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Chapter 3

Monograph in Universal Mimesis of Human Experiences

The world
Representation

Sheryl Dumancas

Joan Palaca

Maria Lourdes Roma

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Cebu Technological University

Cebu City, Central Visayas,
Republic of the Philippines,

Copyright 2015
Produced in the Philippines
All rights reserved
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DEDICATION

To our supportive family,

friends and relatives

for their never-ending

advices and encouragement.

To our heavenly father,

who is the source of

knowledge and wisdom.

CONTENTS
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I.Introduction

A. The role of Literature

B. Background of the short story The Summer Solstice

II. What are Lexicons?

III. How to extract lexicons?

A.Imagery
B.Classification of Lexical Items

IV. How do you perceive the world through these lexemes?

V. Works Cited

The role of Literature

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What do you think is the reason why people continue indulging in reading? Well

apparently, the good thing about reading is you can use your imaginative skills and try to paint a

vivid picture in each narration of the chain events.

Literature plays a vital role in the society, for the reason that literary works give emphasis

as many topics from human tragedies also taken from challenges in life. People want to have

idea about other’s experience and compare it to any other experiences. There are many genres in

literature and one example is short story. The difference between the short story and the novel is

that novel is divided into chapters and has a complicated plot while the short story conveys and

entertains the readers more than the other genres because it establishes a unified mood to relate

an incident involving few characters often in a single setting. Setting provides a backdrop for the

action. If you are going to think the factual information, setting is very essential in the short story

because it sets the reader’s mode and a good description makes the reader more eager to keep up

and follow the events of the story.

Have you tried to interpret a story? Of course, the reader’s recognition of the story was

taken from reality, because most of the situation presents human life and being copied from

reality considering that a literary work is just an art of representation and the only thing which is

real is your idea. According to Plato, what can be touched and seen is a copy from what is real.

Aristotle disagreed and has his different view which is, what is not real is the idea in the mind of

a person. The thing is real for him, what human can actually see and touch in the real world. Like

any other fiction, both novel and short story are fictional narrative of make- believed world,

where the characters seen almost real and the situations are quite similar to real life conditions

and surroundings.
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Background of The Summer Solstice

The Summer Solstice seems overly dramatic. The situation is unreal, but Joaquin writes

the story in romantic tradition of a most colorful period of Philippine history. The story

represents the way of life of the Filipino and culture in the Philippines. The presentation of pagan

rituals and Christian rites, superstitious and religious beliefs. The old and the new were argued to

be more of fission rather than a fusion and for its characteristics that catches’ ones attention

mentally and emotionally (The official website of Wikipedia.com).

This story is written by Filipino National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin who is a

poet, fictionist, essayist, biographer, playwright, and a National Artist (The official website of

pinoylit.webmanila.com). He was honored for journalism, literature, and the Creative

Communication Arts and Ramon Magsaysay Awards (1996). Nick Joaquin’s short story speaks

powerfully to the readers since it determines and makes significant events in reality. His works

employ real life situations which contain such qualities and use symbolic social and cultural

values.

In addition to being regarded as one of Nick Joaquin’s most acclaimed literary works, the

tale is considered to be controversial. The story narrates a ritual performed by a woman to evoke

the gods to grant the blessing of fertility by dancing around a Balete tree that was already a

century old. Joaquin later turned the story into a play entitled Tatarin: A witches’ Sabbath in

Three Acts, on which a film adaptation has been based.

What are Lexicons?

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How many words are present in your vocabulary? Have you learned plenty of words?

Lexicons are abstract unit of a language. It is also known as lexemes with a more or less readily

identifiable meaning or function.

A lexical item is an abstract unit presented in speech or writing by one possibly several

forms it assumes for grammatical purposes. For example, if we want to mention animals, then we

must use either the singular form dog or the plural form dogs. But these two grammatical forms

both represent the same single abstract unit, the lexical item. In the same way, we recognize a

lexical item ‘take’ which can be presented by any of the five grammatical forms take, takes,

took, taken, and taking.

