This paper provides an overview of semiotic studies about advertising, beginning with the early work done in the 1960s. Advertising communication plays a particular role in semiotic studies in the second half of the twentieth century. Pioneering studies of advertising messages, in particular those of Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, date to the 1960s and were carried out for the most part using the tools of classical rhetoric. Following a period in which semiotics displayed a relative lack of interest in (...) advertisements, in the 1980s advertising texts were used as examples in applied narratological analysis by Jean-Marie Floch and others. This occurred at the same time as the so-called “passion turn of semiotics,” which stressed that the passions and emotions present in texts are crucial issues in textual semiotics, and it also seemed to offer fresh perspectives for the analysis of advertising communication. The passion turn took account of the evolution of advertising itself, since modern advertising is more and more interested in conveying passions and emotions. The effectiveness of an advert tends to be closely bound up with the presentation of sensations associated with a given product or brand. Recently, semioticians have begun to study more general features of advertising and marketing discourse. (shrink)

Exhibitions dedicated to the theme of "Red China" occupy an important place in the dissemination of "red" culture, the continuity of the "red" gene and the intensification of "red" education. They reflect the political agenda, have a distinct content and the uniqueness of the text material. Being an important element of the spread of "red" culture, exhibitions on the theme of "Red China" integrate elements of this culture into people's daily lives and play an active role in preserving and (...) multiplying the "red" gene. In this article, the systematization and generalization of knowledge in the field of narrative strategy of exhibitions on the theme of "Red China" is carried out from the point of view of ontology, structure and narrative carrier, which at the present stage is important for building a strong socialist ideology. Exhibitions on the theme of "Red China" are an important way of materialization, visualization and dissemination of "red" culture, as well as an effective means of its popularization. The study found that the "Red" exhibitions should have a "revolutionary content", have a "political character", be "mutually recognized by the authorities and the people", take on the main responsibility for providing people with common access to material and spiritual culture. From the point of view of the communication function of the "red" exhibitions, they are an important means of organizing ideological and political education by the Communist Party of China, strengthening social harmony and promoting basic values. (shrink)

To note that the study of Sanskrit narrative literature, in particular the Epics and Purāṇas, has been plagued with the propensity towards diachronic dissection would be little more than a truism in most scholarly circles. Yet it is with this truism we are forced to begin as we strive to shed the old skin of colonial era receptions of these texts. While there have been notable efforts made to embrace Sanskrit narrative as synchronic wholes, there isn’t much in (...) the way of a systematic methodology for doing so. This paper, therefore, is aimed at charting a methodology for synchronic study of Sanskrit narrative literature, paying particular attention to narrative frames. It advances five avenues of thematic import based on the structure of Sanskrit narrative: inception import, association import, exposition import, framing import, and impetus import. Examples are primarily drawn primarily from the Mahābhārata and the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa. Note that key terms arising from the discussion in this chapter are bolded throughout and appear in a “terminology guide” appended to the end of this study for the sake of reader reference. (shrink)

To talk about the sociology of literary representation is, first and foremost, to propose to historicize representational activity at that crucial point where its social and linguistic dimensions intersect.1 The troublesome incongruity between these two dimensions need not be minimized, but it can be grappled with as soon as the presuppositions of either the hegemony of the subject or that of language itself are questioned. In this view, the position of George Lukács tends to ignore the state of extreme vulnerability (...) and recurrent jeopardy in which representation has always found itself, just as Michel Foucault’s diametrically opposed view of the ultimate hegemony of discourse obliterates or displaces a lot of unbroken contemporary representational practice. Even more important, both these quite different approaches may be said to appear monistic in that the gaps and links between what is representing what is represented are viewed either in terms of closure and continuity or in terms of rupture and discontinuity. But as I shall proceed to glance at some representational strategies in the late modern period, the question needs to be faced whether it is not precisely in these gaps and links, and in the way in which, simultaneously, the gaps are closed and the links are broken up, that historical activity can be seen to assert itself.If the contradiction of system and event, of predetermination and performance can be seen to affect representational activity, and if this contradiction can at all be formulated in terms of a sociological Erkenntnisinteresse, issue of historicity must be discussed on more than one level: not only on the level of what is represented but also on the level of rupture between them as well as their interdependence) together and to attempt to interconnect the semiotic problematic of signification and the extratextual dimension of representativeness, as involving changeful relations of writing, reading, social reproduction, and political power. In this view, the use of signs, although never quite reducible to a referential function, must be reconsidered and this question needs to be asked: under which conditions and in which respects would it be possible to talk of sociology in that area of instability itself which marks the relations between signifier and signified, between the author’s language and the reader’s meaning? Robert Weimann is professor of English and American literature at the Zentralinstitut für Literaturgeschichte, Akademie der Künste, Berlin DDR. His books in English include Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in Theater and Structure and Society in Literary History. His most recent book-length study in German is Shakespeare und die Macht der Mimesis: Repräsentation und Autorität im Elisabethanischen Theater. (shrink)

