Fludernik, Monika (2005) “Histories of Narrative Theory (II): From Structuralism to the Present” in A Companion to Narrative Theory (eds.) James Phelan & Peter J. Rabinowits: 36-59. Oxford: Blackwell.

Structuralist Narratology: The Rage of Binary Opposition, Categorization, and Typology

Genette’s famous distinction between “who speaks” (the narrator) and “who sees” (what Bal calls the focalizer) helped to promote a narratology that maximizes discreteness and precision in classification. – 40

According to Bal, focalization properly defined requires both a focalizer and an object of focalization. She therefore distinguishes who does the following (an extradiegetic narrator, a character) and what is being focused on (the external behavior of a character or the character’s mind – this corresponds to Genette’s external vs. internal focalization). – 41

Beyond Form: Pragmatics, Gender, and Ideology

The “Narrative Turn” and the Media

The Present: The Cognitivist Turn and the Resurrection of the Linguistic Model

Phelan, James & Rabinowitz, Peter J. (2005) “Introduction: Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Narrative Theory” in A Companion to Narrative Theory (eds.) James Phelan & Peter J. Rabinowitz: 1 – 16. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

We have the search for the stable landing, a theoretical bedrock of the fundamental and unchanging principles on which narratives are built. This approach is often associated with what is called structuralist (or classical) narratology, and especially after the rise of post-structuralism, it is often viewed as old-fashioned, even quaint – and it is often believed to yank the life out of the works it considers. – 1-2

Hinton, Perry (2007) “The cultural context of media interpretation” in Handbook of Intercultural Communication (eds.) Helga Kotthoff & Helen Spencer-Oatey: 323-339. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

Introduction

The research in ‘audience reception’, for example, examines a more complex relationship of the audience with the programme – as an integrated element within their everyday lives – encompassing their culture and what it means to them within the discourse of their everyday lives. (Alasuutari 1999) – 323

2. Media effects

3. Audience interpretation

It is possible that the audience in one country may thoroughly enjoy the programme from another country for different reasons, such as the exotic ‘otherness’ of it, compared to those of the audience in the original country, which may be reflecting their everyday concerns. – 329

4. Concluding comments

Zegarac, Vladimir (2007) “A cognitive pragmatic perspective on communication and culture” in Handbook of Intercultural Communication (eds.) Helga Kotthoff & Helen Spencer-Oatey: 31-53. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

1. Introduction

For example, the wink of an eye. Is it a physical reflex from dust in the eye? Or an invitation to a prospective date? Or could it be someone making fun of you to others? Perhaps a nervous tick? The wink itself is real, but its meaning is attributed to it by observers. The attributed meaning may or may not coincide with the intended meaning of the wink. Effective social interaction, though, depends on the attributed meaning and intended meaning coinciding. [emphasis VZ] (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner 1997: 24) - 32

The concept of communicative intention is important, because people generally pay attention to those phenomena which are evidently produced with the intention to convey information. – 32-33

2. Examples of relevance-theoretic account of (inter-cultural) communication

an act of ostensive behaviour (such as pointing gesture, a [deliberate] wink, or an utterance) makes evident the communicators’ intention to inform the addressee/audience of something. Comprehension is an inference (i.e. reasoning) process which takes the evidence presented by the communicative act (i.e. an ostensive stimulus) and the context as inputs, and yields interpretations as outputs. – 33-34

3. The epidemiological approach to culture

4. Relevance in cognition

5. Relevance in communication

the cultural environment of an individual is a subset of that individual’s cognitive environment, and the mutual cultural environment of two or more people, is a subset of their mutual cognitive environment. The terms cultural environment and mutual cultural environment are useful because they provide a principled basis for distinguishing between issues relating to context selection in inter- and intra-cultural communication. – 50

6. Conclusion

David, Herman (2005) “Histories of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments” in A Companion to Narrative Theory (eds.) James Phelan & Peter J. Rabinowits: 19-35. Oxford: Blackwell.

