Showing papers in "Semiotica in 1987"

Circumspection in psychotherapy: Structures and strategies of counselor-client interaction

Abstract: A number of studies have analyzed counselor-client interaction by examining routine therapeutic transactions to explicate the structures and strategies they exhibit (e.g., Labov and Fanshel 1977; Pittinger et al. 1960; Turner 1972). A central phenomenon in these transactions is the 'negotiation of illness' (Balint 1957). In the case of psychotherapy this negotiation is so essential to the treatment process that psychotherapy might be regarded as itself a process of covert negotiation. Client and counselor collaborate in developing a new definition of the client's situation which incorporates the input of the counselor. This negotiation, like other therapeutic activities, is carried out through conversational processes intrinsic to the interactional organization of psychotherapy (Blum and Rosenberg 1968). That is, there is no 'time out' during which this activity can be implemented; it must be accomplished over the developing course of activity in which it is embedded (Garfinkel 1967; Garfinkel and Sacks 1970). In certain circumstances the negotiation endemic to psychotherapy is carried out in especially circumspect ways. This paper examines some of these techniques as they are implemented at one community-based drug abuse treatment agency, here given the pseudonym 'Community Service Center' or 'CSC' (Peyrot 1982a). In cases referred to CSC from the criminal justice system both client and treatment agent are predisposed toward circumspection in their dealings with each other. On one hand, clients are coerced into treatment, often in spite of the fact that they do not want treatment. Many clients want only to satisfy the requirements imposed by the legal system without serious involvement in therapy, a fact generally recognized by treatment agents (Peyrot 1982b). At the same time, clients try to avoid alienating the treatment agents who must certify their participation in therapy if they are to satisfy the requirements for drug treatment. On the other hand, therapists at CSC face an undersupply of clients and must be solicitous of clients because they need every client they can get. Therefore, they try to avoid confrontations which may alienate their clients.

The Identification and role of topic in spoken interaction

Abstract: Spoken discourse is structured on a number of levels. Riley (1977), for example, identifies three. First, there is the formal structure of the discourse, achieved through the grammar of the language. Next is the illocutionary structure, which is achieved through the communication of the ideas and intentions of the speakers. Third there is the interactive structure, which is achieved through turn-taking processes, the roles of the speakers and how they behave in the discourse. It is at the level of illocutionary structure that the thread of topic can most closely be followed. There are further structures that play important roles, for example the structure of thought processes and memory. Different authors have differing opinions as to which of these structures is dominant or of particular importance. Levy (1979) considers the mind to be central, but states that he cannot ignore the structures of the text. The ethnomethodologists (for example, Turner [1974]) concentrate their attention on the interactive aspects of spoken discourse. Traditional linguistics has been most concerned with the formal structures of language. It is apparent that there are elements of spoken discourse that are principally concerned with topical talk, which, being a matter of ideas and information, is centrally conceptual, and related to what Halliday (1970) has called the ideational function of language. Other elements are present to ensure, for example, that the channels of communication remain open, and this is related to Halliday's interpersonal function. Greetings are examples of the latter. It would seem worthwhile to consider the role that topic — roughly speaking the coherent stringing together of propositions — has in structuring discourse, in particular conversations. Specifically it may be asked what role topic has in the illocutionary structure mentioned by Riley above, and what the relationship of topic to individual propositions and illocutions in the discourse is. There are, however, considerable problems in formally identifying topic, and then of establishing the extent to which topic is crucial in the structuring of discourse.

An initial investigation of the usability of fictional conversation for doing conversation analysis

Abstract: This paper proposes that fictional conversations be taken seriously as objects for conversation analysis. It also goes some small way towards exemplifying such an analysis. However, the field of ethnomethodology/ conversation analysis has not been exactly quick to embrace literary materials to date, and it has been especially neglectful of fictional (literary and dramatic) dialogue. Again seriously: one may wonder why this has been the case.

