Wednesday, November 12, 2008
This week I am going to over simplify to the point of causing illness in any reader. There is a palpable progression in the second half of Scholes in an attempt to do what? Find the reader’s position in correlation to text? language in correlation to reality? reality in correlation to text? to language? reality in correlation to author in correlation to text? theory’s correlation to education? educator’s interpretation of text in correlation to student’s? I’m leaving a few out. But, at the end I understood that that there is no certainty in theory, interpretation, language, or reality. Each deals with the other in a sort of overdetermined system where theory may question the foundation of language in reality or in perception of reality, or the basis of a text in historical reality, or the position of a reader within a text, based on his or her personal perception of reality. Where we go is full circle to the first half of the book, to the idea that power lies in the ability to interpret and analyze text. And interpretation is based on almost limitless perceptive angles: language and its codes, infinite ideologies based on history, economy, polity, society, the author’s and the interpreter’s position within these, the question of the text itself. It’s endless and brilliant and fun!
Catching the Fish...or did I?
I found the second half of Textual Power as interesting as the first. That doesn't mean I didn't struggle with many of the things Scholes talked about, but still fascinating. The chapter on rhetoric and textual power (or are they the same?) was especially insightful. Said's commentary on textuality as something "mystical and disinfected...in which the literary text is perceived as forever cut off from reality by its literariness" (Scholes 74). From the tone that Said wrote in, in addition to what Scholes said, I think they both think this is a bad thing. In fact, Scholes argues that so much can come from textuality, and that "textual power makes the opening for criticism" (75). This makes sense to me. Not only is criticism the third part of Scholes "teaching of reading" theory, but Theory--and literature are both meant to be criticized and questioned, not taken at the author--or the reader's interpretation as the only meaningful interpretation. Rather, textuality and theory are tools to unlock all different types of texts, and as Eagleton supposed, "literary theory can handle Bob Dylan just as well as John Milton" (76).
Side note: I have been immersed in a lot of theory this semester, from feminist to literacy to deconstruction--you get the picture. I am noticing that Milton seems to always be the prototypical example in literature. I find this really fascinating, since opinions on Milton seem to be very polar--people either love him or hate him, find him a misogynist, or supporter of women. Its just really, really interesting. Any ideas why?
Okay, but back to the Bob Dylan/John Milton thing for a minute here, I really like Eagleton's ideas on this and it seems supported in many of the ideas through Scholes book, especially in his views and awareness of the constantly changing world and how media has effected it. de Man's ideas on rhetoric also seemed supportive at first: "a text is rhetorical, and rhetoric itself is a text" (77) but then he goes on to say that "textual power is a function of the text's resistance to reading...what makes a text a text is the impossibility of connecting it to the world" (79). I think I understand what de Man is saying here on a comprehension point of view, but what does he really mean? How can a result of a text being just that--a text, the inability to connect it to the world. Don't we all, on some level, connect texts to the world. Maybe he meant text here in terms of literary text, but I'm not quite sure. Or perhaps it is some aspects of hermetics (also known as deconstruction---something else new I learned here!) that I am just not grasping.
I just wanted to add a few works on the Le Guin chapter. I found it really interesting, perhaps because I have read both this book and The Dispossed for a Gender and Utopia class at Millersville. ( I also highly recommend "The Ones that Walk From Omelas"-- its a great short story that also tackles some of the linguistic and philosophical elements of her larger novels). I thought the passage on pronouns and sexuality was really insightful, and rather dead on because, "in short, the categorical opposition male/female is built into our language, and therefore into our thought, at the very deepest level, the level of pronominal reference" (Scholes 114). Perhaps it is just the work that I have been doing for my thesis, but I cant help but to also see a Marxist influence here, as language is just another way that those in power (perhaps a patriarchal society) keep women down--even through what we may view as simplistic pronouns.
Side note: I have been immersed in a lot of theory this semester, from feminist to literacy to deconstruction--you get the picture. I am noticing that Milton seems to always be the prototypical example in literature. I find this really fascinating, since opinions on Milton seem to be very polar--people either love him or hate him, find him a misogynist, or supporter of women. Its just really, really interesting. Any ideas why?
