Book publication

Scientific book: Stvaralačka moć riječi/The Creative Power of the Word

Kresić Vukosav, Marijana/Krasicki, Arkadiusz (2025): Stvaralačka moć riječi  [The Creative Power of the Word]. Zadar: Sveučilište u Zadru. URL: shop-en.unizd.hr/detalji_proizvoda.facacbd702b24b4097fb215194d29e4d.stvaralacka-moc-rijeci.aspx

 

Abstract

Human speech undoubtedly possesses creative power, yet it often appears that the scope and impact of this power are not adequately reflected in scholarly discussions within the humanities. This is the issue to which this book draws attention - an issue that has remained largely unaddressed in academic literature, so far. With the aim of offering a clear perspective on the creation of linguistic and extralinguistic reality, the book first clarifies the extent to which we can grasp reality at all by means of scientific methods. It then examines the modes, scope, and limitations of creation through language at various levels of linguistic description and on the basis of selected linguistic theories.

This is followed by an analysis of the creative power of the word from a biblical perspective, in order to determine the characteristics of human and divine creation. Through two biblical accounts (Gen 1–2), the creative power of God’s word is discerned: God creates the human being by entering into complete communication with him. Human power and human creativity are prompted by God’s command, but also by His call to cooperation.

The outcome of the philological-linguistic and theological analysis presented in this book is a description of human identity as (a) a speaker who, by means of language, can co-create certain aspects of reality, and (b) a creature of God to whom language has been given in order to act in the world — yet whose aims and creative possibilities are limited, because the covenant that God had established with him was broken through sin.