Interpretation and the semiotics of allegory in Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine

Abstract: In discussions of the nature of interpretation from classical to modern times, the term 'allegory' and its cognates have been used in a variety of ways which need to be distinguished. In classical treatments of the subject, allegoria was one of the grammatico-rhetorical tropes, a species of metaphor or transferred, non-literal discourse, where the transfer of meaning was understood to be continuous throughout a sentence or a larger narrative unit. Classical grammarians, especially those of Stoic persuasion, interpreted Homer and other religious and mythological texts as if allegories were interwoven in the narratives, thus making allegoria seem more like a function of interpretation, commentary, or exegesis, activities which seek to renew a text according to the discursive practices of prevailing philosophies and ideologies. Classical thought did not readily distinguish the trope from its interpretation in a commentary. In the terms of post-Augustinian Christian exegesis, a biblical text may have three 'levels' of allegory, one of which was called allegory, and the signfunctions of biblical allegory were accounted for in terms of the grammatical trope. The trope and the discourse substituted for the trope (the interpretation) could both be called allegory. This often confusing dual treatment of allegory (one from the side of the production of discourse, the other from interpretation or exegesis) foregrounds what both have in common — the problematic status of polysemous or over-coded meaning, But allegory also foregrounds an important principle of all interpretation or commentary: interpretation seeks to reveal, in another or supplementary text, what was signified but unexpressed or suppressed in the text being interpreted. Both rhetor and exegete presuppose that allegory is constituted by an essential semiotic supplementarity. The purpose of this essay is to explore the principles of interpretation in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine, writers who utilized the classical grammatical tradition and established the central interpretive methodology for medieval semiotics and exegesis. These writers share a sophisticated understanding of textual semiosis —

Medieval studies and semiotics: Perspectives on research

Abstract: In this brief essay I would like to rough out in broad strokes a summary — and of necessity only a sketchy one — of the current shape of research in sign theory in the Middle Ages, the semiotics of the medieval period, or what is now being called 'medieval semiotics' by a group of scholars working from a variety of specialized research interests under the banner of 'Medieval Semiotic Studies'. The acronym for this group's name is evocative of one (but only one) physical medium in which the group finds the object of its investigations located: manuscripts. A distinction is made hereby that is not insignificant: for if manuscripts dating from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries preserve a great number of the texts whose editions, analyses, interpretations, translations, etc. have occupied traditional medieval research ever since this field of studies came out of the thicket of antiquarianism into the clearing of respectable academic pursuit in the nineteenth century, then the treatment of the period itself, and of the manifold discrete cultural products assigned to it, as a polysystem (EvenZohar 1979) of texts (see, for example, Sponsler, this issue) promises to occupy the next century of medieval studies. And it is certain that just as semioticians will come increasingly to recognize the importance of the Middle Ages in the history of semiotics, so medievalists will come to a fuller realization of the pivotal position of semiotics in medieval culture.

Benveniste’s notion of subjectivity in the active metaphors of ordinary language

Abstract: In a state-of-the-art article, Armstrong (1982) describes how three major publications during 1981-1982 aim at reconciling post-Saussurean theory with traditional criticism (1982: 247), and she concludes by pointing out that post-structuralism 'seems more interested in challenging the assumptions of structuralism and semiotics than it does those of traditional criticism ...' (1982: 274). What strikes a linguist about the presence of these three texts, the review article, and especially Armstrong's conclusion is how successful linguistic-based literary theory has been. The graft has truly taken. Literary structuralists have done more than merely borrow terminology and methodology from Saussurean linguistics; they also have come to think like linguists. No more convincing evidence of this habit of mind can be found than that described in Armstrong's conclusion. Post-structuralist literary theorists now engage in an activity that, since the Chomskian revolution, has become secondnature to a literary theorist, that of using the metalanguage of a theory to question the assumptions of the very theory that consists of the metalanguage. Far from signalling the demise of structuralism, poststructuralist critical introversion is a natural result of a characteristic linguistic orientation. The reconciliation of linguistics and literature has also begun to have an effect on linguists. Whereas literary theorists have borrowed terms and a method from linguists, linguists, in their turn, have recently begun to borrow a subject matter, metaphor, from literary theorists and rhetoricians. Before about 1965, mainline North American linguists whose work centered on ordinary language use, rarely wrote about the structure of metaphor. In fact, Armstrong comments upon how radical it is for a linguist, such as George Lakoff, to see all language as essentially metaphorical (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Lakoff's theoretical bias notwithstanding, this booklength choice of subject matter, in itself, is a radical departure for a North American ordinary language linguist. Isolated papers have appeared here and there (see for example Bicker-

