SPN 305: Introducción
a Estudios Literarios -Otoño 2014
Hoja de Trabajo: 4. Lenguaje, Significado e Interpretación
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1. Literature involves a special kind of language and a
special use of language as special kind attention to language. (55)
2. What is involved in meaning? We need to take three
different dimensions of meaning: the meaning of a word, of an utterance, and of
a text. Possible meanings of words contribute to the meaning of an utterance,
which is an act by a speaker. (And the meanings of words, in turn, come from
the things they might do in utterances). Finally the text, which here
represents an unknown speaker making the enigmatical utterance, is something an
author has constructed, and its meaning, is not a proposition but what it does,
its potential to affect readers. (56)
3. Meaning is based in difference. (56)
4. A language is a system of differences (Ferdinand de
Saussure). What makes each element of a language what it is, what gives it its
identity, are the contrasts between it and other elements within the system of
language…For Saussure, a language is a system of signs and the key fact is what
he calls the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign. This means two things:
First, the sign for instance a word is a combination of a form (the ‘signifier’)
and a meaning (the ‘signified’), and the relation between form and meaning is
based on convention, not natural resemblance. (57)
5. Each language is a system of concepts as well as forms: a
system of conventional signs that organizes the world. How language relates to
thought has been a major issue for recent theory. At one extreme is the common-sense
view that language just provides names for thought that exist independently…At
the other extreme is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that claims that language we
speak determines what we can think…We have evidence that one language or normal
thoughts that require a special effort in another. (58-9).
6. Saussure distinguishes the system of language (la langue) from particular instances of
speech and writing (parole). The task
of linguistics is to reconstruct the underlying system (or grammar) of a
language that makes possible the speech events or parole.
7. In literary studies, there is a contrast between poetics
and hermeneutics. Poetics starts with attested meanings or effects and asks how
they are achieved (What makes this passage ironic?). Hermeneutics, on the other
hand, starts with texts and what they mean, seeking to discover new and better
interpretations. (61)
8. In fact, works of literary criticism; often combine
poetics and hermeneutics, asking how a particular effect is achieved or why an
ending seems right (poetics) but also asking what a particular line means and
what a poem tells us about the human condition (hermeneutics).
9. One reason why literary studies in modern time shave
favored hermeneutics over poetics is meaning needs to be sought… Another reason
is that people generally study literature works not because they are interested
in the functioning of literature but because they think these works have
important things to tell them and what they are. (62).
10. The idea of literary competence focuses attention on the
implicit knowledge that readers (and writers) bring to the their encounters
with texts, what sort of procedures do readers follow in responding to works as
they do?...Thinking about readers and the way they make sense of literature has
led to what has been called ‘reader-response criticism’, which claims that the meaning
of the text is the experience of the reader. (63)
11. There a number of theoretical school and movements (see Appendix
in Literary Theory) that from the
point of view of hermeneutics, are dispositions to give particular kinds of
answers to the question of what a work is ultimately about: ‘the class struggle’
(Marxism), ‘the asymmetry of gender relations’ (feminism), or the ‘heterosexual
matrix’(gay and lesbian studies) for example. (64).
12. But how do we choose between interpretations? The liveliness
of the institution of literary study demands that: (a) arguments about what a
literary work is about is never settled; and (b) arguments have to be made about
how particular scenes or combinations of lines support any particular
hypothesis. You can’t make a work mean just anything: it resists, and you have
to labor to convince others of the pertinence of your reading. (65)
13. The meaning of a work is not what the author had in mind
at some point, nor is it the property of the text or the experience of a
reader. Meaning is an escapable notion because it is not something simple or
simple determined. It is simultaneously an experience of a subject and a
property of a text. If we must adopt an overall principle or formula, that
meaning is determined by context, since context includes rules of language, the
situation of the author and the reader, and anything else that might be
conceivable relevant. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless.
Comentario
El
lemguaje, el significado y la interpretación de una obra va a estar determinada
no solo por poética (el cómo se llega a un objetivo) sino la hermenéutica (de
que se trata el texto al final) de una obra literaria. Nuestra interpretación basada
en nuestros objetivos y maneras de ver el mundo será importante hacer
argumentos de los significados que le demos al texto tanto de una manera
particular como general pero que tienen que ser convincentes de acuerdo al
contexto de la producción y recepción de la obra literaria.
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