81 research outputs found
From Gesture to Theatricality: On Enounciation and the Art of Being Visible
The human motor system is built into its physical surroundings, whether natural or artificial, by the morphological predisposition of its basic muscular attunement to the spatial world of places, things, and beings: its gestures, in the largest sense of this term. Essential schemas of our imaginative mind are grounded in motor patterns reinforced through interaction with this spatial world. Locomotion yields one important pattern of this variety (aspects of ‘going’ from place to place), besides instrumental gestures (aspects of our manipulation of things, of our constructing, changing, moving or destroying them) and immediate symptomatic gestures of mental activity and affective state (such as ‘hesitation’ and ‘perplexity’); special attention must of course be paid to the realm of expressive gestures (aspects of ‘showing’ meanings to others), including those that accompany language or constitute a language in its own right
The Architecture of Semantic Domains
The expression ‘semantic domain’ is a spatial metaphor. In this article, it will be argued that it also expresses a necessary notion in semantic analysis. Anything meaningful is meaningful in a ‘context’; contexts supply relevant frames for the contents of our consciousness, and they thereby allow us to draw inferences from these contents. According to the view presented, contexts are structured within distinct semantic domains, which are grounded in bodily experience, not only in a basic sense, as referring to motor activities, but in the sense of a stable articulation of our life-world as an experiencable whole. The notion of semantic domain expresses this articulation in parts, regions, sorts of conceptual and practical behavior
Por uma semiótica planetária
There exists a universal ecology-based stratification of levels of activity and meaning-making in human societies, a stratifying architecture that determines existing levels of social experience, types of sign functions and semantic functions in language, and finally the mental principles of human subjectivity. The planetary ecology of civilization is therefore constitutive of human semiotics. The following is a short outline of a theory of meaning based on these observations.Existe uma estratificação universal baseada em ecologia dos nÃveis de atividade e criação de significado e efeitos de sentido nas sociedades humanas, uma arquitetura estratificante que determina os nÃveis existentes de experiência social, tipos de funções de signos e funções semânticas na linguagem e, finalmente, os princÃpios mentais da subjetividade humana. A ecologia planetária da civilização é, portanto, constitutiva da semiótica humana. A seguir, é apresentado um resumo de uma teoria da significação com base nessas observações
Forces et espaces : Maupassant, Borges, Hewingway
Le but de la narratologie cognitive, tel que je le vois, est de développer l’étude littéraire et en général sémiotique des récits à partir d’une modélisation cognitive. Il est également de développer les études cognitives de l’esprit et du sens en intégrant l’apport de la critique littéraire existante. J’examine tout d’abord, dans cet article, le concept de discours narratif (versus les discours descriptif et argumentatif) ; ensuite, je discute les principes permettant de distinguer les sous-genres narratifs (histoires réalistes, fantastiques, merveilleuses, grotesques, absurdes) ; enfin, je propose un modèle d’architecture constitutive du sens narratif, tel qu’il se manifeste dans les « bonnes histoires », histoires qui ont un sens, parce qu’elles expriment une vision de la condition humaine.Afin de développer et de tester le modèle, j’analyse une sélection de textes littéraires considérés comme des chefs-d’œuvre : trois nouvelles de Guy de Maupassant (Deux amis, La ficelle et La parure), deux de Jorge Luis Borges (Emma Zunz et La otra muerte – L’autre mort) et, pour finir une d’Ernest Hemingway (A very short story – Une très courte histoire). À travers ces analyses, incluant certaines interprétations littéraires de ces textes, une nouvelle vision des dynamiques narratives se dessine. Des agents opèrent dans des espaces présentant des propriétés dynamiques particulières, dans la mesure où ces dernières déploient des forces caractéristiques, déterminant des actes et des faits. Je postule qu’il existe un ensemble canonique d’espaces narratifs, chacun d’eux impliquant une part importante du sens de l’histoire et y contribuant. Ce modèle distingue quatre espaces, qui sont également mis en scène comme autant de lieux distincts : un espace initial de condition, un espace de catastrophe, un espace de conséquence et un espace de conclusion.Les forces sont décrites comme causales ou intentionnelles. Les forces causales sont soit banales (habituelles, ordinaires, soit physiques soit sociales) ou « fatales » (particulières, contingentes, exceptionnelles). Les forces intentionnelles sont agentives (volitives et incarnées dans des agents) ou magiques (surnaturelles et non-agentives, mais toujours volitives). Les espaces dynamiquement investis, qui encadrent les situations, sont liés par un ordre diégétique canonique, permettant aux forces d’avoir des effets prospectifs et rétroactifs. Cela explique le déroulement des histoires, leur fin et le sens que nous leur assignons. Interprétation et interprétabilité dépendent de la « logique » dynamique de cette diégèse spatiale, plus que de l’identification du lecteur avec les personnages d’une histoire ou de l’idéologie attribuée au narrateur.The aim of a cognitive narratology, as I see it, is to develop the literary and generally semiotic study of narratives through cognitive modeling, and to develop cognitive studies of mind and meaning by integrating insights from literary scholarship. In this article, I first examine the concept of narrative discourse (versus descriptive and argumentative discourse) ; second, I discuss the principles for distinguishing narrative subgenres (realistic, fantastic, marvelous, grotesque, absurd stories) ; and third, I propose a model of the constitutive architecture of narrative meaning as manifested by « good stories », stories that make sense