‘Dreaming of the Middle Ages’: An unpublished fragment

Abstract: I once wrote a long essay in which I said that we are living in a new Middle Ages. But by that I meant an era of transition, of political, cultural, and technological transformation between the end of a worldwide empire and the rise of a new political balance — a very pluralistic period in which the whole deck of historical cards is shuffled and no nostalgia for the past is allowed. My Middle Ages were a realistic period of nostalgia for the future. But the Middle Ages, we have seen, can also be taken as a model for a Tradition that assumes, by definition, to always be right. These Middle Ages are forged by the Merchants of the Absolute, and we must challenge them, under the standard of a New Critique of Impure Reason. What our so-called post-modern era has in common with the Middle Ages is its encyclopedic voracity and flexibility. Okay. And it is legitimate to privilege the cathedral of Strassbourg, celebrated by Goethe, over the boring geometries of the Renaissance. But we cannot forget that Galileo was right, and no dream can convince us that he was wrong. Thus, long life to the Middle Ages and to the dreaming of them, provided that it is not the dream of reason. We have already generated too many monsters.

When is a question an accusation

Abstract: Within the study of naturally occurring talk, the sequencing of utterances, and in particular the structure of 'adjacency pairs', has drawn continuing attention (e.g., in Sacks 1974; Sacks etal. 1974; Schegloff 1968, 1979; Schegloff and Sacks 1973; Atkinson and Drew 1979). Adjacency pairs are two-part sequenced utterances in the first part of which a speaker specifies both the next speaker and the type of response appropriate, for example in summons/response, greeting/greeting, or request/acceptance-denial adjacency pairs. While there may be options available in the construction of the second part of an adjacency pair — for example, a request may be met with an acceptance, denial, or a counter-request — a failure to produce at least one of the expected second parts is noticeable and would merit explanation or action. For example, in a summons/response sequence a failure to answer a summons might lead to a repetition of the summons, or a request for an explanation of the failure to answer (Schegloff 1968). Because of the constraints which surround the production of the second part of an adjacency pair, much attention has been directed toward its accomplishment. However, producing a response which falls within the range of expectations for that sequence is not actually the respondent's initial problem. Rather, the first difficulty rests in recognizing some utterance as the initiating first part of a sequence: an utterance must first be identified as a greeting, question, or summons before one can begin the construction of a response. This is a problem of recognition faced by any respondent, and it turns our attention to the first part of the adjacency pair. What are its markers? How is it recognized? Certainly each type of adjacency pair poses its own problems concerning the recognition of its first part. In the discussion which follows, attention focuses on identifying the markers of an accusation, the first part of the adjacency pair accusation/denial-acceptance.

Aspects of the classification of illocutionary acts and the notion of the perlocutionary act

Abstract: This paper is a report of some observations made in an ongoing research on spoken discourse analysis. The data collected at this stage consist of three hours of dyadic conversations and three hours of telephone conversations among native-speakers of English. The observations pertain first to the weaknesses of Austin's and Searle's taxonomies and subsequent taxonomies of illocutionary acts, and second to their distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary act and subsequent distinctions proposed. This study points out that these weaknesses result from the analysis of utterances in isolation and the use of fabricated data, and that unless we analyze utterances in the context of discourse and turn to empirical data whenever doubt arises, the weaknesses will remain.

Victor W. Turner (1920-1983)

Abstract: Biographie de l'anthropologue ecossais V. W. Turner. Ses travaux en anthropologie symbolique et en semiotique