The units of meaning in lexical semantics are lexical items or units which a speaker can

continually add to throughout their life through learning new words and their meanings. Lexical

item is a single word, a part of a grammaticalized lexis, and not lexicalized grammar. The entire

store of lexical items in a language word, or a chain of words basic elements of a language's

lexicon or vocabulary Lexical items can be generally understood to convey a single meaning,

much as a lexeme, but are not limited to single words.

Lexical items are like "natural units" translating between languages, or in learning a new

language. In this last sense, it is sometimes said that what language consists of is called its lexis.

Many lexical items are either a part of a whole word or part of a word, whereas many other

lexical items consist of parts of one or more words or of multiple words in their entirety.

How to extract Lexicons?

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The Signifier-signified relationships are the words that contained a denotative and a

connotative meaning. To understand the message of the story, you have to imagine how

characters played the significant role. This could be through the symbolic representation.

Signifier is the word that signifies or simply the word image. The signified refers to the

one being symbolized and could be a concept of what signifier refers to. The idea of Saussure

explains the connection between all signifiers that they are “sound images” or “linguistic signs”

and what they are signifying is the word signified (object or concept).

In brief, de Saussure structural linguistics propounded three related concepts. First, De

Saussure argued for a distinction between langue (an idealized abstraction of language) and

parole (language as actually used in daily life). He argued that the “sign” was composed of a

signified, an abstract concept or idea, and a “signifier”, the perceived sound/visual image.

Second, because different languages have different words to describe the same objects or

concepts, there is no intrinsic reason why a specific sign is used to express a given signifier. It is

thus “arbitrary”. Third, signs thus gain their meaning from their relationships and contrasts with

other signs. As he wrote, “in language, there are only differences without positive terms.

In extracting the lexical items, you have to analyze the particular elements of the short

story, the character, setting, plot, theme and symbol, how the author gives description to the

certain elements, how the characters think and how the readers give descriptions. The setting in

the short story includes the time and place where the story takes place, the atmosphere or the

mood of the story; this also refers to the ambiance of the place.
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Imagery

In analyzing the signifier-signified relationship, you are required to visualize mental

images of things and events. You acquire those ideas through your cognitive faculty. You should

focus on how meaning is created and not what it is, because that is the significance in studying

the signifier-signified relationship. Symbolism is the main point why you deal this symbolic use

of images. Imagery means to use figurative language to represent objects, actions and ideas in

such a way that it appeals to our physical senses.

Usually, it is your thought that imagery makes use of particular words that create visual

representation of ideas in our minds. The word imagery is associated with mental pictures.

However, this idea is but partially correct.

Imagery, to be realistic, turns out to be more complex than just a picture. In literature, one

of the strongest devices is imagery wherein the author uses words and phrases to create “mental

images” for the reader. Imagery helps the reader to visualize more realistically the author’s

writings. The usage of metaphors, allusions, descriptive words and similes amongst other literary

forms in order to “tickle” and awaken the readers’ sensory perceptions is referred to as imagery.

Imagery is not limited to only visual sensations, but also refers to igniting kinesthetic, olfactory,

tactile, gustatory, thermal and auditory sensations as well. Example: The gushing brook stole its

way down the lush green mountains, dotted with tiny flowers in a riot of colors and trees

coming alive with gaily chirping birds.

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Classification of Lexical Items

A lexical item or (lexeme) is a word in the sense in which a dictionary contains words.

The following are common types or classifications of the Lexical Items: word/s, parts of words,

phrasal verbs, compound words, polywords, collocations, idiomatic expressions/idioms, sayings,

year, lexical abbreviations and sentence frames and heads.

The following are definitions and example: word/s is the smallest element that may be

uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content with literal or practical meaning (e.g

stout).Parts of words examples are; -s in tress, -er in worker non- in nondescript and –est in

loudest. Phrasal verbs are commonly applied to two or three distinct but related constructions in

English: a verb and a particle and/or a preposition co-occur forming a single semantic unit. This

semantic unit cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts in isolation,

but rather it can be taken as a whole. In other words, the meaning is non-compositional and thus

unpredictable.

Phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and phrasal

verbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs. Additional alternative terms for

phrasal verb are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction, two-part

word/verb, and three-part word/verb (depending on the number of particles), and multi-word

verb.

Collocations are partly or fully fixed expressions that become established through

repeated context-dependent use. Such terms as 'crystal clear', 'middle management', 'nuclear

family', and 'cosmetic surgery' are examples of collocated pairs of words. Collocations can be in

a syntactic relation such as verb–object: 'make' and 'decision', lexical relation (e.g antonymy), or
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they can be in no linguistically defined relation. Knowledge of collocations is vital for the

competent use of a language a grammatically correct sentence will stand out as awkward if

collocational preferences are violated.

Compound word is made up of two or more other words that form a new word (e.g

sidewalk). Polywords examples are by the way and inside out. Idiomatic expression gives an

expression that cannot be understood from the meaning of its own. Simply it covers the literal

meaning of the words and it pertains into something that makes it up and combination of words

that have a figurative meaning and it basically works interpreted in a figurative sense (e.g “Sky

brightening silver light”).Sayings are words or phrase that particular people use in particular

situations (e.g “There is always sunrise before sunset”).

Year means a period of time containing 365(366 days) and that is consists of twelve

months in a year. Apparently calendar exhibits to have counts of year which means years are

counted in cycles with no particular cycle specified as the first cycle (e.g 1850).

Lexical abbreviation is a shortened version of written word or phrase used to replace

original word and to save space. It has no pronunciation of its own, and it can only be

pronounced by pronouncing the free form which it abbreviates. (e.g St.) derived from the

original word ‘Saint’. Sentence frames provide a frame of a complete sentence for students,

while sentence starters are — as the name implies — a starter for students who must complete

the sentence.

Signal words are those words and phrases that clue in the reader or listener to the purpose

of the message. Each of these ideas will be explored in more detail in sections that follow.

Sentence frames provide an opportunity for students to use key vocabulary while providing a
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structure that may be higher than what they could produce on their own. For example, if students

are to compare two ocean creatures, they might say something like "Whales have lungs, but fish

have gills.” These are the classification of lexical items.

How do you perceive the world

through these lexical items?

lexical items reflect to human realities. It mirrors, immitates and represents the parallel

situation copied from the life realities. The story “ The Summer Solstice”centers on the past

events of our cultural survival identity as a nation, it mirrors that the past is the bridge to present

life.The event is based to true life setting where in it focuses on the celebration of the Tadtarin

Festival and also the marriage life of the main characters, Don Paeng and Donya Amada. The

submissive role was played by the husband and the domineering side was played by the wife.It

shows the opposite way of living as it was clearly dsecribed in the Summer Solstice compared to

the way Filipino does.The way of conversation can support the statement that the dominant

figure is not the male but the female, and it is Donya Lupeng. In marriage life , it is really true

the couple acts in two different side. There is one slave and one superior.

Works Cited

Books

Bucao, Lilia Terestiza.Nick Joaquin’s Selected Works and their Prevalence to the
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Philippine Society.Philippines:Co., c2008.

Dones, Marichelle A. and Antonio Yangco.Philippine Literature Student Guide

Mindshapers Publishing, c2009.

Gillespic, Sheena, Econicca, Terezinha, Pipolo, Tony. World literature: Connecting

Nations and Cultures: Longman United States.2001.

Unpublished Materials

Erana, Alma A. “Discourse Analysis of the Bible Select Parable”. Unpublished

Undergraduate Thesis. Cebu Technological University-Main Campus Cebu

City.2012

Monteron, LieniImmarie R. “Emily Dickinson’s Select Poems: Form and Content”.

Nikol, Gregardo P. “The Themes of Alberto S. Florentino’s Five Award-WinningPlay:

Improved Methods of Teaching”.2001

Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis.Cebu Technological University-Main Campus Cebu

City.2012.

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