Introduction

Theory of Literature and Narrative Theory: A Case Study

Early Twentieth-Century Narrative Poetics: “Morphological” Models in Germany and Russia

“Anatomy and morphology share the assumption that an organism is a set of parts… [But whereas] anatomy is satisfied with separating and identifying the parts, morphology informs us that the diverse parts make up a higher-order, structured whole. Morphology is a theory of the formation of complex structures from individual parts.” (Doležel 1990: 56) – 23

German scholars […] distinguished between disposition (logical arrangement) and composition (artistic arrangement) of the structural elements contained within narratives. – 23

Like Dibelius, Propp subordinated character to plot, focusing not on particularized actors but on recurrent, plot-based “functions” instantiated by various individuals across the tales. – 23

in distinguishing between “bound” (or plot-relevant) and “force” (or nonplot-relevant) motifs, Boris Tomashevsky provided the basis for Barthes’s distinction between “nuclei” and “catalyzers” in his “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives”. Renames kernels and satellites by Seymour Chatman, these terms refer to core and peripheral elements of story-content, respectively. Delete or add to the kernel events to the story and you no longer have the same story; delete or add to the satellites and you have the same story told in a different way. – 25

the fabula-sjuzet or story-discourse distinction, that is, the distinction between what and the how, or what is being told about versus the manner in which it is told. – 25

Morphology II: Organic Form, Anglo-American Formalism, and Beyond

The Structuralist Synecdoche: Narratology after Russian Formalism

In Jonathan Culler’s phrase, “linguistic is not hermeneutic”; that is, linguistic analysis seeks to provide not interpretation of particular utterances, but rather a general account of the conditions of possibility for the production and processing of grammatically acceptable forms and sequences. – 30

Structural analysis of stories concerned itself not with what narratively organized sign systems mean but rather with how they mean, and more specifically with how they mean as narratives. – 30

Wellek and Warren Revisited: A Genealogical Perspective

Gumperz, John J. & Cook-Gumperz, Jenny (2007) “Discourse, cultural diversity and communication: a linguistic anthropological perspective” in Handbook of Intercultural Communication (eds.) Helga Kotthoff & Helen Spencer-Oatey: 13-29. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

1. Language difference and cultural relativity

language differences affecting interpretation in everyday life are not just matters of  semantics and grammar. Speaking and understanding also depend on the social situations in which verbal exchanges take place. – 13

2. Ethnography of communication

culture was essentially a communicative phenomena, constituted through talk. – 15

a second approach emerged that focuses directly on the organization of speech exchanges and takes a broader view of language as communicating both content and metapragmatic or indexical information about content. This later approach became known as interactional sociolinguistics. – 16

One cannot, therefore, assume that communicating is simply a matter of individuals transforming their ideas into signs by means of a culturally acquired code. Instead we concentrate on participants’ own context-bound, situated, on-line processing of information. – 17

In interpreting what they hear, interactants focus not just on the referential content of messages, but on what a speaker, intends to communicate. – 17

Interpretations also rely on perceptions of extralinguistic context, knowledge of the world, as well as on the cultural presuppositions that are brought to the interaction. – 17

3. Communicative practice and conversational inference

Communicative practice provides a unifying concept for the analysis of context-bound everyday talk that enables us to deal with grammar and semiotics as they enter into situated interpretation, along with cultural presuppositions that rely on two types of knowledge: (a) grammar and lexical signs that signal via well know grammatical rules and lexical semantics and (b) indexical signs, and among them contextualization conventions that signal by direct association between sign and context. – 18

Conversational inference is defined as situated, context-bound process of interpretation by means of which participants in an exchange assess other participants’ communicative intentions and on which they base their own responses. – 18

4. Interpretation in interaction

5. Misunderstandings as resource for generalizations about communicative practice.

6. Interactional sociolinguistics’ contribution to intercultural communication

7. Conclusion

Blommaert, Jan (2007) “Sociolinguistic scales” in Intercultural Pragmatics 4-1: 1-19.

space is not a passive background but an agentive force in sociolinguistic processes, notably in the assessment of competences. Articulate, multilingual individuals could become inarticulate and “language-less” by moving to a space in which their linguistic resources were valued and recognized into one in which they didn’t count as valuable and understandable. – 2

the layered and polycentric analysis of sociolinguistic phenomena should be seen as tied to differences between “scales”, and that introducing the notion of scales strengthens the socio-theoretical foundations of sociolinguistic analysis. – 3

sociolinguistics should be the study of language in order to gain an understanding of society; not a reduction of society to linguistic structure. – 3

