Paul Hunter, “Synecdoche Against Metonymy: burke, Freire, and Writing Instruction” [Freshman English News, 18.2 (Spring 1990): 2-9] (more…)
January 13, 2009
January 5, 2009
jakobson: aphasia
‘apahasia as a linguistic topic’ in Selected Writings: Word and Language
in this volume, this essay precedes the ‘two types’ essay more routinely cited.
232: “The two opposite tropes, metaphor and metonymy, present the most condensed expression of two basic modes of relation: the internal relation of similarity (and contrast) underlies the metaphor; the external relation of contiguity (and remoteness) determines the metonymy.”
“Language in its various aspects deals with both modes of relation. Whether messages are exchanged or communication proceeds unilaterally from the addresser to the addressee, there must be some kind of contiguity betweent he participants of any speech event to assure the transmission of the message. The separation in space, and often in time, between two individuals, the addresser and the addressee, is bridged by an internal relation: there must be a certain equivalence between the symbols used by the addresser and those known and interpreted by the addressee. Without such equivalence the message is fruitless–even when it reaches the receiver, it does not affect him.”
notes: metonymy as external relation, emphasis on remoteness (and presumably nearness); mode of relation [so emerson’s focus on relations fits this linguistic understanding Jakobson offers. also see that metonymy/contiguity is basis for communication: for transmission of message; and metaphoric for interpretation. So metonymy thus focused more on medium; and metaphor on message?
235: describes the similarity disorder: those who can’t make internal relation/substitituion based on similarity that associates with metaphor. thus tend toward metonymy. notes that this means they can’t do metalanguage.
236: the attention is focused upon contiguity.the most frequently used words are the ‘indices of relations” found in conjunctions, pronouns, articles
the opposite disorder: patient cannot operate with contiguity, but can use similarity. lose ability to “propositionize. The context disintegrates” relational words omitted.
does ‘propositionize’ or sense of build meaning through context compare to emerson’s notion of analogizing?
His concluding paragraph, 238: “While each of these two types of aphasia tends toward unipolarity, normal verbal behavior is bipolar. But any individual use of language, any verbal style, any trend in verbal art displays a clear predilection either for the metonymical or for the metaphorical device.”
any comparisons to be made with Hayles on deep vs. hyper attention?
December 23, 2008
cavell: emerson/dewey
Cavell, forward to The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson, by Naoko Saito [Fordham 2006]
xiv: “Emerson, strikingly, does not divide philosophy into fields, but all of his writing can be seen as directed to what he calls the youth or the student, so that the totality of it embodies a pedagogical ambition, implicitly declaring that his culture as a whole stands in need of education.”
notes that he sees tension as well as relation between the two: transcendentalism and pragmatism
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2: dewey: philosophy as education
want to reclaim dewey by way of emerson: and education as spirit, language of inspiration that can’t be fully grasped in langauge of standardization
5: her sense of deweyan growth (which she will read in light of Emersonian moral perfectionism): education has no end beyond itself, one with growing. thus Dewey shifts from Hegelian absolute, fixed end (might we say metaphor, paradigm?) to Darwinian evolution/naturalism:growth as contingent, natural process (thus metonymic?)
10: the heart of Cavell’s emersonian moral perfectionism: the idea of philosophy as education, the ‘education of grown-ups’
dewey’s language, in dialogue with emerson and cavell, reclaimed as the language of education. [might not also we then need to reclaim emerson's language for education?]
11: emerson and dewey’s process-oriented idea of perfectionist education: a naturalized (secular) notion of conversion: taking place in here and now, again and again.
douglass anderson, philosophy americana: chapter that takes up cavell’s read of emerson and his neglect of the emerson-dewey connection. [his introduction: focus on teaching, tensions in university]
great line from dewey that aligns with Emerson looking back on seapration of his work and teaching: “Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can lets his mind come to close quarters with the pupil’s mind and the subject matter.” (MW 9:116)–from Democracy and education, chapter 8, aims in education (on the vice of externally imposed ends)