On the window structure of narrative discourse

Abstract: Recent research in discourse analysis (e.g., Reichman 1981) has shown that the organization of discourse is anything but a linear process. By linear process I mean the steady and cumulative development of a topic until this topic, being exhausted, is dropped and replaced by another. This conception is currently being challenged by the view that discourse organization possesses 'depth', a dimension which allows several topics or contexts to be alive at the same time. While only one context may be developed at a given time, this context bears a specific relationship to other contexts which have been left in a waiting state. To follow discourse properly, the hearer or participant must be able to distribute the information received into several distinct 'boxes', each corresponding to a distinct context. When a topic is abandoned, he must know whether the box containing the information pertaining to that topic is being definitively or provisionally closed and which other contexts are candidates for reactivation. When a formerly active context is being reopened, its relation to the other contexts must be reassessed and its content must be appropriately updated according to the apparent consensus of the speakers. Participating in a conversation is a matter of relating information to its proper context, knowing when a new context can be introduced or an old one reactivated, remembering the sequence of contexts leading up to the current one, and keeping track of the status of the live but noncurrent contexts. Compared to conversation, narrative strikes us as a much more linear form of discourse. The reasons are twofold: first, a narrative creates a socalled narrative universe, and this universe acts as a unifying frame of reference for the entire text; second, the subject matter of narrative is a temporal succession of events and actions. For this view to hold, all narratives should follow the pattern exemplified below:

Instructional semantics for presuppositions

Abstract: Despite numerous analyses developed in linguistic circles in recent years, the notion of presupposition continues to be one of the most problematic within linguistic investigation. The difficulty in dealing with presuppositions seems to arise at two different levels: on the one hand, the delimitation of the objects under investigation; on the other, the different explanations of the phenomenon. In regard to the problem of delimitation, presupposition seems to be a 'fuzzy' category, or an umbrella term covering assorted semiotic phenomena. In ordinary language the usage of the word 'presupposition' is much broader than in the technical sense. The technical concept of presupposition is restricted to certain kinds of inferences or assumptions, which are characteristically built into linguistic expressions and linked to some specific formal features. Moreover, they can be isolated using a specific linguistic test (traditionally, the negation test). However, even if this first distinction between ordinary and technical usage of the word delimits the domain of application, excluding all inferences and implicatures depending on general world-knowledge and co-textual information (see below), the precise definition of the problem is far from clear. In the literature, a large number of syntactic structures and lexical items have been associated with presuppositional phenomena: 1. Definite description. Since the classical works of Frege (1892), Russell (1905) and Strawson (1950), presuppositions of existence were connected with the nature of reference and referential expressions, namely proper names and definite descriptions: John met the man with the red hat presupposes that there is a man with a red hat. 2. Some particular verbs, namely: a. Factive verbs (Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1971): George regrets that Mary left presupposes that Mary left.

Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness, and Cha(u)nciness

Abstract: If we endeavour to form our conceptions upon history and life, we remark three classes of men. The first consists of those for whom the chief thing is the quality of feelings. These men create art. The second consists of the practical men, who carry on the business of the world. They respect nothing but power, and respect power only so far as it [is] exercised. The third class consists of men to whom nothing seems great but reason. If force interests them, it is not in its exertion, but in that it has a reason and a law. For men of the first class, nature is a picture; for men of the second class, it is an opportunity; for men of the third class, it is a cosmos, so admirable, that to penetrate to its ways seems to them the only thing that makes life worth living. These are the men whom we see possessed by a passion to learn, just as other men have a passion to teach and to disseminate their influence. If they do not give themselves over completely to their passion to learn, it is because they exercise self-control. Those are the natural scientific men; and they are the only men that have any real success in scientific research. (CP 1935-1966: 1.43)

Two aspects of Roger Bacon’s semiotic theory in De Signis

Abstract: Umberto Eco and John Deeley in their lectures on the historical foundations of semiotics at the Fourth International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies ( June 1983, Indiana University, Bloomington) drew attention to a somewhat neglected figure in the history of semiotics: Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1292). Eco indicated the potential importance of a tract written by Bacon on the theory of signs (De Signis) which heretofore has received little or no attention. Eco's remarks concentrated on two aspects of Bacon's semiotic thought: the general classification of signs, which Bacon outlines in the opening sections of De Signis, and a reconstruction of a 'semiotic triangle'. The purpose of this paper is to explore more deeply some aspects of Bacon's semiotic thought as revealed in De Signis. Since Bacon's life and work as a whole is not well known to the history of semiotics, I also attempt here to outline briefly some key points of his broader life and thought. Roger Bacon holds a place of respect in the history of Western philosophy and science. Under the influence of Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253) he attempted to develop a universal system of knowledge (scientia universalis) that would encompass the fields of knowledge as they were understood in the thirteenth century (Easton 1952). For Bacon, this meant two integrating factors: the importance of a mathematical treatment of all sciences, and an emphasis upon matching mathematical formulations with the empirical study of the world. Bacon's famous dictum 'nihil est in intellectu quod prius nonfuerit in sensu (nothing is in the intellect which was not first of all in the senses), while being an expression of his beliefs about the origin of understanding, is also crucial for his belief about how we can arrive at certainty in regard to our (mathematically formulated) theories. In keeping with the stress on empirical investigation, Bacon wrote theoretical and descriptive studies