The point of departure: horizontal and vertical metaphors

The capacity to achieve understanding in communication is the capacity to lift momentary instances of interaction to the level of common meanings, and the two directions of indexicality (i. presupposing the retrieval of available meanings, and ii. entailing the production of new meanings; Silverstein 2006: 14) are at the heart of such processes. – 4

I have been using the term “scale” as an attempt to provide a metaphor that suggests that we have to imagine things that are of a different order, that are hierarchically ranked, stratified. The metaphor suggests spatial images; these images, however, are vertical metaphors of space rather than horizontal ones (implicit in terms such as “distribution” and “spread”, but also “community”, “culture”, and so on). Scales offer us a vertical image of spaces, of space as stratified and therefore power-invested; but they also suggest deep connections between spatial and temporal features. In that sense, scale may be a concept that allows us to see sociolinguistic phenomena as non-unified in relation to a stratified, non-unified image of social structure. Note that the introduction of “scale” does not reject horizontal images of space; it complements them with a vertical dimension of hierarchical ordering and power differentiation. – 4

3. Scales as Semiotized Space and Time

4. The social semiotics of scale

4.1 Loaded words, intertextual asymmetries

Intertextuality, in its classical interpretations, stands for the fact that words carry with them histories of use and abuse. As Bakhtin (1986) note, they also carry histories of evaluation, of value-attributions providing positive, negative and relative value to terms and statements. Intertextuality is what makes particular terms sensitive. – 8

terms trigger specific form of intertextuality, and that not every intertext has the same scope, range or weight (cf. Silverstein 2005). – 9

4.2 Scale and institutional habitus

4.3 Language and state

The state is, apart from the prime-language ranking agency, also often the prime language codifying agency. When languages are accepted as official by the state, such languages need to be converted into a literate standard. – 12

4.4 Global languages localized

5. Conclusion

Saussure, Ferdinand de (2011) Course in General Linguistics (Tr.) Wade Baskin (eds.) Pery Meisel & Haun Saussy. NY: Columbia University Press.

Introduction: Saussure and His Contexts

“Signifier” and “Signified”: Reclaiming Saussure’s Legacy

Saussure reconceived the problem of reference as one of signification. – xv

Life and Afterlife

The Materiality of Sign: Solving the Problem of “Sensations” and “Ideas”

The association of signifier and signified is “arbitrary”, to use Saussure’s words, because it is only circumstantially determined. – xxxix

The Temporality of the Sign: Dialectic of Langue and Parole

“indeed it is extremely false to imagine there to be a distinction between the sound and the idea. These are in fact inseparably in our minds.” – xliii (EGL 2006, 41; ELG 2002,64)

Saussure: Translator’s Introduction

Saussure: Preface to the first edition

Saussure: Introduction

Chapter I: A Glance at the History of Linguistics

Chapter II: Subject Matter and Scope of Linguistics; its Relations with Other Sciences

Chapter III: The Object of Linguistics

1. Definition of Language

2. Place of Language in the Facts of Speech

3. Place of Language in Human Facts: Semiology

Chapter IV: Linguistics of Language and Linguistics of Speaking

Language exists in the form of a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each member of a community, almost like a dictionary of which identical copies have been distributed to each individual. – 19

Chapter V: Internal and External Elements of Language

The culture of a nation exerts an influence on its language, and the language, on the other hand, is largely responsible for the nation. – 20

