Showing papers by "Jonathan Culler published in 1980"

Narrative discourse : an essay in method

Abstract: Foreword by Jonathan Cutler Translator's Preface PrefaceIntroduction 1. Order 2. Duration 3. Frequency 4. Mood 5. VoiceAfterword Bibliography Index

Fabula and Sjuzhet in the Analysis of Narrative: Some American Discussions

Abstract: When I first began writing really just began writing, I was tremendously impressed by anything by everything having a beginning a middle and an ending. I think one naturally is impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything. So paragraphing is a thing then any one is enjoying and sentences are less fascinating, but then gradually well if you are an American gradually you find that really it is not necessary not really necessary that anything that everything has a beginning and a middle and an ending and so you struggling with anything as anything has begun and begun and began does not mean that thing does not really mean beginning or begun. Gertrude Stein (1969: 23)

Reply to van der hoven

Abstract: At the end of his review of Ferdinand de Saussure Mr. van der Hoven claims that theorists of language should address themselves to "substantive questions of meaning" such as "by what processes do we choose some formulations and reject others as inadequate or false." Since linguists have never defined their task as that of describing how we choose what to say about a particular situation, Mr. van der Hoven seems to be proposing a grand new vision of linguistics, based on the dubious assumption that a grammar of a language should distinguish between true and false statements. This confusion emerges at the very beginning of his critique. He quotes the claim that a semiological analysis of the conventions of astrological discourse "would not be fundamentally affected if future discoveries were to prove that everything the astrologers said were true. The same rules would underlie astrological discourse whether the predictions they yield are true or false." To this he objects that "for the serious users of this largely obsolete language, the truth (or at least supposed truth) of astrological statements is perhaps the single most important factor in the discourse." Doubtless it is, and thus the concerns of a consumer of astrology are very different from the concerns of the semiologist who is analyzing astrology as a signifying system. Mr. van der Hoven implies that the semiologist ought to change his purpose and investigate whether astrological predictions are true or false, since this is what worries serious users, but that would not be semiological investigation at all; it would be astronomy statistics, and perhaps sociology. The distinction between study of the rules of a system and study of the truth or falsity of particular statements or discourses produced by the system is absolutely basic, but since Mr. van der Hoven has apparently failed to grasp it, let us take another example. If someone were to utter the statement John is easy to please, his interlocutor might be particularly anxious to know whether this were really true or whether it were false, a lie designed to reassure. Truth or falsity of the statement might be "the single most important factor in the discourse," but this does not mean that the linguist should abandon his attempt to describe the grammar of English and concentrate instead on the truth or falsity of this sentence. The question of how the speaker decided what to say about John and what led him to pick this information rather than another might be a fruitful topic of research, but it is fundamentally different from the linguistic project of working out the underlying system of rules of a language. Failure to distinguish the two bespeaks confusion and can only result in confusion. Next there is the problem of the arbitrary nature of the sign, which is somewhat more complicated. Mr. van der Hoven cites as a critique of this principle the fact that there may be historical reasons for the emergence or evolution of a form: "there may still be appropriate reasons why the meaning of 'cattle' evolved as Culler suggests it did." In fact, his formulation here is too weak: in principle every change has a cause. As it happens, attempts to explain the emergence of a particular form, the adoption of one