Okay, but back to the Bob Dylan/John Milton thing for a minute here, I really like Eagleton's ideas on this and it seems supported in many of the ideas through Scholes book, especially in his views and awareness of the constantly changing world and how media has effected it. de Man's ideas on rhetoric also seemed supportive at first: "a text is rhetorical, and rhetoric itself is a text" (77) but then he goes on to say that "textual power is a function of the text's resistance to reading...what makes a text a text is the impossibility of connecting it to the world" (79). I think I understand what de Man is saying here on a comprehension point of view, but what does he really mean? How can a result of a text being just that--a text, the inability to connect it to the world. Don't we all, on some level, connect texts to the world. Maybe he meant text here in terms of literary text, but I'm not quite sure. Or perhaps it is some aspects of hermetics (also known as deconstruction---something else new I learned here!) that I am just not grasping.
I just wanted to add a few works on the Le Guin chapter. I found it really interesting, perhaps because I have read both this book and The Dispossed for a Gender and Utopia class at Millersville. ( I also highly recommend "The Ones that Walk From Omelas"-- its a great short story that also tackles some of the linguistic and philosophical elements of her larger novels). I thought the passage on pronouns and sexuality was really insightful, and rather dead on because, "in short, the categorical opposition male/female is built into our language, and therefore into our thought, at the very deepest level, the level of pronominal reference" (Scholes 114). Perhaps it is just the work that I have been doing for my thesis, but I cant help but to also see a Marxist influence here, as language is just another way that those in power (perhaps a patriarchal society) keep women down--even through what we may view as simplistic pronouns.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Scholes's Textual Prowess?
I learned a great deal from reading Textual Power these past two weeks, yet I must admit I often became a prisoner in Schole’s “Prison House of Language,” and likely not the model prisoner as was Fredric Jameson due to my English teacher imposter status. The frustration began when I started to read Chapter 5; I was feeling disoriented and figured I needed to go back and reread the previous chapters. Silly me, that was not the answer. So I dug in again and plowed through. Some of it I understood and some of it . . . well, let’s just say I am beginning to tire of having to keep my Oxford English Dictionary by my side when I read. Did anyone else feel this way? I suppose you could call me the world’s biggest griper, and at this moment, you would be correct. Ray, could I borrow your brain for just a little while. I’ll take real good care of it. . . . I promise.
So with my own brain ready to explode, I have my usual questions with a few comments sprinkled throughout just for fun. First, will someone please explain in language that even I can understand the notions of Terry Eagleton and Paul de Man with respect to rhetoric? And maybe a few words about Derrida and Saussure? I mean, I thought I understood deconstruction theory, but now I’m not so sure. Now for a bit of commentary. I thoroughly enjoyed (perhaps not completely understood, but let’s just not go there now) Scholes’s discussion on Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Some of the interpretation and critical strategies could be applied to Marge Piercy’s futuristic He, She and It, wherein a woman falls in love with—and yes, has sex with—a cyborg. Those dang preconceptions can be so hard to shake. Enlightening to say the least, but again I felt so out of touch, so ignorant of all that there is to understand.
I don’t know if I actually found a fish in the text, but I did spot some “Macrorieisms,” specifically on page 131 where Scholes discusses Agassizese’s technique for instruction as told by Ezra Pound: “He [the student] can, however, now speak and write Agassizese, for this is what he has really learned: to produce the sort of writing his teacher wants….The student seems to be learning about the subject, but what he is really learning is to give the teacher what he wants.” So, let’s see, is Scholes saying that we should not allow ourselves to be fettered by what others tell us about fish we encounter? That we need to examine the fish for ourselves using whatever means we have available to discover as much as we can about the fish? And that if someone hands us a cow and asks us to interpret it as a fish, we should be able to discern the difference? What if that same fish happens to be lying in the pasture next to the cows? Can we examine it as a fish, or must it be in its own context, in its own habitat?
If the Detext was to serve as a debriefing, I failed miserably.
So with my own brain ready to explode, I have my usual questions with a few comments sprinkled throughout just for fun. First, will someone please explain in language that even I can understand the notions of Terry Eagleton and Paul de Man with respect to rhetoric? And maybe a few words about Derrida and Saussure? I mean, I thought I understood deconstruction theory, but now I’m not so sure. Now for a bit of commentary. I thoroughly enjoyed (perhaps not completely understood, but let’s just not go there now) Scholes’s discussion on Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Some of the interpretation and critical strategies could be applied to Marge Piercy’s futuristic He, She and It, wherein a woman falls in love with—and yes, has sex with—a cyborg. Those dang preconceptions can be so hard to shake. Enlightening to say the least, but again I felt so out of touch, so ignorant of all that there is to understand.
