There are two interesting puzzles about tropes. They are literal nonsense, yet native speakers easily make sense of them. Moreover, despite the fact that tropes are literal nonsense, native speakers find them helpful ...There are two interesting puzzles about tropes. They are literal nonsense, yet native speakers easily make sense of them. Moreover, despite the fact that tropes are literal nonsense, native speakers find them helpful in clarifying and enhancing meanings and sharpening reference. In this paper, there is an attempt to explain these puzzles through the use of theories of markedness and rank, as framed by Peirce's semiotic theory. Tropes are nonsense in that they tend to violate the implicit rules of semantic fields. These create puzzles and anomalies for the native speakers to resolve—abductions—and they do so primarily by certain markedness and rank operations. By neutralizing or bracketing categorical ranks, speakers can see, more clearly, the similarity between the salient or marked features of elements from disparate semantic fields. This results in a more vivid sense of the targets of such tropes. Markedness assimilation can help sharpen reference or help to focus distinctions that make things clearer. Markedness reversals can also help in the manner, but can also obfuscate when that is appropriate.展开更多
Wordsworth’s love towards nature is great. He believes that divinity exists in everything created by God. The tempo of the poem reaches its peaks when the author gives the two close’shots of daffodils, which are eff...Wordsworth’s love towards nature is great. He believes that divinity exists in everything created by God. The tempo of the poem reaches its peaks when the author gives the two close’shots of daffodils, which are effected by the parallel two lines.展开更多
This paper analyzes the role of six tropes （metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor, analogy, allegory, and irony） in Nietzsche＇s and Novalis＇ writings on language and cognition, using the comparison to show how a negative...This paper analyzes the role of six tropes （metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor, analogy, allegory, and irony） in Nietzsche＇s and Novalis＇ writings on language and cognition, using the comparison to show how a negative element in Nietzsche＇s attitude towards the tropic nature of cognition underlies well-known problems in his response to nihilism. These problems include ambiguities in Nietzsche＇s attitude to truth, and the question of how well he can carry through his project of affirming the individual on the basis of a creative reinterpretation of experience. I maintain that Novalis understands language and cognition to be tropic in a similar way as Nietzsche does, and that these writers provide similar critiques of discursive reason on the basis of what they view as its stultifying rigidity and misleading claims to a ＂literal＂ form of objectivity. However, I argue that Novalis avoids Nietzsche＇s difficulties by maintaining that a creative element in cognition does not rule out a variant of a correspondence notion of truth. Although Novalis＇ account thus falls foul of Nietzsche＇s goal of providing an immanent affirmation of human experience, the comparison shows that a Nietzschean attempt to provide a convincing model of individual self-affirmation should integrate a more positive role for trope, which can support a satisfying conception of the value of human creativity.展开更多
Centuries of rhetorical and literary studies have strongly been influencing the cognitive understanding of metonymy. Many different classifications of tropes have been proposed. Some subsume metonymy and synecdoche un...Centuries of rhetorical and literary studies have strongly been influencing the cognitive understanding of metonymy. Many different classifications of tropes have been proposed. Some subsume metonymy and synecdoche under metaphor while the other classify it under synecdoche. The paper overviews the main researches on metonymy in west countries and in China since 1980s from cognitive perspective.展开更多
I discuss the human need or drive for meaning （which I call ＂the Human Eros＂） and how this centers on various central or core meanings that become embodied so as to constitute definitive identities--identities of ...I discuss the human need or drive for meaning （which I call ＂the Human Eros＂） and how this centers on various central or core meanings that become embodied so as to constitute definitive identities--identities of self, group, culture, and world. 1 call these ＂mythoi＂ （and not ＂myths＂ insofar as their key feature is their importance and value--＂myth＂ carries with it the distracting association of ＂falsehood,＂ especially ＂unscientific falsehood;＂ science is loaded with its mythoi like everything else.） These mythoi must be embodied experientially and in cultural habits, actions, rituals, i.e., praxeis, in order to renew and reconstitute a sense of meaning and value in existence. That is, mythoi serve the Human Eros. These mythoi employ tropes or cultural types as structural principles. Tropes themselves tend to group in various relational patterns and tensions that I call ＂constellations.＂ Much of the ＂play of signs＂ in cultural creation lies in exploring, clarifying, and even antagonizing these relations as ways of deepening the world of meaning. ＂Play＂ explores possibilities, beginning with given actualities. It may explore relations that remain distant from the core of a culture＇s or individual＇s self-understanding. But it may approach and, at times, directly engage core meanings and values, possibly transforming them.展开更多
