Reference:
Excerpts 'Rhetoricians used to be the people who worried most about the
complex of problems which I shall discuss under a somewhat ponderous
term, Experiential Iconicism....The traditional labels under which these
problems used to enter into rhetoric and grammar were ordo naturalis
and ordo artificialis....In natural order ... text and discourse have the
same arrangement as things in the universe of discourse'
(97-8).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | arrangement |
discourse |
grammar |
iconicism |
rhetoric |
term |
text |
universe |
'To begin with I shall for a moment leave the larger patterns of order
in the physical world and in society. Instead I shall cite a few examples
from a notoriously complex area of English syntax, namely adverbial
placement' (99).
Domains: Under construction |
'I have spoken about text strategies and must therefore digress to
explain the background of this concept....It is practical as well as
theoretically defensible to classify text models into four major categories.
The first category of models is sentence-based. A sentence-based
model uses ready-made sentences as its input and cannot therefore
manipulate sentence boundaries. It can only explain how features within
and between sentences, such as anaphoric and cataphoric references
and theme-rheme-focus structures, link sentences to one another.... The
second type of model is predication-based. Here the input consists of a
set of predications of some kind together with their temporal, causal or
spatial, and perhaps social, relations, and a strategy which controls their
textualization and linearization into sentences through grouping,
conjunction, and embedding' (102).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | category |
concept |
conjunction |
sentence |
strategy |
temporal |
text |
'If we want to derive predications out of the model too, instead of
accepting them as part of the input, we must adopt a device of the third,
cognitive, type. In such cognitive models the predications are usually
derived out of a cognitive network, again under the control of a text
strategy.... But in addition to all this we may also wish to look into the
motives and reasons why a certain speaker/writer has opted for one
particular text strategy in his particular context of situation. If so, we must
once again enlarge our perspective and adopt a model of a fourth type
which is sensitive not only to strategies of text composition but also to
principles of human interaction. Such models try to explain how human
beings communicate as part of their attempts at social cooperation'
(103).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | composition |
context |
interaction |
network |
perspective |
principles |
situation |
strategy |
text |
'Causal explanations must be sought at a level more
comprehensive than that of the structure with which one is preoccupied'
(103).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | structure |
'If we wish to relate instances of experiential iconicism in text
generation or in text interpretation and comprehension to our general
knowledge of the world (as we must), a cognitive model becomes
necessary. And we must cite principles of human interaction if we can to
detect the motives for the preference of one text strategy to another. In
brief, we shall need the whole gamut of models if we wish to explain why
somebody opts for an iconic arrangement of his text and how he carries
out his iconic strategy through text patterning and, ultimately, syntax. This
is simply another way of saying that experiential iconicism can be
discussed in terms of examples brought from various levels: syntax, text
patterning, cognition, interaction' (104).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | arrangement |
cognition |
comprehension |
iconicism |
interaction |
interpretation |
knowledge |
principles |
strategy |
syntax |
text |
world |
'How, then, does experiential iconicism relate to some other major
text-strategic principles, at sentence level most notably information
dynamics and saliency? ... Information dynamics is concerned with the
distribution of old and new information, or more precisely, of information
which the speaker/writer assumes or knows is familiar to the receptor
and information he assumes or knows will be new. Should we wish to
regard such assumptions, and hence the distribution of old and new
information in the text, as part of the universe of discourse, information
dynamics might merge with experiential iconicism'. But if we maintain a
distinction between the text and the world it describes, such a merger
will not take place' (107-8).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | discourse |
distinction |
distribution |
iconicism |
level |
principles |
sentence |
text |
universe |
world |
'Information dynamics and experiential iconicism ... conspire without
being identical. In addition, we cannot discard iconicism as but another
manifestation of salience in the usual sense of that term ... Salience is a
result of a set of universal psychological principles which people use
when translating their experiences into language' (109).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | iconicism |
language |
principles |
result |
salience |
term |
universal |
'Salience involves basic strategies of cognition which are reflected
in language rather than such text-strategic alternatives whose task it is to
illustrate in iconic terms the structure of the world' (110).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | cognition |
language |
salience |
structure |
world |
'So far I have concentrated on empirically verifiable patterns of
order in the worlds of nature and of society. But iconicism can be used
to evoke orders of a less readily verifiable kind -- processes of
association in an individual's mind..., and imaginary patterns in
imaginary universes and fantasies. Thus the very ordering of a text can
turn into a semiotic subsystem, or perhaps rather into a potential
hierarchy of such subsystems because there can be simultaneous
iconicism at various macro- and microlevels of text structure. Indeed
iconicism is potentially conceivable at every level where the structure of
the text and of language allows a choice between different patterns of
linearization' (110).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | association |
hierarchy |
iconicism |
language |
level |
mind |
nature |
semiotic |
structure |
text |
Last Modified:
July-12-96 8:49:31
Reply to randy_radney@sil.org[A Lexicon of the Humanities |
SIL Home Page | Contributions]