La sémiotique de Port-Royal: Du savoir au vouloir (-dire)

Abstract: 1. L'archeologie du savoir de Foucault en tant que semiotique concue comme analyse des codes culturels. 2. Port-Royal : De l'emploi discursif des signes a une theorie quaternaire du signe. 3. Vers une metasemiotique : la pragmatique de l'emploi et de l'interpretation des signes

On hanging up in telephone conversation

Abstract: The subject of this paper is a brief telephone conversation between a fouryear-old boy, Nahod, and a five-year-old giri, Kini. In attempting to finish their conversation they select who will hang up first. At this point in the conversation hanging up becomes an endless 'problem', with neither child being able to realize the actual action of hanging up. The aim of this paper is first to describe how the children were not able to hang up after mutual agreement as to who would hang up first, and second, to discuss how hanging up is relevant to practical reasoning in telephone conversation. The following is an extract from a telephone conversation between the two children mentioned above:

Dress right, dress: The Boy Scout uniform as a folk costume

Abstract: Modern American adults tend to understand children's lives and the culture of young people more in terms of adult meanings than in terms of the meanings shared by the young participants. The sight of young people in uniforms is a case in point. A common adult response to Boy Scouts in uniform is negative, seeing in the uniform a paramilitary association of little value. This century's experience with the Hitler Youth, and with what is still explicitly a paramilitary use of youth organizations (including the Boy Scouts) in some societies, reinforces the impression that young people in uniforms stand for anti-democratic, authoritarian, aggressive values that betray both American principles and the innocent culture of the child. This first response to the sight of young people in uniforms hides a deeper paradox that folklorists ought to explore. As we expand our inquiry to include the expressive cultures of modern, bourgeois groups like firefighters, peace officers, military personnel, health professionals, and Boy Scouts, we face the fact that these groups are often in uniform (Joseph and Alex 1972). The paradox of a 'folk in uniform', therefore, is that many folk groups in modern society must generate an expressive culture under the condition of a severely restricted vocabulary of dress, a vocabulary chosen by the more powerful in the bureaucratic hierarchy within which the face-to-face folk group exists. Of course, even traditional folk groups in some sense face an equally narrow range of choices when it comes to dress. Yoder's (1972: 196) definition of folk costume — i.e., 'that form of dress which (1) outwardly symbolizes the identity of a folk community and (2) expresses the individual's manifold relationships to and within that community' — is broad enough to include the folk groups among the American bourgeoisie; and case studies of folk costume among the more rural, traditional American folk groups suggest clothing vocabularies that are in many cases not much broader than those of a uniform. But whereas in the case of the Amish, for example, the community senses that the restricted dress

The effects of play contexts on the development of preschool children’s verbalized fantasy

