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The Henri Meschonnic Reader: A Poetics of Society

Henri Meschonnic

Marko Pajevic (ed.)

Henri Meschonnic was a linguist, poet, translator of the Bible and one of the most original French thinkers of his generation. He strove throughout his career to reform the understanding of language ... More

Henri Meschonnic was a linguist, poet, translator of the Bible and one of the most original French thinkers of his generation. He strove throughout his career to reform the understanding of language and all that depends on it. His work has had a shaping influence in various fields and its importance is growing. Here, for the first time, some of the key texts are made available in English for a new generation of scholars in the humanities. By introducing key works of Henri Meschonnic, this Reader will enrich, enhance and challenge your understanding of language. This book includes fourteen key texts which cover the core concepts and topics of Meschonnic’s theory. It explores his key ideas on poetics, the poem, rhythm, discourse and his critique of the sign. Meschonnic’s vast oeuvre was continuously preoccupied with the question of a poetics of society; he constantly connected the theory of language to its practice in various fields and interrogated what that means for the individual and society. In exploring this fundamental question, this book is central to the study and philosophy of language, with rich repercussions in fields such as translation studies, poetics and literary studies, and in redefining notions such as rhythm, modernity, the poem and the subject. The Reader is accompanied by introductory texts to Meschonnic, his key concepts and his poetics of society, as well as by a glossary, index and bibliography.Less

Humboldt, Worldview and Language

James Underhill

This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with ... More

This book investigates the vigorous and inspiring linguistic philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Many English-speaking authors speak of a ‘Humboldtian tradition’ and associate Humboldt's name with research into linguistic relativism and the work of Whorf. But few scholars quote Humboldt's writings, and those who do, often prove only that they fail to perceive the great scope of his work and that they are incapable of seizing the essential principles of Humboldt's ethnolinguistic project. Hegel, Chomsky, Crystal and Habermas all try understand Humboldt through the prism of their own approach to language and ideas. The present work, tries to set the record straight, and to demonstrate why Humboldt's linguistic philosophy will take us much farther than the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Humboldt's work lays down a challenge to philosophy, which has difficulty in taking into account language as it is created and maintained in the world. At the same time, it represents no less of a challenge to approaches to language which seek to step over individual writing and speech, and speak of ‘language’ in abstraction, or seek the deeper structures of cognition. Humboldt takes us back to the origin of language, speech. His concept of language is supra-subjective. Individuals become individuals through language, through conversation in linguistic communities. At the same time Humboldt takes us back to languages in all their diversity. Finding something universal in that diversity, and something essentially specific in each facet of the universal faculty of language is the twin force of Humboldt's vast synthesis of empirical findings.Less

Texture - A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading

Peter Stockwell

This book represents the latest advances in cognitive poetics. It builds feeling and embodied experience on to the insights into meaningfulness that the cognitive approach to literature has achieved ... More

This book represents the latest advances in cognitive poetics. It builds feeling and embodied experience on to the insights into meaningfulness that the cognitive approach to literature has achieved in recent years. Taking key familiar concepts such as characterisation, tone, empathy, and identification, the book aims to describe the natural experience of literary reading in a thorough and principled way. It draws on stylistics, psycholinguistics, critical theory and neurology to explore the nature of reading verbal art. The aim is a new cognitive aesthetics of literature for its readers.Less

What if Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure?

Russell Daylight

Between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure gave three series of lectures on the topic of general linguistics. After his death, these lecture notes were gathered together by his students and ... More

Between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure gave three series of lectures on the topic of general linguistics. After his death, these lecture notes were gathered together by his students and published as the Course in General Linguistics. And in the last 100 years, there has been no more influential and divisive reading of Saussure than that of Jacques Derrida. This book is an examination of Derrida's philosophical reconstruction of Saussurean linguistics, of the paradigm shift from structuralism to post-structuralism, and of the consequences that continue to resonate in every field of the humanities today. Despite the importance of Derrida's critique of Saussure for cultural studies, philosophy, linguistics and literary theory, this book presents the first analysis. The magnitude of the task undertaken here makes this book a resource for those wishing to interrogate the encounter beyond appearances or received wisdom. In this process of a close reading, the following themes become sites of debate between Derrida and Saussure: the originality of Saussure within the history of Western metaphysics; the relationship between speech and writing; the relationship between différance and difference; the intervention of time in structuralism; linguistic relativism and the role of the language user. This commentary also poses new questions to structuralism and post-structuralism, and opens up new terrain in linguistic and political thought.Less