This model, whose principles Jean Gagnepain has methodically set forth in his three volume study On Meaning (Du Vouloir Dire), covers the whole field of the human sciences. One essential feature of the theory is that it seeks to find a kind of experimental verification of its theorems in the clinic of psychopathology. For this reason, the theory presents itself as a 'clinical anthropology'. The theoretic model developed by Gagnepain and his research group at Rennes has inspired the work of professors and researchers in a number of European countries and in the United States in a wide variety of disciplinary fields, among them linguistics, literature, psychology, art history, archeology, psychoanalysis, theology. Its aim is deliberately trans-disciplinary - or, as Gagnepain humorously puts it, the theory of mediation cultivates 'in-discipline'.