The Aesthetics of Exodus

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek R. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
General Intellect

While the general intellect continues to provide a rich resource for understanding post-Fordism and for theorizing resistance, there remains a neglected aesthetic dimension to the general intellect and the role that art can play in resistance based on it. This article develops the general intellect along these lines by drawing on two theorists who are rarely thought together: Paolo Virno and Jean-François Lyotard. The article begins by introducing the general intellect and Virno’s reconceptualization of it as the general or generic intellect. It then introduces a relationship between art and the general intellect by reading Virno’s theory of language, speech, and communication. From here, it goes to his theory of exodus, which is then read back through his linguistic theory to draw out the key role that subjective defection plays in the project. Although Virno doesn’t spend much time discussing art, his brief remarks are used as an entry point to move to Lyotard’s writings on music and art, where the author fleshes out an aesthetic dimension to the general intellect and the project of exodus. The argument focuses on the artistic gesture (the “art” in/of the artwork) and especially timbre as witnesses and eruptions of the potentiality of the general intellect that can never be properly actualized. By analyzing timbre as a fugitive force that desubjectifies those gathered around music, the author argues that it provides an example of the opening necessary for the subjective defection that inaugurates exodus. In this way, the aesthetic dimension added to the general intellect is the generic capacity to be affected and disindividuated.

The Sign Theory of Language and the form-meaning interface / La Théorie du langage basée sur le signe et l’interface forme-sens

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (02) ◽  
pp. 171-215
Author(s):  
Frederick J. Newmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Significant Degree ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Sign Theory ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
External Motivation

AbstractThis article examines a key feature of Denis Bouchard's Sign Theory of Language, namely theSubstantive Hypothesis(SH), the idea that “the most explanatory linguistic theory is one that minimizes the elements (ideally to zero) that do not have an external motivation in the prior properties of the perceptual and conceptual substances of language”. The article argues that the strongest form of the SH is challenged by two widespread classes of phenomena: morphosyntactic generalizations that are not sign-based, and non-sign-based external pressures on grammars. It concludes with some speculative remarks on why, to a significant degree, grammatical patterning is not sign-based.

scholarly journals Benjamin's conception of language and Adorno's aesthetic theory

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (112) ◽  
pp. 321-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Duarte
Keyword(s):  
Primary Task ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Original Language ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Original Strength

According to the theory of language of the young Benjamin, the primary task of language isn't the communication of contents, but to express itself as a "spiritual essence" in which also men take part. That conception according to which language would be a medium to signification of something outside it leads to a necessary decrease of its original strength and is thus denominated by Benjamin bürgerlich. The names of human language are remainders of an archaic state, in which things weren't yet mute and had their own language. Benjamin suggests also that all the arts remind the original language of things, as they make objects "speak" in form of sounds, colors, shapes etc. That relationship between arts as reminders of the "language of things" and the possible reconciliation of mankind with itself and with nature has been developed by Theodor Adorno in several of his writings, specially in the Aesthetic Theory, where the artwork is ultimately conceived as a construct pervaded by "language" in the widest meaning - not in the "bourgeois" sense.

Linguistics and communication

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-313
Author(s):  
Keith Allan
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Object Language ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Primary Function ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis essay begins by identifying what communication is and what linguistics is in order to establish the relationship between them. The characterization of linguistics leads to discussion of the nature of language and of the relationship between a theory of language, i. e., linguistic theory, and the object language it models. This, in turn, leads to a review of speculations on the origins of human language with a view to identifying the motivation for its creation and its primary function. After considering a host of data, it becomes clear that, contrary to some approaches, the primary function of human language is to function as a vehicle of communication. Thus, linguistics studies what for humans is their primary vehicle of communication.

Linguistic Theory of Language Learning as Related to Machine Teaching

1970 ◽  
Vol 54 (8) ◽  
pp. 617
Author(s):  
Charles N. Staubach ◽  
Richard Barrutia
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Theory Of Language

“Déjà Vu” or Memory-Science between Gérard de Nerval and Marcel Proust

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyne Ender
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Marcel Proust ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Mental Event ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Gerard De Nerval ◽  
Deja Vu ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Déjà Vu ◽  
The Mind

ArgumentCultivated by a number of writers and studied by psychologists, the phenomenon of déjà vu is an invention of the nineteenth century and is part of a broader exploration of how the mind experiences memory and time. Thus this typically benign mental aberration provides an entry-point into the mechanisms that preside over the regulation of the flow of consciousness. The theories of the mind developed recently by neuroscientists help us understand, meanwhile, why investigations into this mental “event” necessarily invoke concepts of representation and narrative. In fact, our increasingly sophisticated models for processes of memory and perception depend on literary representations. This article relies on the paramnesiac writings of Gérard de Nerval, seen through the lens of Proust's analysis, to argue that a consideration of the aesthetic and representational features of déjà-vu can bring us closer to solving the epistemological challenges we face in studying this phenomenon.For Gregory T. Polletta

The relevance of introspective data

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Frederick J. Newmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Number Of Publications

Introspective judgments of acceptability have long been criticized for being both inconsistent and irrelevant. A number of publications have addressed the former issue and have argued that such judgments, carefully collected, are generally consistent. It remains the case, however, that many linguists question whether introspective data are or can be relevant to the construction of the correct theory of language. In the view of many usage-based grammarians, the sentences made up by analysts rather than real-life utterances lead inevitably to the supposedly unrealistic and complex abstract structures posited by generative grammarians. The chapter challenges that view. Appealing to a 170 MB corpus of conversational English, it argues that introspective data and conversational data do not lead to different conclusions about the nature of linguistic theory.

“accipiendo vel compilando ab aliis”: De vulgari eloquentia 1.1. Reading Dante with Dante: A contribution to Dante’s theory of language

2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582110225
Author(s):  
Maria Luisa Ardizzone
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Vita Nuova ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
De Vulgari Eloquentia

This article analyzes Dante’s theory of language and considers at first a few fragments of Dante’s Latin treatise on the vernacular, reading them in light of their ancient-medieval contexts. This reading allows part-modification of the critical discourse about Dante’s theory of language. The article argues that Dante’s discussion did not start in the De vulgari eloquentia, as is commonly assumed, but was at first introduced in the Vita nuova. Recent studies show that the theme of laude in the Vita nuova includes a linguistic theory and a discourse on the deep structures of language. Focussing on specific words, considering them in light of the ancient-medieval background, the article organizes a transverse reading that considers layers of Dante’s discourse on language from the Vita nuova to the Commedia not yet explored and evaluated.

scholarly journals Communicative Approach in Teaching Foreign Languages

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 359-365
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Actual Performance ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Distribution Shifts

The Communitive Approach in language teaching starts from а theory of language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop communicative competence. Another linguistic theory of communication favored in CLT is functional account of language use. Linguistic is concerned with the description of speech acts of texts, since only through study of language in use are all the functions of language and therefore all components of meaning brought into focus. The goal of language teaching is to develop what referred to as “communicative competence”. This term is coined in order to contrast а communicative view of language and theory of competence. Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener in а completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitation, distribution, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.

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