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Meaning is the difference of one sign in respect to all other signs. ... Colin Yallop and Anna Cermakova (2004): Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Corpus, meaning, intertextuality


1
Corpus, meaning, intertextuality
  • Wolfgang Teubert

2
Structuralism
  • Language (and other social artefacts) is a
    system.
  • The (linguistic) sign has two aspects form and
    meaning. There is no meaning without form. (Do
    thoughts have a form?)
  • Meaning is the difference of one sign in respect
    to all other signs.
  • Structuralism is, by definition, a synchronic
    approach to the study of the products of culture
    (including language), considered independently of
    their authors, consumers and circumstances of
    production.

3
The language system and its location
  • Emile Durkheim (famous sociologist) Language is
    a social system, and therefore it is located in
    groups (and only secondarily in individuals).
  • Ferdinand de Saussure a) Langue is a collective
    and, at the same time, mental fact parole is an
    individual creation b) language change is a
    parole phenomenon.
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty (famous sociologist) The
    shared linguistic world is the product of the
    sedimentation of an intersubjective practice.

4
Representation vs. communicationconceptual vs.
textual approach
  • Representation relationship between sign and
    object. (Language represents reality.)
  • Communication relationship between people, or,
    rather, texts (for written language). (Language
    is for communication.)
  • Signs signify (denote, represent) an object.
  • Texts mean something to a person , and we may be
    told in subsequent texts how hearers interpret
    them.
  • Signification (denotation) results from
    decontextualisation (lexical knowledge
    synchronic).
  • Textual meaning is (hermeneutical) interpretation
    (encyclopaedic knowledge diachronic).

5
Noam Chomsky The language system is in the head!
  • The language faculty is a mental (and not a
    social) faculty. We find the language system in
    the mind (cognitivism).
  • Language is not learned by the application of
    reinforcement (as claimed by behaviourism).
  • The language system (grammar) is, to a large
    extent, hard-wired.
  • The analysis of la parole (performance) does not
    tell us about la langue (competence).
  • An actual corpus is almost useless for
    linguistic analysis.

6
Claude Lévi-Strauss (famous anthropologist)
  • believes that underlying structures - whether in
    kinship systems, myths, rituals or objects such
    as masks - are evidence for the way the mind
    works cognitivism
  • believes that the human mind operates in terms of
    binary oppositions and that such oppositions
    structure all the phenomena of human culture
    structuralism/cognitivism
  • identifies meaning by locating each story or
    artefact in a transformation set such that
    each individual element stands in differential,
    contrastive or oppositional relation to every
    other structuralism

7
Cognitive linguistics, or how does the mind work?
  • Meanings are in the head.
  • Cognitivism looks into behaviourisms black box.
  • The computer is the model of the mind.
  • The mind uses the universal language of thought.
  • Natural language expressions are converted into
    mental representations.
  • Mental representations are processed
    syntactically (algorithmically).
  • Meaning is reduced to syntactic properties.
  • The mind is a syntactic (algorithmic) engine the
    mind is a computer.
  • Intentionality (consciousness) is not required.

8
A brief history of mental concepts
  • Aristotle Peri hermeneias Spoken words are the
    symbols of mental experience.
  • Boethius In perihermeneias Spoken words
    primarily signify mental concepts, secondarily
    denote the things.
  • Anselm of Canterbury Monologion Mental words
    are natural words (similitude!) and thus
    identical for all human beings.
  • Thomas of Erfurt Grammatica speculativa Mental
    concepts are the same for all men.
  • William of Ockham Summa logicae Verba mentis
    (mental concepts) are the signs of a lingua
    mentalis (language of thought).
  • Sole dissenting voice Augustine We acquire
    mental concepts through spoken language.