I don’t know if I actually found a fish in the text, but I did spot some “Macrorieisms,” specifically on page 131 where Scholes discusses Agassizese’s technique for instruction as told by Ezra Pound: “He [the student] can, however, now speak and write Agassizese, for this is what he has really learned: to produce the sort of writing his teacher wants….The student seems to be learning about the subject, but what he is really learning is to give the teacher what he wants.” So, let’s see, is Scholes saying that we should not allow ourselves to be fettered by what others tell us about fish we encounter? That we need to examine the fish for ourselves using whatever means we have available to discover as much as we can about the fish? And that if someone hands us a cow and asks us to interpret it as a fish, we should be able to discern the difference? What if that same fish happens to be lying in the pasture next to the cows? Can we examine it as a fish, or must it be in its own context, in its own habitat?
If the Detext was to serve as a debriefing, I failed miserably.
the 3 Rs: Writing, reading, and interpreting
I knew it! I knew it! The free float bull dada dead author wide open interpretation was a set up. "open the window, ray" she says.
The chapter on LeGuinn was a beautiful example that doing the work and writing of criticism does not only get presented as dry theory. Straight shot, no frills, academic artillery style theory is not the most widely appealing genre. Many people prefer not to read it, opting for something more entertaining, or more illustrative, less "convoluted." Enter LeGuinn. Left Hand of Darkness is criticism on language and societal gender definition, etc. The Dispossessed does the same thing regarding so-called "freedom" and anarchism/communism.
Time to hook the Fish.
First, the fish in the text. On page 144, Scholes states, "To write the fish in many modes is finally to see that one will never catch the fish in any one discourse." Like the blind men and the elephant, the truth-fish does not appear fully to any one literacy, any one discursive practice. Leaving aside the metaphysical/epistemic volumes that could be gone into on what "truth" is or isn't like, I can at least say this one thing--"If you are only a single blind man examining the elephant, the chances are much higher it will simply walk over and crush you." Multiple discursive literacy give better chances at understanding, application, interpretation, and criticism. This is why the Nietszche reference from four pages earlier is worthwhile: a claim to absolute truth is dangerous and is more likely an indicator of blind faith than wisdom or enlightenment.
Now, the Text from Fish. "If you play cards with Stanley Fish, don't let him bring his own deck." (157) Yes, the Name-list-poem example is a stacked deck. Brilliant, innovative, persuasive--until you get critical. For another counter example of being able to interpret any text entirely from what your interpretive community has instilled within you, see my previous blog entry for this week. The middle ground solution proposed by Scholes on page 165 is exactly what I was trying to express last week, and grants power to all three participants in a text, though not simultaneously. "A written text is a record of a transaction between a writer and the language in which the text is composed." Corollary by Bergeron: "A read text is a transaction between the language of the text and the reader/interpreter." Neither writer nor reader is unconstrained, but the notion that either is entirely determined begs the question of why read or write?
And because of the intermediary of the text, there is no certainty in the meaning intended and the meaning gleaned, but a good writer and a good reader can get "roughly the same referent, roughly the same concept" (96) across the spacetime between two minds.
The chapter on LeGuinn was a beautiful example that doing the work and writing of criticism does not only get presented as dry theory. Straight shot, no frills, academic artillery style theory is not the most widely appealing genre. Many people prefer not to read it, opting for something more entertaining, or more illustrative, less "convoluted." Enter LeGuinn. Left Hand of Darkness is criticism on language and societal gender definition, etc. The Dispossessed does the same thing regarding so-called "freedom" and anarchism/communism.
Time to hook the Fish.
First, the fish in the text. On page 144, Scholes states, "To write the fish in many modes is finally to see that one will never catch the fish in any one discourse." Like the blind men and the elephant, the truth-fish does not appear fully to any one literacy, any one discursive practice. Leaving aside the metaphysical/epistemic volumes that could be gone into on what "truth" is or isn't like, I can at least say this one thing--"If you are only a single blind man examining the elephant, the chances are much higher it will simply walk over and crush you." Multiple discursive literacy give better chances at understanding, application, interpretation, and criticism. This is why the Nietszche reference from four pages earlier is worthwhile: a claim to absolute truth is dangerous and is more likely an indicator of blind faith than wisdom or enlightenment.
Now, the Text from Fish. "If you play cards with Stanley Fish, don't let him bring his own deck." (157) Yes, the Name-list-poem example is a stacked deck. Brilliant, innovative, persuasive--until you get critical. For another counter example of being able to interpret any text entirely from what your interpretive community has instilled within you, see my previous blog entry for this week. The middle ground solution proposed by Scholes on page 165 is exactly what I was trying to express last week, and grants power to all three participants in a text, though not simultaneously. "A written text is a record of a transaction between a writer and the language in which the text is composed." Corollary by Bergeron: "A read text is a transaction between the language of the text and the reader/interpreter." Neither writer nor reader is unconstrained, but the notion that either is entirely determined begs the question of why read or write?
