Taylor, Talbot J. (1998) “Do you understand? Criteria of understanding in Verbal Interaction” in Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader (eds.) Roy Harris & George Wolf: 198-208. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

“To make the words serviceable to the end of communication, it is necessary that they excite, in the Hearer, exactly the same Idea, they stand for in the mind of the Speaker. Without this, Men fill one another’s Heads with noise and sound; but convey not thereby their Thoughts, and lay not before one another their Ideas, which is the end of Discourse and Language.” (Locke 1690, Book III, Ch. 9, Section 6). – 198

We can never know, Locke argues, if the ideas we signify by certain words are the same as  our hearers signify by the very same words. Consequently, we can never be certain that our hearers receive the thoughts we intend by our utterances to convey. That is, the ‘imperfection of words’ consists in the fact that, because the understanding of words is a private, mental event, they do not provide speakers with a means of knowing whether their words are being correctly understood. – 199

From Saussure’s conventionalist point of view, we may be certain that all speakers of the same language link the same ‘signifies’ with the same ‘signifiants’ because that connection is arbitrarily imposed on them by the conventions of their language. Saussure’s reply to Locke’s worries about the intersubjectivity of the connection between words and ideas was to argue, in effect, that speakers and hearers do not possess any ideas other than those given to them by the signs of their language. – 199-200

Toolan, Michael (1998) “On Inscribed or Literal Meaning” in Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader (eds.) Roy Harris & George Wolf: 143-158. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

Literal, Conventional and Utterance Meaning

Searle on literal meaning relative to a background

Compositionalism

The Pragmaticist Tradition

Integrational Linguistics

Prototype

Concluding Remarks

The communicative event postulated by Wittgenstein fulfills the three criteria for the speech act to be ironical: the proposition is inappropriate (‘false’), it was ‘meant’ to be inappropriate, thus there is the requisition intention, and it is ‘known’ to be inappropriate – there is no mention of deceit, as there would be if the speaker was simply lying. – 160

Harris, Roy (1998) “Three Models of Significance” in Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader (eds.) Roy Harris & George Wolf: 113-125. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

1. Introduction

2. The surrogational model

As the term surrogational implies, the defining feature of this model is that signification is explained in terms of the sign being a surrogate or substitute for something else. According to this theory, the sign ‘stands for’ what it signifies. – 114

Words may be regarded as surrogates for physical objects, actions, etc. Alternatively, words may be regarded as surrogates for ideas or mental processes. In the former case the meaning is taken to be the corresponding object, action, etc. In the second case meaning is taken to be the corresponding concept.

            These two approaches may be termed reocentric and psychocentric surrogationalism. – 115

Triangle of Signification: Signification is construed in terms of three interconnected dyadic relations; those between sign and concept, sign and object, object and concept. – 116

3. The structural model

Whereas surrogationalism seek to explain signification in terms of relations between signs and non-signs, the structural model explains it solely in terms of relations between signs and other signs. – 117

4. The integrational model

It (Integrational semiology) starts from the more modest thesis that no act of communication is contextless and every act of communication is uniquely contextualized. – 119

the integrationist does not assume that the sign has any existence outside the communication situation which gives rise to it. – 119

from an integrational point of view the only a priori determinacy a sign has is contextual determinacy, and contexts are open-ended. -119

5. Signification, epistemology and science

6. Conclusion

Harris, Roy (1998) “The Integrational Critique of Orthodox Linguistics” in Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader (eds.) Roy Harris & George Wolf: 15-26. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

Introduction

if language is viewed not as an activity at all but as a faculty or ability which underlies the activity and makes it possible, the dilemma of conflicting definitions simply reappears at one remove. For there is no way of identifying the language faculty without reference to the activity which it is alleged to sponsor. – 15-16

Let segregational linguistics treat language as autonomous system, examine their interval relations, and perhaps speculate at a very abstract level about how such systems might be represented in the human brain, while integrational linguistics will concentrate on the external relations between languages and the individuals and communities using them. – 17

The philosophical basis of the integrationist position is the thesis that the linguistic universe is populated not by mysteriously unobservable objects called ‘language’ but by observable human beings who somehow and sometimes manage to communicate with one another. – 19

A sign is any observable feature or complex of features which, by virtue of its integrational function, plays role in our diverse but continuous practices of making sense. The sole necessary and sufficient condition for the constitution of a sign is our recognition of this role. – 19

From an integrational point of view, language arises from the creative use of communicational space in which we live, and speaking and writing are only two of the many human activities which articulate this space. – 19

The segregationist response

Three misconception of indeterminacy

The indeterminacy of linguistic sign

Harris, Roy (1998) “Language as a Social Interaction: Integrationalism versus Segregationalism” in Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader (eds.) Roy Harris & George Wolf: 5-45. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

