On topics today

This article surveys the state of so-called topic theory today. It charts its development through two generations of topic theorists. The first is constructed around three influential texts: Leonard Ratners seminal book that established the discipline in its own right, Classic music: expression, form and style (1980); Wye Allanbrooks. Rhythmic gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (1983); and Kofi Agawus. Playing with signs: a semiotic interpretation of classical music (1991). The second comprises significant advances in topic theory essayed through two further pairs of texts: Robert Hattens Musical meaning in Beethoven: markedness, correlation, and interpretation (1994) and Interpreting musical gestures, topics, and tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (2004); and Raymond Monelles Linguistics and semiotics in music (1992) and The sense of music: semiotic essays (2000). Topic Theory's role as the soft hermeneutic sub-field of music semiotics (relative to the harder, formalist practices of Nattiezs neutral level analysis) is portrayed here as navigating a number of treacherous polemical paths. These wend their way between referential style (expression) and structural syntax (form); historical reconstruction and hermeneutic construction; and heightened sensitivity to social meanings and imposed acts of creative interpretation. This existence of topic theory in a continuous dialogue between structural formalism and the semantics of expressive discourse is held responsible for its marginal position both to the dominant strains of contemporary postmodern musicology and to the dying embers of formalist analysis. The failure of topic theory to strike a fashionable text-context balance thus highlights why musicology continues to view semiotics with scepticism. Ratner presents his thesaurus of style labelssomewhat dubiouslyas the historically authentic ready-to-hand materials (types and styles) of eighteenth-century expressive musical rhetoric. But it is Agawus combination of this universe of topics with a Schenker-influenced beginning-middle-end paradigm that establishes the hallmark of first generation topic theory on which the first half of this paper focuses. Agawus delicate equation between extroversive and introversive semiosis is essayed as a pivotal turning point in topic theorys ability to transcend the mere passive ascription of rhetorical labels. Out of this equation, expressive meanings can ariseas much from the non-congruence, as the congruence, of signs and structure. Hatten's critique of Agawu for neglecting the full interpretative consequences of his signifieds is the springboard for his more hermeneutically replete brand of topic theory and the emergence of the second generation topic theorists. Hattens use of troping (a kind of musical metaphor), is one of many interpretative tools that are responsible for broadening the arena of topic theorysome of his others being: expressive genres, emergent meanings and markedness theory. These are deployed across a variety of musical parameters as Hattens attention increasingly turns to the prototypicality of topics in their euphoric and dysphoric states. Hattens interpretative work is shown to transcend historical reconstruction to comprise creative interpretation built on a much broader definition of expressive gestures, of which topics are only a constituent part. The article concludes with Monelles expos of the dubious historical underpinnings of Ratners topic theory foundations. This does not render this vibrant branch of semiotics redundant but, on the contrary, charts its future direction as one calling out for far deeper historical investigation and cultural criticism. Monelles enlightening forays into the more replete expressive meanings of such topics as the horse and pianto make this point abundantly clear. The future of topics today, if not musicology in general, is one of cultural criticism

Metaphors in the construction of theory: Ramus, Peirce and the American mind

This study argues for the mutual impenetration of logical, legal and scientific metaphors and attempts to determine the role played by them in the construction of theory. Specifically it attempts to discover the impact which the metaphors of topical logic may have had on the construction of American ideology. Chapter 1 offers a brief discussion of logical metaphors and their relation to the social and intellectual settings which generate them. Chapter 2 extends that discussion to principles of positive law and political order as they developed in the unstable atmosphere of 16th Century Europe. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 attempt to relate the metaphors defined in Chapters 1 and 2 to the development of the scientific models which emerged during the scientific revolution of the 17th Century. These chapters proceed in the context of a discussion of the interaction of Aristotelian, Cartesian and Ramean paradigms. Chapter 6 argues for the crucial importance of topical metaphors in the establishment of order in the American colonies. Chapters 7 and 8 carry the argument for a New England Mind into a national setting and discuss how Ramean metaphors contributed to the construction of American conceptions of political order and physical law. These chapters attempt to identify a controlling metaphor of continuity which operated at the base of American models. Chapter 9 claims this metaphor of continuity as the logical ground of pragmatic thought, transmitted to C. S. Peirce through the German logical tradition via Leibniz and Wolff. Chapter 10 extends that discussion to a specific investigation of Peirce\u27s Illustrations of the Logic of Science, considered here as representative of a fundamental commitment on Peirce\u27s part to a methodology which would underwrite the rest of his thought. Chapter 11 laments the failure of James, Dewey and Royce to appreciate the power of Peirce\u27s model and discusses the effect which their fragmentation of his continuous reality had on American philosophy. Peirce\u27s logic of science emerges as a fundamental expression of an American mind with roots sunk deep in a Ramean logical paradigm