And because of the intermediary of the text, there is no certainty in the meaning intended and the meaning gleaned, but a good writer and a good reader can get "roughly the same referent, roughly the same concept" (96) across the spacetime between two minds.
No getting around it-IT IS ABOUT US!
Bottom Line: Literacy is about being active. Illiteracy could be said to be passive. The basic theory going from illiteracy to literacy gives a voice to the silent and the verbal through knowledge, interpretation, and criticism. That should be the theory to place individuals in the place they want to be (not just the place they are forced to be for whatever reason).
Illiteracy may be what makes us The Other, literacy is about allowing us in and out of groups at our own discretion and desire.
Who better than to address "The Other" then Edward Said:
"Where there is knowledge, and discourse, there must criticism also be, to reveal the exact places-and displacements-of the text, thereby to see the text as a process signifying an effective historical will to be present, an effective desire to be a text to be a position taken" (75).
The purpose of theory is not the theory but the application of the theory. I think Scholes gets a too into the theory of too many theories.
Then there is his reference to John Berger's Ways of Seeing with the hilarious cover of many people all looking toward the same place with the glasses. The reading, the interpretation, and the criticism of this text could be grounded in many ideologies. "Once again, language is personified and allowed to have a free choice in selection signifier. But the selection is from a 'spectrum of conceptual possibilities,'...(105)I would have to agree with Saussure when he "tells us that words 'that have something in common are associated in the memory" (103)The role of education might be the exposure of the student to the stories in memories outside the student's present place and time by providing access to the information and the tools to evaluate. I think that words as language becomes needs for the individual to function in all the worlds of personal choice.
I did get tired of how the examples did not offer a consistent connected thread. Even attempting to follow his theories require an intimate knowledge of many theorists at the expense of finding Scholes's theory. The whole chapter on the Left Hand of Difference seemed irrelevant.
First, for the unheard to become heard they have to answer Foucault's question "First of all who is speaking" (132). Then they have to evaluate and interpret the rest of that quote on page 132. But in order to interpret and personalize the text, the student needs skills, techniques, and confidence. The student needs to evaluate and critic recurrent themes and techniques by the speaker that give truths the illusions of truthfulness that Nietzsche discusses on page 140 when talking about truth and lies. This goes back to my comment in another blog regarding Brecht's essay: The Five Truths. I would even go further to say that education is about showing what is important to know about the text and what is "the chatter" of the text and the purpose of that chatter. So the importance of the text and language and education seems to be grounded in the theory (UGH! theory) that "We [should] care about texts for many reasons, not the least of which is that they bring us news that alters our way of interpreting things" (165).
Illiteracy may be what makes us The Other, literacy is about allowing us in and out of groups at our own discretion and desire.
Who better than to address "The Other" then Edward Said:
"Where there is knowledge, and discourse, there must criticism also be, to reveal the exact places-and displacements-of the text, thereby to see the text as a process signifying an effective historical will to be present, an effective desire to be a text to be a position taken" (75).
The purpose of theory is not the theory but the application of the theory. I think Scholes gets a too into the theory of too many theories.
Then there is his reference to John Berger's Ways of Seeing with the hilarious cover of many people all looking toward the same place with the glasses. The reading, the interpretation, and the criticism of this text could be grounded in many ideologies. "Once again, language is personified and allowed to have a free choice in selection signifier. But the selection is from a 'spectrum of conceptual possibilities,'...(105)I would have to agree with Saussure when he "tells us that words 'that have something in common are associated in the memory" (103)The role of education might be the exposure of the student to the stories in memories outside the student's present place and time by providing access to the information and the tools to evaluate. I think that words as language becomes needs for the individual to function in all the worlds of personal choice.
I did get tired of how the examples did not offer a consistent connected thread. Even attempting to follow his theories require an intimate knowledge of many theorists at the expense of finding Scholes's theory. The whole chapter on the Left Hand of Difference seemed irrelevant.