Chapter VI: Graphic Representation of Language

1. Need for Studying the Subject

2. Influence of Writing: Reasons for its Ascendance over the Spoken Form

3. Systems of Writing

4. Reasons for the Discrepancy between Writing and Pronunciation

5. Results of the Discrepancy

Chapter VII: Phonology

1. Definition

2. Phonological Writing

3. Validity of Evidence Furnished by Writing

Appendix: Principles of Phonology

Chapter 1: Phonological Species

1. Definition of Phoneme

2. The Vocal Apparatus and its Functioning

3. Classification of Sounds According to their Oral Articulation

A. Zero Aperture: Occlusives

B: Aperture 1: Fricatives or Spirants

C. Aperture 2: Nasals

D. Aperture 3: Liquids

E. Aperture 4: i, u, ü

F. Aperture 5: e, o, ö

G. Aperture 6: ɑ

Chapter II: Phonemes in the Spoken Chain

1. Need for studying sounds in the spoken chain

2. Implosion and Explosion

3. Different combinations of Explosions and Implosions in the chain

i.                    Explosive-Implosive Combination (<>)

ii.                 Implosive-Explosive Combination (><)

iii.               Explosive Link (<<)

iv.               Implosive Link (>>)

4. Syllabic Boundary and Vocalic Peak

5. Criticism of Theories of Syllabication

6. Length of Implosion and Explosion

7. Phonemes of Aperture 4: Diphthongs; Questions about Transcription

Editor’s Note

Part One: General Principles

Chapter I: Nature of the Linguistic Sign

1. Sign, Signified, Signifier

considering the speaking-circuit that both terms involved in the linguistic sign are psychological and are united in the brain by an associative bond. – 65-66

The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The later is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses. – 66

It is clear that only the associations sanctioned by that language appear to us to conform to reality, and we disregard whatever others might be imagined. – 66-67

I call the combination of a concept and a sound-image a sign, but in current usage the term generally designates only a sound-image, a word, for example. – 67

Ambiguity would disappear if the three notions involved here were designated by three names, each suggesting and opposing the others. I propose to retain the word sign to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified and signifier; the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts. – 67

2. Principle I: The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign

The term [arbitrary] should not imply that the choice of the signifier is left entirely to the speaker; I mean that it is unmotivated, i.e. arbitrary in that it actually has no connection with the signified. – 68-69

1. Onomatopoeta might be used to prove that the choice of the signifier is not always arbitrary. But onomatopoeic formations are never organic elements of a linguistic system. Besides, their number is much smaller than is generally supposed. – 69

As for authentic onomatopoeic words, not only are they limited in number, but also they are chosen somewhat arbitrarily, for they are only approximate and more or less conventional imitations of certain sounds. In addition, once these words have been introduced into the language, they are to a certain extent subjected to the same evolution – phonetic, morphological, etc. - that other words undergo. – 69

2. Interjections

for most interjections we can show that there is no fixed bind between their signified and signifier. We need only compare two languages on this point to see how much such expressions differ from one language to the next. – 69

3. Principle II: The Linear Nature of the Signifier

In contrast to visual signifier which can offer simultaneous groupings in several dimensions, auditory signifiers have at their command only the dimension of time. Their elements are presented in succession: they form a chain. – 70

Chapter II: Immutability and Mutability of the Sign

1. Immutability

The signifier, thought to all appearances freely chosen with respect to the idea that it represents, is fixed, not free, with respect to the linguistic community that uses it. – 71

1. The arbitrary nature of the sign.

2. The multiplicity of signs necessary to form any language.

3. The over complexity of the system.

4. Collective inertia toward innovation.

2. Mutability

Regardless of what the forces of change are, whether in isolation or in combination, they always result in a shift in the relationship between the signified and the signifier. – 75

Chapter III: Static and Evolutionary Linguistics

1. Inner Duality of all Sciences Concerned with Values

Everything that relates to the static side of our science is synchronic; everything that has to do with evolution is diachronic. Similarly, synchrony and diachrony designate respectively a language-state and an evolutionary phase. – 81

2. Inner Duality and the History of Linguistics

3. Inner Duality Illustrated by Examples

a material sign is not necessary for the expression of an idea; language is satisfied with the opposition between something and nothing. – 86

