ISI Library

Other title information: An anthroposemiotic theory of Literary characters

Annotation: It is commonly believed that some approaches of structural semiotics, narratology and cognitive science have not yet succeeded in constructing a complete and coherent theory of literary character. The author argues that the primary explanation of the failure is the artificial separation between characters and their actions. One of the chief implications of such separation is treating characters in terms of structures, agents, actants, functions, roles, and signs, which obviously mean that actions can hardly be explained as intended, motivated, performed and experienced. Survival, as a motivation-based concept, is one of the key concepts making the separation between character and action something impossible. Humans in literary narratives search for survival as an aware process of knowing and meaning making. Meaning in literary narratives can be produced by heroizability, which treats literary characters as living anthroposemiotic entities aware of their natural motivation to achieve in order to survive and produce meanings of their survival. As such, characters in literary narratives have active cognitions, and their cognitive activities remain meaningless without a process of semiosis. Applying Anthroposemiotic theory with Modeling System Theory, heroizability provides methodical tools to explain how the narrative text is represented and, thus, how it is to be interpreted properly by the reader not only to find, but also to make meaning in narrative world.

Identifier: 9781501510816

Status: Available

Other title information: exploring text and semio-translation

Annotation: The book sets to answer questions regarding the definitions of text, translation and meaning, presenting a semiotic approach to the matter

Identifier: 9042016426

Status: Available

Other title information: Augmented edition with a new preface

Annotation: The primary task of literary theory, Jonathan Culler asserts in the new edition of his classic in this field, is not to illuminate individual literary works but to explain the system of literary signification - the rules and conventions that determine a reader's understanding of a text and that make literary communication possible. In this wide-ranging book, he investigates the possibilities of a semiotics of literature.

Identifier: 0801487935

Status: Available

Other title information: iconicity in language and literature

Annotation: This collection puts the interdisciplinary study of iconic dimensions (comprising what has been termed 'imagic iconicity', as well as 'diagrammatic iconicity', i.e. iconicity of a more abstract and less semiotic type) on the map, paying special attention to the use of iconicity in literary texts.

Identifier: 9027221790

Status: Available

Other title information: on the Limits of Language and Literature

Annotation: Evoking Pandora and Occam as metaphoric corner posts in an argument about language as discourse, Horst Ruthrof brings analytic philosophy to bear on issues of Continental philosophy, with attention to linguistic, semiological, and semiotic concerns. Instead of regarding meanings as guaranteed by definitions, the author argues that linguistic expressions are schemata directing us more or less loosely toward the activation of nonlinguistic sign systems. Ruthrof draws up a heuristic hierarchy of discourses, with literary expression at the top, descending through communication-reduced reference and speech acts to formal logic and digital communication at the bottom.

Identifier: 0253349958

Status: Available

Other title information: from word to culture

Annotation: Occupying a still evolving but clearly established place in 20th-century intellectual history, Mikhail Bakhtin is best characterized as a philosopher of dialogue or human communication. The book approaches its subject by concentrating on problems of language and literature

Identifier: 0333556321

Status: Available

Notes: Originally published as La revolution du langage poetique (1984), translated by Margaret Walker, introduction by Leon S. Roudiez

Annotation: Her aim here is to investigate the workings of "poetic language" as signifying practice, that is, as a semiotic system generated by a speaking subject within a social, historical field.

Identifier: 0231056427

Status: Available

Other title information: Symposium de Varsovie 1968

Annotation: A compilation of papers covering different topics through a semiotic approach, including literature, linguistics, psychology and zoosemiotics

Status: Available