Your search for: semiotic AND grammar

The label `semiotic grammar' captures a fundamental property of the grammars of human languages: not only is language a semiotic system in the familiar Saussurean sense, but its organizing system, its grammar, is also a semiotic system. This proposition, explicated in detail by William McGregor in ...

The label `semiotic grammar' captures a fundamental property of the grammars of human languages: not only is language a semiotic system in the familiar Saussurean sense, but its organizing system, its grammar, is also a semiotic system. This proposition, explicated in detail by William McGregor in this book, constitutes a new theory of grammar. Semiotic Grammar is `functional' rather than `formal' in its intellectual origins, approaches, and methods. It demonstrates, however, that neither a purely functional nor a purely formal account of language is adequate, given the centrality of the sign as the fundamental unit of grammatical analysis. The author distinguishes four types of grammatical signs: experiential, logical, interpersonal, and textural. The signifiers of these signs are syntagmatic relationships of the following types, respectively: constituency, dependency, conjugational (scopal) and linking (indexical, connective). McGregor illustrates and exemplifies the theory with data from a variety of languages including English, Acehnese, Polish, Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, and Mohawk; and from his pioneering research on Gooniyandi and Nyulnyul, two languages of the Kimberleys region of Western Australia.

Signs in Society takes up Ferdinand de Saussure's challenge to study the "life of signs in society" by using semiotic tools proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce. Richard J. Parmentier explicates Peirce's fundamental semiotic concepts and evaluates their potential for cultural analysis. After ...

Signs in Society takes up Ferdinand de Saussure's challenge to study the "life of signs in society" by using semiotic tools proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce. Richard J. Parmentier explicates Peirce's fundamental semiotic concepts and evaluates their potential for cultural analysis. After considering the possibility of using complex semiotic processes, Parmentier examines the relationship between social action and theoretical discourse. Parmentier applies Peircean concepts in two ethnographic case studies based on fieldwork in Belau (Micronesia), one dealing with historical changes in the symbolism of mortuary exchange valuables and the other analyzing an instance of political oratory as a contextual performance. Then, using diverse data - from Melanesian mythology and Babylonian ritual to contemporary American "living history" museums and television advertising - Parmentier finds tropic innovation, formalized re-enactment, and controlling metalanguages in cultures across space and time. Finally, the author uncovers the pragmatic dimensions of the comparative work of philosophers of religion and locates strategies of naturalizing and conventionalizing discourse in both social reality and social theory. Throughout Signs in Society Parmentier focuses on links between text and context, linguistic and nonlinguistic signs, semiotic and metasemiotic levels, and elementary and complex semiotic phenomena. It demonstrates the effectiveness of semiotic theory in illuminating complex social and cultural practices.

This is the first book to bring together four distinct literatures--functional linguistics, child language, narrative development, and discursive psychology. It is an outgrowth of the historical relationship between psychology and linguistics, especially the post-Wittgensteinian "turn to language." ...

This is the first book to bring together four distinct literatures--functional linguistics, child language, narrative development, and discursive psychology. It is an outgrowth of the historical relationship between psychology and linguistics, especially the post-Wittgensteinian "turn to language." Relevant issues are situated at that interface in a way that should prove accessible to both linguists with little or no psychological knowledge and to psychologists with no linguistics background are addressed. Previously, there have been volumes on the theses of discursive psychology and social constructionism and volumes on the workings and theories of functional linguistics, but none have attempted to link the two as natural bedfellows in this way. While clearly situated within the spirit of the Berkeley school, it goes beyond it by virtue of linking functional linguistics and discursive psychology, and by doing this ontogenetically. Overall, this book is an investigation of the psycholinguistic thesis of the social construction of selfhood and the psychology of everyday life. Featuring the only book-length studies of the use of grammatical analysis as a research strategy in psychology, it integrates issues of human development and child language in a new way. It deals in careful linguistic analyses, examining the role of grammatical forms in constituting context which involves an examination of their functions that are then used to highlight fundamental aspects of development. The linguistic analyses are treated as a testing ground for the ideas and claims made in discursive psychology. The discussion deals with many of the current issues in psychology and related disciplines, including narrative, morality, agency, and responsibility, in order to show the central role of language in human functioning.