Abstract: A number of researchers (e.g., Fein 1975, 1981; Field et al. 1982; Mathews 1977; McLoyd 1980) have attempted to document the developmental sequence, suggested by Piaget (1962), whereby preschool children transform routine events, objects, and roles into fantasy. These researchers have suggested that with development, preschool children tend to symbolize objects, roles, and events in increasingly abstract ways. Children's fantasy transformations, they argued, are first dependent upon realistic objects present in the play environment. As development progresses, children's transformations become relatively independent of objects present. Matthews (1977) and McLoyd (1980) have constructed continua which describe this process. These continua were constructed by observing same-age and same-sex dyads interacting with toys typically found in preschool classrooms. More specifically, dyads were brought into an experimental playroom equipped with a variety of toys. The children were free to play with any of a number of different toys during the observations. Children's play behavior was then categorized on continua of symbolic behavior as object or ideational transformations. McLoyd (1980) categorized the development of the language that preschoolers used to engage in symbolic play, i.e., verbalized fantasy, as either object or ideational transformations. In object transformations children used language to assign an imaginary property or identity to an object; ideational transformations, on the other hand, involved children using language to create fantasy which was relatively independent of objects. McLoyd found that neither of these forms of verbalized fantasy changed significantly in children from three and a half to five years. She did, however, detect sex differences; girls, generally, made more transformations than boys. A methodological problem exists in the McLoyd (1980) study. In this study, children were free to play with a number of different play props (e.g., blocks, puzzles, dolls, trucks, etc). When children are free to choose play props, some children may systematically opt to play with certain

The role of the unconscious in nonverbal information processing

Abstract: The intent of this paper is to show that the unconscious is the main source of control for nonverbal behavior, and to indicate some of the implications of that hypothesis. The unconscious is often mentioned in passing in our literature on nonverbal behavior, but readers are rarely given much detail; this leads to the suspicion that the writers have little detail to communicate. Let me begin this paper by commenting briefly on a standard — and otherwise fine — text in the area (Knapp 1980). A quick survey of Knapp's book finds him explaining that conversational distances are regulated unconsciously (1980: 81), that facial displays are usually done unconsciously (1980: 164), and that people may well learn their nonverbal skills unconsciously (1980: 232). All this is probably true, and Knapp's claims are not controversial. The striking thing about these discussions, however, is that they tend to stop after the assertion about unconscious control. How is distance regulated unconsciously? How does the unconscious control facial display? What is unconscious learning, and how does it take place? These are the sorts of questions that a full treatment of nonverbal behavior ought to answer, and they have rarely been addressed in our literature on speech communication. To see the importance of exploring the role of the unconscious in nonverbal behavior, consider Knapp's statement that distance regulation is controlled out of consciousness. We can specify at least the following background assumptions implied in Knapp's claim: 1. Without conscious eifort, physical distance is accurately perceived and remembered. 2. Distance rules are stored out of consciousness. 3. Appropriate distance rules are activated without consciousness. 4. The unconscious tests distances' conformity with the appropriatelychosen rules, and makes decisions about the propriety of various distances. 5. The unconscious has sufficient control of motor processes to move the body in conformity with the distance rules.

The Performance as an Interpretant of the Drama

Abstract: Processus de transformation qui s'operent lors du passage du texte dramatique a la mise en scene et a la performance de la piece. L'A. degage deux principes : la transformation lineaire qui suit l'ordre des signes verbaux du texte dramatique| la transformation globale qui est le resultat d'une transformation de la piece ecrite comprise comme un tout. Dans tous les cas, lorsque la piece se joue, les signes theâtraux fonctionnent comme des interpretants des signes verbaux. A cause de leur iconicite, ils ont toujours un sens qui differe des simples signes verbaux, mais la performance proprement dite peut etre definie comme un travail en soi et, en meme temps, comme la transformation du script

The metalanguage of transformational syntax: Relations between jargon and theory

Abstract: Linguists have long been interested in the jargon used in professional fields, having as their object not merely the collection of jargon terms but also the investigation of how such terms are adopted or created within a given profession and how they are interpreted by nonspecialists (see for example Caso 1980 and Landau 1980). Ironically, however, linguists have given little attention to the jargon of linguistics itself. The few works that do examine the terminology used by linguists concentrate, for the most part, on problems that have arisen from the inconsistent use of terminology across linguistic fields (for discussion, see Firth 1948; Hartmann 1971,1973). To my knowledge, though, no extended study has been made of how linguistic jargon constitutes a semantically cohesive vocabulary. This question is especially interesting with respect to the jargon used by linguists working within the transformational-generative theory of syntax. Since its inception, transformational grammar has undergone a shift in theoretical orientation from Standard Theory (ST) (dating from 1957 to approximately 1970) to Extended Standard Theory (EST) (dating from 1970 to the present). In turn, this shift in theoretical outlook has been paralleled by a shift in metalanguage. Upon examining those ST and EST terms with dual reference — that is, those terms that have both specialized (metalinguistic) and nontechnical meanings — one finds that the ST and EST lexicons are unified by diametrically opposed metaphorical frameworks. Furthermore, the semantic differences between the ST and EST lexicons reinforce the theoretical differences between these two approaches to transformational syntax. Finally, in their attempts to apply transformational theory to other domains, nonlinguists in fields such as composition have misinterpreted the metalanguage, and hence the claims, of ST, apparently as a result of the metaphorical framework which unifies