Khronika: Soviet Newsreel at the Dawn of the Information Age

This dissertation considers ten years in the life of one word. Between 1918 and 1928, khronika—the Russian word that describes newsreel filmmaking—became the site of extensive debates about the aesthetics and social responsibilities of the documentary film. Following the February revolution of 1917, khronika was promoted as the privileged record keeper of a new historical era, catalyzing a period of unprecedented formal innovation. During this period, Soviet documentarians transform the relationship between text and image, developing a film style that integrated verbal and visual material. In newsreel journal such as Kino-Pravda, images cease to be passive illustrations accompanying text and are for the first time treated as equally capable of delivering propositional content. Like other modernist art practices, khronika develops in dialogue with attempts to define its essence as a film genre and its medium specificity. Falling under the influence of competing strains within Constructivism, khronika is first conceived as a purely visual medium and then again as a purely factual one. Made up of seventeen variations on the social, political, and aesthetic aspects of khronika's evolution, the dissertation makes a crucial revision of documentary history. Rather than focus on the first instances of non-fiction films that adapt the narrative conventions of fiction film, Khronika examines the origins of documentary as an informational medium. Drawing on film theory, history of science, and philosophy, Khronika asks what it was that film learned to express during the first tumultuous decade when documentaries ceased to be windows onto a world and become the active interpreters of the reality captured by motion picture cameras.Slavic Languages and Literature

The influence of the philosophy of pragmatism on social studies methodology.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Boston University Misnumbered Pages 43, 4

Educating Semiosis: Exploring ecological meaning through pedagogy

This thesis consists of six essays – framed by introduction and conclusion chapters – that develop possibilities for philosophy of education and pedagogy from the lens of bio-semiotics and edu-semiotics (biological and educational semiotics). These transdisciplinary inquiries have found commonality in the concept of learning-as-semiosis, or meaning-making across nature/culture bifurcations. Here, quite distinct branches of research intersect with the American scientist-philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839 - 1914) pragmatic semiotics. I argue in these essays that the research pathway suggested by the convergence of edu- and bio-semiotics, reveals possibilities for developing a (non-reductive) theory of learning (and pedagogy generally) that puts meaning-making processes in a central light. A fully semiotic theory of learning implores us to take an ecological and biological view of educational processes. These processes explore the complementarity of organism-environment relations and the relationship between learning and biological adaptation. They also unravel new implications for education through the basic recognition that meaning is implicitly ecological. Understanding semiotic philosophy as an educational foundation allows us to take a broader and less dichotomized view of educational dynamics, such as: learning and teaching, curriculum design, arts and music education, inter/trans-disciplinary education, literacy (including environmental and digital literacy), as well as exploring the relationships and continuities between indigenous/place-based and formal pedagogical processes and practices. From this meaning-based and ecological perspective, what is important in the educational encounter is not psychologic explanations of learning stages, predetermined competencies, or top-down implemented learning-outcomes, but rather meaning and significance and how this changes through time-space and with others (not only human others) in a dynamic and changing environment. As addressed more directly in the conclusion chapter, these essays unravel the implications of this emerging approach to the philosophy of education, pedagogy and learning theory, specifically by providing conceptual/philosophical possibilities for integrating arts education, science education, and indigenous place-based knowledge into holistic educational approaches and programs

What can anyone say so far on the Peirce-CJC relation?

Charles S. Peirce (†1914) is often referred to as the founder of contemporary semiotics. Peirce provided the community of inquiry with a very convincing explanation of what a sign is. Peirce's definition of the sign bears a striking resemblance to that proposed in the 1606 volume of the CJC, the Coimbra Jesuit Course, authored by Sebastião do Couto (†1639). The community of inquiry holds the belief that Peirce drew from the writings of Couto to arrive at his triadic conception of the sign. Could it be that the effect of the CJC on Peirce is restricted to the definition of the sign? What can anyone say so far on the Peirce-CJC relation? Our ultimate purpose here is to provide a contribution to settling such doubts