First, for the unheard to become heard they have to answer Foucault's question "First of all who is speaking" (132). Then they have to evaluate and interpret the rest of that quote on page 132. But in order to interpret and personalize the text, the student needs skills, techniques, and confidence. The student needs to evaluate and critic recurrent themes and techniques by the speaker that give truths the illusions of truthfulness that Nietzsche discusses on page 140 when talking about truth and lies. This goes back to my comment in another blog regarding Brecht's essay: The Five Truths. I would even go further to say that education is about showing what is important to know about the text and what is "the chatter" of the text and the purpose of that chatter. So the importance of the text and language and education seems to be grounded in the theory (UGH! theory) that "We [should] care about texts for many reasons, not the least of which is that they bring us news that alters our way of interpreting things" (165).
Scholes
So really…anything we say can be philosophically picked apart. Don’t get me wrong—I have no desire to do that. But every expression, every article before a noun…it can all be picked apart and argued and made into a philosophical discussion. Page 78 talks a little about Archie Bunker and his “what’s the difference” comment. When I read the final sentence in that excerpt, “…the literal meaning asks for the concept whose existence is denied by the figurative meaning.” I stayed on that sentence for 10 minutes. So true. How often do my children ask me what something means…not the dictionary definition of a wor, but a phrase that is an idiom or more often a sarcastic remark made by me or that they hear on Seinfeld. I would simply answer…it’s meant to be sarcastic. But really it’s so much more. The very sarcasm that is meant to be the answer to a question or comment disguises or dismisses what was supposed to be the actual answer. The sarcasm IS the answer. That’s why it’s so hard for people to learn English…not that this is some profound revelation…but I usually take the reading perspective and the gh’s and ph’s ad f’s and how they all sound the same…but that’s how the English language was written and we just have to see it enough for it to register as that sound. Scholes is right…teaching is a theoretical activity. On so many levels. It is not just literary, but it also verbal and cultural…just like literacy.
One thing that bothers me about these books, and right now I am specifically referring to page 88, is that theorists write a lot of their opinions based on how wrong someone else’s thoughts or theoretical achievements are/were.
Moving on… I am picking up the habit of writing as I read…
I find it interesting how both Vygotsy and Scholes discuss the change of language and its
evolution. Vygotsky had a deep effect on the way linguistic theorists think and analyze, and the idea that thought s dependent upon language (101) This, for me, leads into this whole discussion he has about verbal and non-verbal signs and whether or not they are linguistic. More often than not, the non-verbal expresses more than the verbal. As I read, I am not sure that Scholes has an opinion about this as much as he seems to insert excerpts from various theoretical works, then proceeds to pick apart the semantics, wherein I can’t see that he agrees or disagrees with the actual passage, but he’s more passionate about how the passage was worded or that the theorist is stealing other’s ideas without giving credit. He spends the entire last chapter picking apart Stanley Fish…but reading it makes me wonder why he thinks he’s right and Fish is wrong on certain points. I was disappointed that in all his attacks, I’m having trouble deciphering what exactly Scholes’ theory is…it appears based on the attacks he’s made on others’ theories (maybe that’s the point of this book?), which is not, to me, a theory at all.
Anyone else notice that Scholes was awarded the Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize?
One thing that bothers me about these books, and right now I am specifically referring to page 88, is that theorists write a lot of their opinions based on how wrong someone else’s thoughts or theoretical achievements are/were.
Moving on… I am picking up the habit of writing as I read…
I find it interesting how both Vygotsy and Scholes discuss the change of language and its
evolution. Vygotsky had a deep effect on the way linguistic theorists think and analyze, and the idea that thought s dependent upon language (101) This, for me, leads into this whole discussion he has about verbal and non-verbal signs and whether or not they are linguistic. More often than not, the non-verbal expresses more than the verbal. As I read, I am not sure that Scholes has an opinion about this as much as he seems to insert excerpts from various theoretical works, then proceeds to pick apart the semantics, wherein I can’t see that he agrees or disagrees with the actual passage, but he’s more passionate about how the passage was worded or that the theorist is stealing other’s ideas without giving credit. He spends the entire last chapter picking apart Stanley Fish…but reading it makes me wonder why he thinks he’s right and Fish is wrong on certain points. I was disappointed that in all his attacks, I’m having trouble deciphering what exactly Scholes’ theory is…it appears based on the attacks he’s made on others’ theories (maybe that’s the point of this book?), which is not, to me, a theory at all.
Anyone else notice that Scholes was awarded the Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize?