Translatio studii et imperii: Sir Gawain as literary critic

Abstract: The attempt to assess the poetics of the medieval period poses a number of related problems for the modern literary critic. On the one hand, the textual material that has been preserved from the Middle Ages does not examine poetics in a fashion that is easily translatable in modern literarycritical terms. On the other hand, the texts that modern critics tend to use for the purpose of eliciting medieval poetic theory favor other genres of medieval writing over the specifically poetic text, focusing instead, for example, upon rhetorical, theological, and philosophical material rather than upon poems. Such genres as these are useful as a back-drop against which medieval literary theory may be judged, but somewhat limited when tapped as the sole source for explicating this period's poetics. More useful, perhaps, for the modern critic's attempts to uncover and assess the poetics informing medieval literature is the narrative literature of the period itself. The commonly held view of language as an inherently multivalent vehicle of communication enabled — and' probably inspired — poets to create multivalent narratives. Like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (the subject of the present inquiry, a number of these narratives include levels in which the poet, self-reflexively, metacritically, addresses the art of poetry. Clearly, the multivalence of some medieval narrative poems provides a way for the modern literary theorist to uncover rather sophisticated literary theoretical perspectives. In pursuing the problem of medieval literary theory, I am struck by the similarity between some medieval approaches and Maria Corti's theses in her Principi della comunicazione letter aria (1976). To simplify, Corti's work is a general assessment that considers literature in terms of an information and communication system, best analyzed both synchronically and diachronically (Corti 1978: 1-19, 63-66). She sees the poetic text as a hypersign (Corti 1978: 78-80, 89-114), which can function as such only because of its dependency on, while breaking away from, the texts which form its tradition, or in her terms, the literary system (Corti 1978: 131-137). This view of the literary

Remarks on the topology and kinematics of speech and writing

Abstract: Speech and writing are two forms of language expression that are distinct from each other in respect to their production, reception, and substance. The differences — and, sometimes, similarities — which I shall discuss in this article are of another kind, namely those of topology and kinematics, i.e., of geometrical distribution and kinematic states of rest and motion. The notions of topology and kinematics of these two forms of expression can be understood in two ways, either physical or semiotic. The four resulting dimensions of properties are to be compared in this article. Nonetheless, if the main goal is to grasp the characteristic properties and above all the characteristic differences of the two forms of expression, then these four dimensions do not obtrude in the same way or with the same force. The dimension which obtrudes most forcibly is that of physical kinematics, because the main characteristic, the differentia specified, of speech seems to be physical motion whereas the differentia specified of writing seems to be physical rest. On closer inspection it turns out that the physically kinematic relationship between speech and writing is not so clearly polarized. This polarization is due only to a reduction in the multitude of variants by which these two phenomena are characterized. Thus, writing occurs not only in a state of physical rest, but also, like speech, in a state of physical motion. For the sake of convenience, I shall distinguish the two modes as wriiing-at-rest and writing-in-motion respectively, although they are by no means uniform. There is writing-in-motion which leaves traces and writing-in-motion which does not. In the case where writing-in-motion leaves traces, we may make further distinctions with regard to the nature and the duration of the traces. Of particular interest is the parameter of the duration of the traces. From a theoretical standpoint this parameter seems to permit only a system of gradual distinctions. From a pragmatic standpoint, however, it seems possible to reduce this gradual system to a dichotomy and to draw a distinction between traces which have the duration of a moving line (as

