Saturday, April 25, 2009

There is nothing in discourse that is not to be found in the sentence

GooseDrop! from The Daily Goose by Matthew

“I also tried to stop using phrases like of course and adverbs like surprisingly, predictably, understandably, and ironically, which place a value on a sentence before the reader has a chance to read it. Readers, I learned, are not as dumb as the writer thinks; they must be given room to play their role in the act of writing—to discover for themselves what’s surprising or predictable or understandable or ironic. They don’t want that pleasure usurped."

Rhetoric as a second linguistics from The Joyful Knowing by Mike Johnduff

From the point of view of linguistics, there is nothing in discourse that is not to be found in the sentence: "The sentence," writes Martinet, "is the smallest segment that is perfectly and wholly representative of discourse." Hence there can be no question of linguistics setting itself an object superior to the sentence, since beyond the sentence are only more sentences--having described the

Mar 27, 2009 Saying X rather than Y from The Joyful Knowing by Mike Johnduff

This is why I like I.A. Richards: the way he is so attentive to the psychology of communication, or rather how the necessities of communication require certain things from one's psychology. More fundamentally, it is his attentiveness to particular openings in the process of communication for reform, for precision, when that space is currently in complete disarray--precisely because we do not see

Logocentrism from Gaia Community: kelamuni's Blog

In an article on "Logocentrism, " Wikipedia says this: "Logocentrism is often used as a derogatory term, refering to the tendencies of some works to emphasize language or words to the exclusion or detriment of the matters to which they refer."

In other words: thought and langauge --- bad; "reality" and "experience" --- good. What beautiful, hilarious irony. A classic example of how the meaning of an idea is changed when it is coopted by popular thought, particularly when the original idea is potentially critical of the received conception.

In post-modern thought, "logocentrism" denotes exactly the opposite of the above. By "logocentrism" is meant the tendency to ground the meaning of words in a transcendental referent, in the "pure presence" of a self-same "thing" to the exclusion of its dependence upon the linguistic context in which the term is situated and to which it is related.

*Note that any account of meaning, or metaphysical account with an implied theory of meaning, that makes the prescriptive claim, "don't confuse the finger for the moon," will be "logocentric" insofar as it will imply a representationalist theory of perception, a referential or extensionalist theory of meaning, and a correspondence theory of truth.

1 comment:

  1. Unless it is spoken by, and thus empowered by a Realizer, all language and discourses are mere double-minded propaganda with the "I" as its center pole. And which always act as a protective hedge around the person who writes or utter the language.

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