De Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics

 Saussure examines the relationship between speech and the evolution of

language.
 Investigates language as a structured system of signs.
 Draws a distinction between language (langue) and the activity of speaking
(parole).
 Speaking is the activity of the individual.
 Language is the serial manifestation of speech.
 Language is a system of signs that evolve from the activity of speech.
 The signs that constitute language are psychological entities. (impression
on our senses)
 Writing is a symbolic representation of those signs. Semiology
 Saussure’s focus is on the linguistic unit (sign).
 Sign , signified, signifier
 Signifier-----sound pattern / signal
 Signified-----concept / signification

The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign

 No two people have precisely the same concept of “tree” since no two
people have precisely the same experiences or psychology.
 If words stand for pre-existing universal concepts they would have exact
equivalents in meaning from language to the next.

The Linear Nature of the Signifier

 Spoken language includes communication of concepts by means of

sound-image from the speaker to the listener.
 Language is the product of the speaker’s communication of signs to the
listener.
 Combination of the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.
  Relation between linguistic signs can be either: syntagmatic (linear),
sequential or successive or associative (substitutive).
 Written language exists for the purpose of representing language.
 Synchronic (static)---study of language at a particular point in time.
 Diachronic (evolutionary) ---study of history or evolution of language.

Roland Barthes’ Myth as a semiological system

 Semiology is a science of forms. It studies significations apart from their

content.
 Semiology postulates a relation between a signifier and a signified.
 There is a correlation: the signifier, the signified and the sign.
 The sign is the associative total of the first two terms.
 The signified--- the concept.
 The signifier----the acoustic image (mental)
 The sign---the relation between concept and image. (the word for
linguistics is a concrete entity).
 In myth ---the signifier, the signified and the sign
 Myth is a system from semiological chain which existed before it: the
“second-level” sign, or “second-level” semiological system. The signifier in
such a system is already a complete sign that already contains a signifier
and a signified. The signified is “added on top” of that existing structure, so
we get a sign of double complexity which is a myth.
 Language-object --- language which myth gets hold of in order to build its
own system.
 Metalanguage ---- a second language in which one speaks about the first.
 On the plane language the signifier is meaning.
 On the plane of myth the signifier is form.
 The signified is the concept.
  Correlation of the two is the sign. ( ex. a black soldier giving the French
salute)

Roland Barthes’ Science versus Literature

 Scientists treat language as a tool. The goal is to make it clear and

valuable. “language is literature’s Being, its very world; the whole of
literature is contained in the act of writing, and no longer in those of
‘thinking’, ‘portraying’, ‘telling’ or ‘feeling’”
 To scientists, the subject-matter or content of communication is most
important. It should be clear, precise and objective.
 The contrast between science and literature is especially important to
structuralists.
 Rhetoric is one of the ancestors of structuralism.

Roland Barthes’ The Death of the author

 Barthes brings his concept of the author not being the origin of the text.
 It seems that Barthes is reclaiming the position maintained by New
Critics that the text must be analyzed by not considering author’s intention
but the structure of the text.
 Barthes’ treatment of the author is entirely different than that of New
Critics.
 While New Critics completely remove the space of the author from their
humanistic viewpoint about the reading of the text, Barthes maintains the
place for the author by making him/her a junction where language meets,
crosses, transmits, converts, etc.
 The author is treated as being a medium, to commit the mistake of
simplifying it, which translates/transforms the, let’s say, culture into the
text through language.
  After this the author is dead and, therefore, the reader becomes the sole
owner of the text, having access to interpret the text as he/she wishes. The
author becomes a free agent who is independent to treat and, also, alter
the process of the signification of signifier and signified.
 The working of the process between signifier and signified found
structuralism get further bereft of signified as the reader has the option of
connecting the signifier to his own signified once the author’s intentions
are removed from the analysis.

I. A. Richards Poetry and Beliefs

 Words work in the poem in two main fashions: sensory stimuli and
symbols.
 Refrain from considering the sensory side.
 Confine to the other function of words in the poem (pseudo-statement)
 Scientific statement –truth is a matter of verification.
 Emotive utterance –truth is primarily acceptable by some attitude
 Acceptance is governed by its effects upon our feelings and attitudes
 When language is used for scientific purposes, it is matter of fact and
requires undistorted references and absence of fiction.
 When language is used for emotive ends, it may be true or false.
 In the scientific use of language, the references should be correct and the
relation of references should be logical.
 In the emotive use of language, any truth or logical arrangement is not
necessary —it may work as an obstacle. The attitudes due to references
should have their emotional interconnection and this has often no
connection with logical relations of the facts referred to.
Cleanth Brooks’ The Formalist Critic

 Brooks summarizes the misunderstandings in relation to formalist criticism.

 Critics of formalism purport that making the novel the central concern of
criticism has appeared to mean cutting it loose from its author and from his
life as a man and this criticism can seem “bloodless and hollow”.

 Others object that emphasizing the work seems to involve severing it from
those who actually read it, and this severance may seem drastic and
therefore disastrous.

 Brooks argues against these misconceptions, explaining that the formalist

critic, because he wants to criticize the work itself, makes two assumptions.
First, he assumes that the relevant part of the author’s intention is what he
actually got into his work; that is, he assumes the author’s intention as
realized is the “intention” that counts, not necessarily what he was
conscious of trying to do, or what he now remembers he was then trying to
do.

 Secondly, the formalist critic assumes an ideal reader; that is, instead of
focusing on the varying spectrum of possible reading, he attempts to find a
central point of reference from which he can focus upon the structure of
the poem or the novel. The reduction of a work of literature to its causes
does not constitute literary criticism; nor does an estimate of its effects.
Good literature is more than effective rhetoric applied to true ideas-even if
we could agree upon a philosophical yardstick for measuring the truth of
ideas and even if we could find some way that transcended nose-counting
for determining the effectiveness of the rhetoric.
Foucault What is an Author

 Foucault reminds us that although we regard the concept of

authorship as "solid and fundamental," that concept hasn't always existed.

It "came into being," Foucault explains, at a particular moment in history,
and it may pass out of being at some future moment.

 He takes up our habit of thinking about authors as individuals, heroic

figures who somehow transcend or step outside history. Why, he wonders,

are we so strongly inclined to view authors in that way?

 Why are we often so resistant to the notion that authors are

products of their times.

 According to Foucault, Barthes had urged other critics to realize that

they could "do without [the author] and study the work itself"
 Foucault asks us to think about the ways in which an author's name

"functions" in our society.

 The "author function" is not a person and is not to be confused with

either the "author" or the "writer." The "author function" is more like a set
of beliefs or assumptions governing the production, circulation,
classification and consumption of texts. (Put another way, it's the thing that
makes us want to know about the author of a poem--and never think of
asking about the author of a commercial or a contract.)

 The "author function" is linked to the legal system and arises as a

result of the need to punish those responsible for transgressive statements.

 The "author function" does not affect all texts in the same way. For

example, it doesn't seem to affect scientific texts as much as it affects

literary texts.