9
A first digression Thought and language
  • The primordial function of language is not
    communication but the externalisation of
    thought...The problem of our ancestors... was
    how to pair thoughts we have with the sounds we
    make.
  • There is innateness without adaptation and there
    is thought (expressed in an innate, universal
    language of thought) without there necessarily
    being (natural) language.
  • Jerry Fodor 'Give me that juicy bit over there'.
    LRB 27, 30 (06.10.05)

10
A second digression mental concepts
  • In Ockhams (and some cognitivists) mental
    lexicon, there is one concept that stands for one
    referent.
  • Would there be synonyms? Would there be
    ambiguity? Would we find pronouns? Would there be
    metaphors?

11
From sign to text intentionality meaning is
more than the structuralist opposition between
concepts
  • I. is a characteristic feature of mental and
    linguistic states according to which they have an
    object or content and are thus about something
  • I. means to be aware of the meaning of a symbolic
    expression (a text segment)
  • I. is what people (can) have but computers cannot
  • I. is having a first-person experience
  • Interpreting a text is having a first-person
    experience

12
Intentionality and corpus linguistics
  • We (as linguists) do not have direct access to
    first-person experiences.
  • We do have access to texts, texts that make up
    the discourse.
  • Texts do not have first-person experiences. But
  • Texts are the testimony of first-person
    experiences.
  • Texts are about something. They communicate
    content.
  • Texts create first-person experiences. They
    create intentionality.

13
Corpus linguistics an alternative approach to
meaning
  • Language is discourse. Language is la parole.
  • The discourse is the totality of texts
    communicated by the members of the discourse
    community.
  • Language is not a mental but a social phenomenon.
  • Language is the exchange of content.
  • We can look for meaning is in the discourse, not
    in the head.

14
Corpus linguistics means
  • The discourse generates its own conventions
  • The mental lexicon is a reflection of the
    register of a discourse.
  • The discourse is auto-referential we talk about
    what has been said.
  • Each new contribution to the discourse modifies
    the meaning of what has been said before.
  • Meaning is negotiable.
  • Meaning is not stable. (Texts are not stable)
  • The discourse has, by necessity, a diachronic
    dimension.

15
Two perspectives of corpus linguisticsrepresenta
tion vs.communication
  • If we look at text segments as units of meaning,
    we make a generalisation.
  • Units of meaning are are recurrent
    representations of signifieds. Units of meaning
    are generalisations.
  • The study of units if meaning requires a
    synchronic approach.
  • If we look at what a text segment communicates,
    we view it as a unique occurrence.
  • What makes a text segment a unique occurrence is
    the uniqueness of its intertextual links.
  • Intertextuality requires a diachronic perspective.

16
Corpus linguistics the diachronic (textual)
(hermeneutical) perspective
  • Each text is a reaction to previous texts
  • Each text segment or instantiation of a lexical
    item can be viewed as a unique occurrence.
  • Research questions
  • What did the text (segment) mean when it was
    written?
  • (Intertextual links!) Is it a response to
    something said previously? Were similar things
    said at the time?
  • Where, how and why has it been repeated since?
  • How was it interpreted after it was written?
  • How relevant is it?

17
Hermeneutics and the diachronic corpus of social
Vatican encyclicals property
  • Every man has by nature the right to possess
    property as his own. 1891,Rerum novarum,  6  
  • The natural right itself of owning goods ought
    always to remain intact and inviolate, since this
    indeed is a right that the state cannot take
    away. 1931, Quadragesimo anno,  49
  • Every man has in principle the right to use all
    the material goods of this earth, and this right
    can by no means be abolished, not even by other
    rights. 1941, Whitsun address.
  • The right to private ownership of goods has
    permanent validity. 1961, Mater et magistra,
     109
  • Private property does not constitute for anyone
    an absolute and unconditional right. 1967,
    Populorum progressio.  23
  • The violation of the human right to ownership of
    property leads to inefficiency. 1991, Centesimus
    annus,  24

18
Intentionality of the author or the borrowed
intentionality of the text?We are always dealing
with written language.
  • Inscription becomes synonymous with the semantic
    autonomy of the text, which results from the
    disconnection of the mental intention of the
    author from the verbal meaning of the text, of
    what the author meant and what the text means.
    What the text means now matters more than what
    the author meant when he wrote it. (Paul Ricoeur
    1976 29 f.)