文摘There are two interesting puzzles about tropes. They are literal nonsense, yet native speakers easily make sense of them. Moreover, despite the fact that tropes are literal nonsense, native speakers find them helpful in clarifying and enhancing meanings and sharpening reference. In this paper, there is an attempt to explain these puzzles through the use of theories of markedness and rank, as framed by Peirce's semiotic theory. Tropes are nonsense in that they tend to violate the implicit rules of semantic fields. These create puzzles and anomalies for the native speakers to resolve—abductions—and they do so primarily by certain markedness and rank operations. By neutralizing or bracketing categorical ranks, speakers can see, more clearly, the similarity between the salient or marked features of elements from disparate semantic fields. This results in a more vivid sense of the targets of such tropes. Markedness assimilation can help sharpen reference or help to focus distinctions that make things clearer. Markedness reversals can also help in the manner, but can also obfuscate when that is appropriate.
文摘Wordsworth’s love towards nature is great. He believes that divinity exists in everything created by God. The tempo of the poem reaches its peaks when the author gives the two close’shots of daffodils, which are effected by the parallel two lines.
文摘This paper analyzes the role of six tropes （metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor, analogy, allegory, and irony） in Nietzsche＇s and Novalis＇ writings on language and cognition, using the comparison to show how a negative element in Nietzsche＇s attitude towards the tropic nature of cognition underlies well-known problems in his response to nihilism. These problems include ambiguities in Nietzsche＇s attitude to truth, and the question of how well he can carry through his project of affirming the individual on the basis of a creative reinterpretation of experience. I maintain that Novalis understands language and cognition to be tropic in a similar way as Nietzsche does, and that these writers provide similar critiques of discursive reason on the basis of what they view as its stultifying rigidity and misleading claims to a ＂literal＂ form of objectivity. However, I argue that Novalis avoids Nietzsche＇s difficulties by maintaining that a creative element in cognition does not rule out a variant of a correspondence notion of truth. Although Novalis＇ account thus falls foul of Nietzsche＇s goal of providing an immanent affirmation of human experience, the comparison shows that a Nietzschean attempt to provide a convincing model of individual self-affirmation should integrate a more positive role for trope, which can support a satisfying conception of the value of human creativity.
文摘Centuries of rhetorical and literary studies have strongly been influencing the cognitive understanding of metonymy. Many different classifications of tropes have been proposed. Some subsume metonymy and synecdoche under metaphor while the other classify it under synecdoche. The paper overviews the main researches on metonymy in west countries and in China since 1980s from cognitive perspective.
文摘I discuss the human need or drive for meaning （which I call ＂the Human Eros＂） and how this centers on various central or core meanings that become embodied so as to constitute definitive identities--identities of self, group, culture, and world. 1 call these ＂mythoi＂ （and not ＂myths＂ insofar as their key feature is their importance and value--＂myth＂ carries with it the distracting association of ＂falsehood,＂ especially ＂unscientific falsehood;＂ science is loaded with its mythoi like everything else.） These mythoi must be embodied experientially and in cultural habits, actions, rituals, i.e., praxeis, in order to renew and reconstitute a sense of meaning and value in existence. That is, mythoi serve the Human Eros. These mythoi employ tropes or cultural types as structural principles. Tropes themselves tend to group in various relational patterns and tensions that I call ＂constellations.＂ Much of the ＂play of signs＂ in cultural creation lies in exploring, clarifying, and even antagonizing these relations as ways of deepening the world of meaning. ＂Play＂ explores possibilities, beginning with given actualities. It may explore relations that remain distant from the core of a culture＇s or individual＇s self-understanding. But it may approach and, at times, directly engage core meanings and values, possibly transforming them.
