Paradigms of reading : relevance theory and deconstruction / Ian MacKenzie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mackenzie, I. E. (Ian E.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rhetoric.

Relevance.

Hermeneutics.

Reference (Linguistics).

Communication.

Physical Description:

viii, 237 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Summary:

Linguistic signs do not coincide with intended or interpreted meanings. For relevance theory, this theoretical commonplace merely demonstrates the inferential nature of language. For Paul de Man, on the contrary, it suggested that language is unstable, random, arbitrary, mechanical, ironic and inhuman. This book seeks to show that relevance theory is a more plausible account of communication, cognition and literary interpretation than the deconstructionist theory de Man elaborated from readings of Rousseau, Hegel, and Nietzsche.

Contents:

1 Pragmatic Banality and Honourable Bigotry 1

Synopsis 6

Honourable bigotry 11

2 Relevance Theory and Spoken Communication 16

Linguistic underdetermination 17

Ostension, inference, intentions and relevance 18

Implicatures, vagueness and poetic effects 22

Metaphor and irony, description and interpretation 25

3 'Positive Hermeneutics': Relevance and Communication 29

The hermeneutic tradition 33

Communicative intentions 36

The epidemiology of representations 41

The reader as supplement 44

4 'Negative Hermeneutics': Themes, Figures, Codes and Cognition 47

Unconscious identities 48

Reading and time 50

Canonicity 53

Codes and inference 55

Carvers and modellers 60

5 Words, Concepts and Tropes 62

Nouns and concepts 65

Metaphor, truth, lies, realistic assumptions and surplus value 69

Numbers 74

Dead metaphors and catachreses 76

6 Rhetoric as an Insurmountable Obstacle 84

'What's the difference?', 'Son of a bitch!' and catastrophic confusions 86

Rhetoric and aesthetics 90

Tropes and persuasion 95

Irony 98

Resistance to language 101

7 Words and the World: The Problem of Reference 107

Being and becoming 108

Concepts, metaphors, catachreses and reference 112

Reference and ideology 115

'Ich kann nicht sagen was ich nur meine' 118

Reference and application 126

8 Mechanical Performatives 131

The purloined ribbon 133

Excuses, fictions and machines 138

Paul de Man's war 146

9 The Madness of Words and the Enunciating Subject 152

The fallacy of the active sign 153

From intentional subjects to inhuman language 157

Arbitrary signifiers and accountable authors 166

Dialogism and ventriloquism 170

10 'When Lucy ceas'd to be' 176

Wordsworth's use of rock and roll 177

Wordsworth's murderous spirit 180

Lucy and Freud 182

Lucy as metaphor 186

From beyond the grave 188

Miller's tale 190

11 Relevance and Rhetoric 196.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-231) and index.

ISBN:

0333968336

OCLC:

50006565