19
Jacques Derrida Limited inc a b c (1977)
  • Writing is an iterative structure, cut off from
    consciousness.
  • The unity of the signifying form only
    constitutes itself by the virtue of its
    iterability, by the possibility of its being
    repeated on the absence of a determinate
    signified. (cf. property)
  • Every sign, linguistic or non-linguistic, in a
    small or large unit, can be cited, put in
    quotation marks, and in doing so it can break
    with every given context, engendering an infinity
    of new contexts.

20
Michel Foucault LArchéologie du savoir (The
Archeology of Knowledge) (1969)
  • One is led therefore to the project of a pure
    description of discursive textual events. This
    description is easily distinguishable from a
    Chomskyan analysis of language.
  • The statement is always an event that neither la
    langue nor the structural meaning can quite
    exhaust.
  • We must establish the correlations of one
    statement with other statements that may be
    connected with it.
  • We need the building-up of coherent and
    homogeneous corpora of documents (open or closed,
    exhausted or inexhaustible)

21
Conclusion
  • Neither structuralism nor cognitive linguistics
    can account for intentionality.
  • Meaning is a social phenomenon. Mental
    representations / mental lexicons are not
    observable and therefore irrelevant.
  • Meaning is negotiated and exchanged in the
    contributions to the discourse.
  • The discourse has a diachronic dimension. We have
    to examine the intertextual links.
  • We do not have the speaker, we only have the
    text.
  • Corpus linguistics provides a methodology for a
    hermeneutic approach to meaning.

22
  • SOME RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS
  • Aristotle Peri hermeneias/On interpretation.
    http//classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/interpretation.1
    .1.html
  • Chomsky, Noam (2000) New Horizons in the Study
    of Languages and the Mind. Cambridge Cambridge
    University Press
  • De Beaugrande, Robert Linguistic Theory The
    Discourse of Fundamental Works.
    http//beaugrande.bizland.com.htm
  • Derrida, Jacques (1988) Limited Inc. Evanston
    Northwestern University Press
  • Doe, John (1988) Speak into the Mirror A Story
    of Linguistic Anthropology. Lanman, Maryland
    Rowman Littlefield
  • Fairclough, Norman (2001) Language and Power.
    London Logman
  • Firth, John Rupert (1957) Papers in
    Linguistic Theory 134-1951. London Longman
  • Foucault, Michel (1972) The Archaeology of
    Knowledge. London Tavistock Publcations
  • Halliday, M. A. K., Wolfgang Teubert, Colin
    Yallop and Anna Cermakova (2004) Lexicology and
    Corpus Linguistics. London Continuum
  • Joseph, John E., Nigel Love, Talbot J. Taylor
    (eds.) (2001) Landmarks in Linguistic Thought.
    London Routledge 
  • Knowles, Murray, Rosamund Moon (2005)
    Introducing Metaphor. Abingdon Taylor Francis
  • Lakoff, George, Mark Johnson (1981) Metaphors we
    Live By. Chicago University of Chicago Press
  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1988) The Savage Mind.
    London Weidenfeld and Nicholson 
  • Morris, Pam (1997) The Bakhtin Reader Selected
    Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov.
    London Hodder Arnold
  • Pinker, Steven (1994) The Language Instinct. New
    York HarperCollins 
  • Pratt, Mary Louise (1986) Fieldwork in common
    places. In James Clifford, George E. Marcus
    Writing Culture. Berkeley University of
    California Press
  • Rastier, Francois (1998) On signs and texts
    Cognitive scienceand interpretation. In Applied
    Semiotics/Sémiotique Appliquée, no. 5, 303-330
  • Ricoeur, Paul (1976), Interpretation Theory
    Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth,
    Texas The Texas Christian University Press
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