Monday, November 10, 2008
Scholes might want to stick to sandals
Sometimes, I think, authors bite off a bit more than they can chew. This might have been the case for Robert Scholes in chapters 5-9. Although I could follow his chronological train of thought, he tried to cover too much territory. The leap from deMan and Eagleton [with the discussion of the world being text and the battle between structuralists and post-structuralists] to Stanley Fish and his presumption that the text only becomes important when interpreted by the reader was just too much of a stretch. My head seriously did spin by the time I finished this book.
The Agassiz anecdote got me thinking. It reminded me of an expensive online writing program (My Access) that some students use as preparation for standardized test writing (no joke). Students respond to a prompt, submit it for scoring by the computer and receive immediate feedback. What I've noticed, though, is that the computer can only give limited explanations of writing problems it finds. For example, feedback to an ELL student about "clause errors" was vaguely explained in a way that made any sense to this student. He'd take a stab at a revision, submit it, and cringe when his score became even lower than his first one. It occurred to me that this student was learning to guess what the computer wanted which is Scholes's precise point when he says "He can, however, now speak and write Agassizese, for this is what he has really learned: to produce the sort of writing his teacher wants" (131). Why not just play "Guess what I'm thinking" and make a game of it?
I was fascinated by the discussion of the words boeuf and ochs. This was my first exposure to Saussure and I definitely got his point. "Language exists in order for us to talk about such things, among things." Yep. We develop words for things that exist in our world. Both the French and the Germans needed a way to identify that critter in their world.
Scholes lost me in his discussion of the theory of time on page 93. How can we never be in the present? I get the arrow example but, frankly, that's when I think theorists need to get out of their cubbies and interact with some real people. It's a little too heady for me I suppose.
The naming function of language and the numb eel story intrigued me. It seems completely logical that Aphra Behn did, indeed, discover the electric eel -and what a cool attempt at a name! Although I've never been stung by an electric eel, I imagine it would be numbing. I wonder if Plato considered language when he coined the phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Behn had the necessity to name that eel, she just didn't invent a term that appealed to the general population.
"Nowhere is language more absolute than in its treatment of sexuality" (114). Scholes's conversation of Aristotle's list of oppositions was seducing. The books that I've read of Ursula K. LeGuin's are children's books (the Wizard of Earthsea series) and didn't broach this subject (at least I don't think they did!) Through his detailed conversation of The Left Hand of Darkness, I feel like I really want to read it. I want to see firsthand how she intertwines so many of those opposing forces into that book in such a seemingly effortless way.
"...to a very real extent, one's beliefs will color what one reads" (151). Yep.
The Agassiz anecdote got me thinking. It reminded me of an expensive online writing program (My Access) that some students use as preparation for standardized test writing (no joke). Students respond to a prompt, submit it for scoring by the computer and receive immediate feedback. What I've noticed, though, is that the computer can only give limited explanations of writing problems it finds. For example, feedback to an ELL student about "clause errors" was vaguely explained in a way that made any sense to this student. He'd take a stab at a revision, submit it, and cringe when his score became even lower than his first one. It occurred to me that this student was learning to guess what the computer wanted which is Scholes's precise point when he says "He can, however, now speak and write Agassizese, for this is what he has really learned: to produce the sort of writing his teacher wants" (131). Why not just play "Guess what I'm thinking" and make a game of it?
I was fascinated by the discussion of the words boeuf and ochs. This was my first exposure to Saussure and I definitely got his point. "Language exists in order for us to talk about such things, among things." Yep. We develop words for things that exist in our world. Both the French and the Germans needed a way to identify that critter in their world.
Scholes lost me in his discussion of the theory of time on page 93. How can we never be in the present? I get the arrow example but, frankly, that's when I think theorists need to get out of their cubbies and interact with some real people. It's a little too heady for me I suppose.
The naming function of language and the numb eel story intrigued me. It seems completely logical that Aphra Behn did, indeed, discover the electric eel -and what a cool attempt at a name! Although I've never been stung by an electric eel, I imagine it would be numbing. I wonder if Plato considered language when he coined the phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Behn had the necessity to name that eel, she just didn't invent a term that appealed to the general population.
"Nowhere is language more absolute than in its treatment of sexuality" (114). Scholes's conversation of Aristotle's list of oppositions was seducing. The books that I've read of Ursula K. LeGuin's are children's books (the Wizard of Earthsea series) and didn't broach this subject (at least I don't think they did!) Through his detailed conversation of The Left Hand of Darkness, I feel like I really want to read it. I want to see firsthand how she intertwines so many of those opposing forces into that book in such a seemingly effortless way.
"...to a very real extent, one's beliefs will color what one reads" (151). Yep.
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