CP – Number 12 (2007)

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper is an analysis of presidential inaugurals. Although having as a case study the American ideologies, the general model of argument development in presidential address may be compared to any such type of discourse belonging to other political cultures.

Keywords:

political culture, comparative analysis, persuasive strategies, Plato, Aristotle, presidential ideologies, inaugural speech, types of inaugurals.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0001 [0002080]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

Iconicity, the semiotic device of reality, should be interpreted through the lens of indexicality and simbolicity because a visual display of some participants has been shot for historical and cultural reasons. Starting from van Leeuwen’s social semiotics, Schirato and Webb’s pictorial turn and Wright’s photography handbook, we will provide an analysis of Britishness through the Burberry fragrances for Women and Men. The check-pattern and the shots of some famous places in London are not just some fabric design or buildings, but they become signs of British style within the visual discourse.

Keywords:

text - symbol (seeing - looking), pictorial turn, visual culture, visual narrative.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0002 [0002081]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

Since the 1950ies, the researchers’ interest in text and discourse (particularly in poetic discourse through the semiotic square of the ‘master tropes’, Jameson apud Chandler 2002) has been growing stronger through the issues it has raised. The paper deals with concepts such as text, discourse, metaphor and self from a semiotic perspective (having as theoretical background Chandler 2002, Cmeciu 1999, Danesi 2002, Eco1979/1991, 1996, 2004, Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Petru Ioan 1995, Vlad 1982, 2003, Wasik 2003), taking Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. A Biography as ‘cultural object’ for analysis. Starting from Gide’s mise en abyme and from Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor and Danesi’s metaphorical reasoning, we propose two other narrative techniques, that is mise en hauteur and mise en surface, and the notion of (meta)meta-phorization, which names a process of meta-phorizing the text.

We consider Orlando as a complex and complete text whose content starts from an identifiable, codified and encodifying unit/centre (linguistically rendered by a name) and communicates itself through a web of discourses circumscribed within borders. Two distinctions could be made here: dimensions of text/book, which refer to market requirements (the text as commodity) and textual dimensions, which envisage hyper-, hypo-, inter-, para- and metatextual elements; the latter taking the unweaver/reader to strategies such as mise en hauteur and mise en surface.

The act of producing meaning against a large time-space canvas and the attempt of somebody ‘to catch in words’ the most ‘life-like’ significations and to render them as reliable for/to somebody else is suggested by the metaphorical act of weaving. Discourse seen as ‘practice’ (according to Foucault) focalizes and investigates two roles: of the weaver and of the unweaver. The fabric of warps and wefts, through its game of forward and backward movement, brings to the foreground the maker/producer of discourse as the manifestation of consciousnesses oriented towards specifically spatio-temporal created (and invented) worlds and the reader as reproducer and interpreter of threads read in a ‘reverse’ way. It is this distribution of roles between addresser and addressee which gives cultural value to the text.

The analysis of metaphors which communicate different selves in Orlando. A Biography reveals the becoming of the creative Self within a process of metaphorizing through a game of metaforms and meta-metaforms (Danesi) which register the shift from constructing the self to recovering a self or metamorphosizing selves while living in and experiencing different cultural spaces and memories.

Keywords:

text, discourse, semiotic approach, metaphor, self, field of action, dynamic (re)mapping.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0003 [0002082]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper deals with the major aspects defining the eighteenth century English cultural discourse on issues regarding the women’s lives and their roles in marriage. Richardson’s novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded probably offers the best epitomized image of two important stages in a woman’s life: firstly, the preconditions of maidenhood, and, secondly, the duties and benefits of wifehood and motherhood. The paper represents only a starting point in the portrayal of the eighteenth century cultural discourse on feminine cultural types like the coquette, the prude, the country maid, the town lady, or the female wit.

Keywords:

virtue, virginity, prudence, domesticity, affectivity, exogamy.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0004 [0002083]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

The need for communication has existed since the beginning of mankind and it was language that has proved to be the most successful means of interaction. However, with the growth of political, economic and cultural dependencies among countries, the requisite for a common tongue allowing to reject all linguistic barriers has become indispensable in order to preserve positive relations between them. Therefore, the search for the perfect universal means of interaction has remained the fundamental objective of philosophers and linguists for centuries. Despite many opinions that English serves one of the most vital roles in the modern international communication (Crystal [1997] 2003, Graddol 2006), its position as a World Language has not yet been officially established. This article is to consider the attitudes towards the status of English in the contemporary world, analyse its standing in modern politics and society and decide whether it may be classified as an international, global or universal language.

Keywords:

contemporary English, global language, international communication, international language, society, universal language.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0005 [0002084]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

This paper proposes an interpretation of narrative as a complex web of interrelated elements, of which “field”, “time” and “memory” are essential. Our framework revolves around the exploration of two embedded types of discourse – the scientific and the artistic – that unfold the web of temporal relations within the narrative structure, by means of a variety of figurative connections. Besides the investigation of the scientific language that uses a denotatively accessible form, we shall insist upon the literary language that unfolds the connotative aspects of language.

Keywords:

time, field, memory, narrative web, narrative embedding, meaning networks, discourse, conceptual metaphors.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0006 [0002085]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

Modern identities within the text and of the text have been shaped from the perspective of the new society of consumption, through the perspective of the estrangement of the individual and through an upgraded Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. The modern individual has to find his way in a modern space which has no individuality for the dramas of man are the same anywhere, in a time in which man seems to have forgotten his past, lost any perspective upon the future and he seems to be living in an ever lasting, repetitive now while using a language which communicates but never perlocutes. Our paper aims at presenting few of the devices through which a paragon of the theatre of the absurd, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, manages to render all these aspects while equally puzzling and infuriating readers and spectators alike.

Keywords:

text, discursive strategies, Waiting for Godot, metatheatre, intertextual force of language.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0007 [0002086]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper is an attempt to show Carl Wernicke’s contribution to the study of the relationship between language, brain and neurolinguistics.

Keywords:

aphasia, language, neurolinguistics, psyche, psycholinguistics.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0008 [0002087]

Issue:

CP, Number 12

Section:

No. 12 (2007)  Editorial

Abstract:

The main aim of the paper is to account for the cognitive axiological consequences of the selection and arrangement of the content in texts which represent the genre of obituary in the British Press.

Keywords:

obituary, axiological features, cognitive devices, British press, discourse, text.

Code [ID]:

CP200712V00S01A0009 [0002088]