As Silverstein did in an article published as recently as 1977, that certain ‘cultural prerequisites’, as he called them, need to be taken into account for purposes of grammatical analysis. In other words, if the linguist is to give a full and satisfactory account of native speakers’ mastery of their language, that account cannot ignore the speakers’ awareness of certain context-dependent social practices that must be presupposed if certain type of linguistic expression are to make any kind of sense at all. – 6

Segregational analysis treats language and languages as objects of study existing in their own right, independently of other varieties of communication and amenable to description in terms that are quite separate from those used in any other discipline. – 6

the integrational approach, sees language as manifested in a complex of human abilities and activities that are all integrated in social interaction, often intricately so and in such a manner that it makes little sense to segregate the linguistic from the non-linguistic components. – 6

M. M. Bakhtin (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (Trs.) Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist. Austin & London: University of Texas Press.

Introduction - Michael Holquist

Heteroglossia is Bakhtin’s way of referring, in any utterance of any kind, to the peculiar interaction between the two fundamentals of communication. On the one hand, a mode of transcription must, in order to do its work of separating out texts, be a more or less fixed system. – 12

Epic and Novel

Towards the Methodology for the Study of the Novel

the novel is the sole genre that continues to develop, that is as yet uncompleted. – 19

Studying other genres is analogous to studying dead languages; studying the novel, on the other hand, is like studying languages that are not only alive, but still young. – 19

This ability (of parodying itself) of the novel to criticize itself is a remarkable feature of this ever-developing genre. – 20

the novel inserts into these other genres an indeterminacy, a certain semantic openendedness, a living contact with unfinished, still evolving contemporary reality. – 20

three basic characteristics that fundamentally distinguish the novel in principle from other genres: (1) its stylistic three-dimensionality, which is linked with multilanguage consciousness realized in the novel; (2) the radical change it effects in the temporal coordinates of the literary image; (3) the new zone opened by the novel for structuring literary images, the zone of maximal contact with the present in all its openendedness. – 21

The epic as a genre in its own right may, for our purposes, be characterized by three constitutive features: (1) a national epic past – in Goethe’s and Schiller’s terminology the “absolute past” – serves as the subject for the epic; (2) national tradition serves as the source for the epic; (3) an absolute epic distance separates the epic world from contemporary reality, that is, from the time in which the singer lives. -21

When the novel becomes the dominant genre, epistemology becomes the dominant discipline. – 22

From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse

Five different stylistic approaches to novelistic discourse may be observed:

1. the author’s portions alone in the novel are analyzed.

2. a neutral linguistic description of the novelist’s language

3. in a given novelist’s language, elements characteristic of his particular literary tendency are isolated

4. language is analyzed as the individual style of the given novelist

5. Novel’s devices are analyzed from the point of view of their effectiveness as rhetoric. – 30

One’s own language is never a single language: in it there are always survivals of the past and a potential for other languagedness that is more or less sharply perceived by the working literary and language consciousness. – 37

Expressing Time and Space in Novels (Chronotope)

ii. Apuleius and Petronius (Adventure-everyday novel)

·         Adventure novel of everyday life

i. The satyricon of Petronius

ii. The Golden Ass of Apuleius

·         The features are found in satire and Hellenistic diatribe, as well as works from Christian literature on the lives of saints

Characteristics

-          Mix of adventure-time and everyday-time; emergence of new type of adventure-time distinct from Greek adventure-time

-          Metamorphosis (development of the idea of metamorphosis)

iii. Ancient Biography or Autobiography

Passes through the course of a whole life.

iv. The problem of Historical Inversion and Folkloric Chronotope

v. Chivalric Romance

vi. The Function of the Rougue, Clown and Fool in the Novel

vii. The Rabelaisian Chronotope

viii. The Folkloric Bases of the Rabeliasian Chronotope

ix. The Idyllic Chronotope in the Novel

x. Concluding Remark

A literary work’s artistic unity in relationship to an actual reality is defined by its chronotope. – 93

Discourse in the Novel

Modern Stylistics & the Novel

Discourse in Poetry and Discourse in the Novel

the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the wrd, and make it one’s own. – 108

Heteroglossia in the Novel

The Speaking person in the Novel

The speaking person in the novel is always, to one degree or another, an ideologue, and his words are always ideologemes. A particular language in a novel is always a particular way of viewing the world, one that strives for a social significance. – 121

What is hybridization? It is a mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousness, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation or by some other factor. – 129

The two Stylistic Lines of Development in the European Novel

Menz, Florian (1989) “Manipulation strategies in newspapers: a program for critical linguistics” in Language, Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse (ed.) Ruth Wodak: 227-249. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

1. Introduction

2. “Critical Linguistics” - an extended model

3. The importance of the “Neue Kronenzeitung” in Austria

4. Trivial myths as means of ideologizing

4.1 The strategy of “black and white depiction”

4.2 “Mythical groups of reference”

4.3 Strategies for emotionalization

5. An example of miscarried ideologizing