Models of narrative structure

Abstract: Narrative theory has a long tradition of borrowing its models from linguistics. This borrowing goes on in two senses of the word; one kind of borrowing involves modeling narrative on a linguistic phenomenon. An example is Genette's (1981) use of the verb and its secondary categories (aspect, mood, voice, etc.) as an analogue for the story and its elements (point of view, narrator, etc.). Other examples of the first kind of borrowing include Todorov's (1977) and Kristeva's (1970) analogy between the parts of a story and the parts of a sentence, with events as verbs, characters as nouns, attributes of characters as adjectives. The second type of borrowing, which is the type that I am concerned with here, involves modeling narrative on a linguistic theory. We find, for example, Dundes' (1965) motifeme and Dorfman's (1969) narreme, which borrow the paradigm — to use Thomas Kuhn's term — of structural linguistics; and Colby's (1973) and Prince's (1973, 1980) theories, which borrow the paradigm of transformational-generative grammar. The models employed by linguistic theory tend to be visual. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, linguistic models generally take the form of twodimensional representations, 'diagrams' (Stewart 1976). This is not surprising in view of the role played by visual thinking even in the more 'respectable' hard sciences like physics. Everyone knows the story of Kekule's formulation of the structure of the benzene ring — falling asleep in front of the fire, dreaming of a snake with its tail in its mouth, and waking up with the Aha! response that Koestler talks about, knowing that the molecular structure must be circular. Einstein himself said that he thought in visual terms until a problem had been solved; its translation into a verbal formulation came at the end. Models taken from linguistics and used in narrative theory fall into two groups: constituent analysis models and flowchart models. Models for the constituent analysis (or 'parsing') of individual stories take the form of the 'tree' diagrams used by both structural and transformational linguistics to represent a variety of concepts (Stewart

Of position papers, paradigms, and paradoxes

Abstract: Consider three polemical statements, conceivably representing an imaginary 'post-modernist's' reaction to the State-of-the-Art Conference on semiotics at Bloomington, Indiana in October of 1984, and more specifically to a 'position paper' (Anderson et al. 1984) completed shortly before the Conference: 1. The traditional idea of foundations implies the necessity of closure, of transcendental fixity. It can also be, and has often been, dangerously imperialistic. 2. The notion of epistemology, which is related to scientia, or what is ordinarily conceived to be fully demonstrated and unalterable knowledge, may actually serve to stifle a free spirit of inquiry. 3. Attempts toward a unity of the 'human sciences' and the 'natural sciences' can be nothing more than a Utopian dream destined to suffer the fate of the Vienna Circle's International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. What is the relevance, if any, of the Vienna Circle, logical positivism, and the Unified Science idea to the State-of-the-Art Conference or to the above-mentioned 'position paper'? How could our imaginary bystander establish such connections? In general, are those who support the field (discipline, method) of semiotics indeed in search of ultimate epistemological foundations? If so, is their quest motivated by illusions concerting sciential Descartes, of course, was among the first of the modern philosophers to attempt to provide us with foundations: a firm and permanent structure for the sciences, an Archimedean point, intuition, which would lead to indubitable knowledge. Aside from Peirce's rejection of the Cartesian doctrine, well known to semioticians, it bears mentioning that Descartes gave us an either/or imperative: either there is a fixed foundation for knowledge, or darkness is inescapable, and madness, ignorance, and

‘Making it’ in the Merchant’s Tale: Chaucer’s signs of January’s fall

Abstract: The application of contemporary sign theory or semiotics in the analysis of medieval literature in general, and of Chaucerian literature in particular, remains a fairly controversial issue. Such established medievalists as Morton W. Bloomfield and Florence Ridley have argued in print over the usefulness of this critical approach in recent essays which evaluate contemporary literary theories as applied to Chaucer's works. Calling semiotics 'peripheral' to the study of medieval texts (1981:26), and regretting the current lack of interest in more traditional tools of literary analysis, Bloomfield has strongly advocated a renewed emphasis on philology in such endeavors (1979: 411). Taking a more positive attitude to the newer approaches, Ridley anticipates that these new theoretical assays are signs 'that we are on the verge of new developments in Chaucer studies' (1981a: 51). Mediating between these two positions, Brian Stock suggests that 'semiotics is perhaps most skillfully deployed in concert with more traditional historical tools, not in isolation' (1979: 392). In their collection, Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry, John Hermann and John Burke warn,