4. The Difference between two Classes Illustrated by Comparisons

5. The two Linguistics Contrasted According to their Methods and Principles

6. Synchronic and Diachronic Law

7. Is there a Panchronic Viewpoint?

8. Consequences of the Confusing of Synchrony and Diachrony

9. Conclusion

Part Two: Synchronic Linguistics

Chapter I: Generalities

Chapter II: The Concrete Entities of Language

1. Definition: Entity and Unit

3. Practical Difficulties of Delimitation

Chapter III: Identities, Realities, Values

Chapter IV: Linguistic Value

1. Language as Organized Thought Coupled with Sound

2. Linguistic Value from a Conceptual Viewpoint

4. The Sign Considered in its Totality

Chapter V: Syntagmatic and Associative Relations

1. Definitions

Those (co-ordinations) formed outside discourse are not supported by linearity. Their seat is in the brain; they are a part of the inner storehouse that makes up the language of each speaker. They are associative relations. – 123

3. Associative Relations

2. Simultaneous Functioning of the two Types of Groupings

3. Absolute and Relative Arbitrariness

2. Relational Divisions

In discourse, on the one hand, words acquire relations based on the linear nature of language because they are chained together. – 123

Combinations supported by linearity are syntagms. The syntagm is always composed of two or more consecutive units. In the syntagm a term acquires its value only because it stands in opposition to everything that precedes or follows it, or to both. – 123

Outside discourse, on the other hand, words acquire relations of different kind. Those that have something in common are associated in the memory, resulting in groups marked by diverse relations. – 123

Chapter VIII: Role of Abstract Entities in Grammar

Part Three: Diachronic Linguistics

Chapter I: Generalities

Chapter II: Phonemic Changes

1. Their absolute regularities

2. Conditioned phonetic changes

3. Points on Method

Chapter III: Grammatical Consequences of Phonemic Evolution

1. The Breaking of the Grammatical Bond

2. Effacement of the Structure of Words

3. There are no Phonetic Doublets

4. Alternation

5. Laws of Alternation

2. Analogical Phenomena are not changes

3. Analogy as a Creative Force in Language

Chapter V: Analogy and Evolution

1. How an Analogical Innovation Enters Language

2. Analogical Innovations as Symptoms of Change in Interpretation

3. Analogy as a Renovating and Conservative Force

Chapter VI: Folk Etymology

2. Agglutination and Analogy

Chapter VIII: Diachronic Units, Identities and Realities

2. Subjective Analysis and the Defining of Subunits

3. Etymology

Part Four: Geographical Linguistics

Chapter I: Concerning the Diversity of Languages

Chapter II: Complications of Geographical Diversity

1. Coexistence of Several Languages at the Same Point

2. Literary Language and Local Idiom

Chapter III: Cause of Geographical Diversity

1. Time, the Basic Cause

2. Effect of Time in Continuous Territory

4. Languages have no Natural Boundaries

Chapter IV: Spread of Linguistic Waves

1. Intercourse and Provincialism

3. Linguistic Differentiation on Separate Territories

Chapter III: Reconstructions

1. Their Nature and Aim

2. Ethnic Unity

3. Linguistic Paleontology

4. Linguistic Type and Mind of the Social Group

Chapter V: Language Families

Wolf, George, Michele Bocquillon, Debbie De La Houssaye, Phyllis Krzyzek, Clifton Meyhard, Lisbeth Philip (1998) “Pronouncing French Names in New Orleans” in Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader (eds.) Roy Harris & George Wolf: 324-341. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

Introduction

Two theoretical discussions of pronunciation

Field observations of speakers’ remarks on pronunciation

i. The general problem: pronunciation of unfamiliar written forms

ii. Categories of non-bearers’ experience of names

iii. Bearers’ attitudes towards the pronunciations of their names

iv. Bearers’ strategies for managing public pronunciation of their names

Towards lay metalanguage

Morris, Marshall (1998) “What Problems? On Learning to Translate” in Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader (eds.) Roy Harris & George Wolf: 313-323. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

An integrational view of translation

Roy Harris’s categorization of ‘Non-integrational theories’ of translation

1. Transference theories – Message is in focus

2. Replicational theories – Text is in focus

Transference theories treat translation as a set of procedures for extracting a ‘message’ from a text in language A and re-encoding it in language B. The ‘object’ of translation is the message, not the text itself. Replicational theories treat translation as a set of procedures for replicating (as far as possible) in language B (features of) a text formulated in language A. The Object of translation is the text itself. – 316

“in human communication (linguistic) signs are never invariants.” – 316

A modern Japanese example

An English example, remote in time

When language misleads