by conveying a view of the human condition.In order to develop and test the model, I analyze a selection of acknowledged literary masterpieces : three short stories by Guy de Maupassant (Deux amis, La ficelle, La parure), two by Jorge Luis Borges (Emma Zunz, La otra muerte – The other death), one by Ernest Hemingway (A very short story). Through these analyses, including succinct literary interpretations of the texts, a new view of narrative dynamics is outlined. Agents operate in spaces that have specific dynamic properties, in that they display characteristic forces determining acts and events. There is, I postulate, a canonical set of narrative spaces, each encompassing and contributing a significant part of the meaning of a story. The model distinguishes four such spaces, which are typically also staged as distinct locations ; an initial conditioning space, a catastrophic space, a consequence space, and a conclusion space.Forces are described as causal or intentional. The causal forces are either trivial (habitual, regular, default, whether physical or social) or « fatal » (special, contingent, singular). The intentional forces are agentive (volitive and located in agents) or magical (supernatural and non-agentive but still volitive). The scenario-framing, dynamically invested spaces are linked in a default diegetic order allowing forces to fire forwards and backwards, which explains how stories progress and end, and in particular, eventually, how they can mean what we report them to mean. Interpretation and interpretability depend on the dynamic « logic » of this spatial diegesis, more than on reader identifications in a story, or on ideologies ascribed to the narrator
Culture, creativity, and conceptual dynamics: A structural hypothesis
We redefine the concept of concept and focus on its role in the intersubjective processes that characterize cultures and socio-cultural communities. Conceptual density determines communitary coherence, whereas highly variable conceptual velocity determines inter-conceptual dynamics within distinct conceptual fields of activity. Conflicts opposing force of conceptual authority by knowledge value and force of conceptual authority through social power lead to states of socio-cultural consensus or dissensus. A model of socio-cultural concept structure is proposed. The creativity of concept formation is considered a major factor in historical time; different states of relative balance between creativity and stereotypicity are mentioned, including a dangerous neutralizing alliance of artistic and epistemic creativity on the one hand and technologically enhanced power concepts. In a sense, thinking is ubiquitous, but only certain forms of thinking are creative – those that minimize the influence of social power and maximize the slow intersubjective processes of shared experience that make culture be culture
De la dynamique phrastique. Grammaire, chorématique et Théorie des Catastrophes
Nous proposons une modélisation dynamique, chorématique et topologique de la structuration phrastique et montrons que le sens grammatical relève d'un processus de complémentation qui rend plausible une conception compositionnelle et moins relativiste que celle d'une certaine linguistique cognitive, de la notion de construction. Notre approche montre mieux, nous l'espérons, comment le langage peut simuler la pensée et ainsi nous permettre de la partager. Car la syntaxe est déjà sémantique. Il s'agit de comprendre comment elle peut l'être.We propose a dynamic, chorematic, and topological model of phrasal structuring and show that grammatical sense is the result of a process of complementation which makes a compositional conception of the notion of construction, a less relativist one than that of a certain cognitive linguistics, plausible. Our approach shows, hopefully in a better way, how language can simulate thought and therefore allow us to share it. For syntax is already semantics. It is a matter of understanding how
Qu’est-ce qu’un citoyen global ? La vision d’une sémiotique cognitive
This article proposes a stratified realistic model as a general and comprehensive framework for a description of the human world experienced, as well as its strata and areas of experience. An attempt will be made to show how a psycho-semiotic study should be directly associated with an eco-semiotic study because the mind is itself shaped by the semiotic world with which it has evolved. Ethics, aesthetics, and critical thinking must now converge, in the light of contemporary threats, to defend the possibility of global and planetary humanity and habitat.Cet article propose un modèle réaliste stratifié en tant que cadre général et global pour une description du monde humain vécu, ainsi que de ses strates et domaines d’expérience. On tentera de montrer comment une étude psycho-sémiotique doit être directement associée à une étude éco-sémiotique, parce que l’esprit est lui-même façonné par le monde sémiotique avec lequel il a évolué. Éthique, esthétique et pensée critique doivent maintenant converger, à la lumière des menaces contemporaines, pour défendre la possibilité d’une humanité et d’un habitat globaux et planétaires
Betydning og grammatik – i et semiotisk perspektiv
Grammar is directly rooted in human phenomenology, in the sense that we all immediately experience the salient and meaningful compositional events in the syntactic structure of currently heard or read texts. Since we have this introspective access to syntax and can grasp the grammatical properties, grammatical analysis can be based on experiential phenomenal composition. I intend to show some basic principles of such an analysis and of a possible graphic form of representation that can work in a pedagogical settting. The structure that appears through long term use of phenomenological and ‘stemmatic’ analysis of sentence syntax points to the existence of a generic and canonical grammar underlying specific construction grammars; this canonical format is, I suggest to think, rooted in human cognition and its semantic conceptual formats. The article finally presents a text sample from a German newspaper, transcribed according to the stemmatic principles
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