Joaquin Segura. Untitled (fig. 40) . 2007 continent. 1.2 (2011): 117-124. The interview that follows is a dialogue between artist and gallerist with the intent of unearthing the artist’s working strategies for a general public. Joaquin Segura is at once an anomaly in Mexico’s contemporary art scene at the same time as he is one of the most emblematic representatives of a larger shift toward a post-national identity among its youngest generation of artists. If Mexico looks increasingly like a (...) foreclosed home burning to the ground, Segura could likely be the one walking away, charred matchstick between thumb and forefinger and shit-eating grin on his face. His corrosive attacks on institutions, ideologies, and power reflect a deep general distrust of authority, increasingly evident within the work of younger Mexican artists. It is perhaps most directly the result of President Calderon’s deeply unpopular war against the cartels but no doubt equally the product of decades upon decades of rampant corruption and errant policy within Mexico. Brett W Schultz (BWS): A recurring—if not dominant—theme within your current work and investigation explores ideological extremism in reaction to some perceived political and economic disenfranchisement, especially that espoused and practiced by right-wing groups in United States. That's exactly why I thought of you when I was approached to contribute a piece to an issue on the subject of the moraine—taken metaphorically here to signify a certain set of beliefs that have resurfaced within mainstream American culture in the wake of a probably over-exaggerated political sea-change, marked by Obama's election. You're a Mexican artist who now lives and works in Guadalajara, far from the border cities where such concerns would seem more likely to be relevant to a contemporary artist; of course, you're even farther from the culture that birthed this nature of extremism. What interests you so intensely about this movement, if we can call it that? Joaquin Segura (JS): I think there are several seminal points that you touch on in this particular question. There's a very specific set of interests that make me address the socio-political issues I've been dissecting through my practice in the last few years. First of all, I don't really consider myself a 'mexican' artist. As I've made clear in the past, I don't really believe in the notion of 'identity' or the idea of 'nation', which I find totally laughable and heartwarmingly passé. I'm convinced that these are totally outdated models of understanding our differences and similarities, expanding our already immense and irreconcilable cultural abysses instead of bringing them together, thus resulting in their total dispersion among the complex and extremely arbitrary weaving of contemporary social nucleii. Pretty much a frankly bad joke, if I may say so. The fact that I live and work in Mexico is a completely random geographical and temporal factor, which of course affects what I think and what I do, but I've chosen not to be limited by this specific circumstance. In the past, while working abroad, I've taken advantage of this preconception of Mexico—to be more exact, pretty much all of Latin America—as one of the last barbaric bastions of western civilization. Totally amusing, if you ask me about it. I consider my practice to be, among other things, a gonzo strategy of deceit: there are quite a few roles you can adopt in this approach that may actually reveal themselves to be a privileged vantage point. In my experience, the gentle savage is one of the most effective ones to establish my standing position. Thus, I'm a mexican artist if I need it to prove my point. If it's not necessary in a specific circumstance, I'm not. Quite simple, I think. Said in other words, it's just an ace I can play to win a particular match. It has worked so far, at least for me. L: Hey, America… , 2009. R: The Inaugural Address , 2009. I am interested in the nature of power and the rise and fall of totalitarian ideological and political apparatuses nowadays. But I guess, going even further, I'm essentially fascinated by the fissures and contradictions that have made these structures spectacularly crumble to the ground. I do believe extreme ideologies have played a crucial role in the globalization of socio-political crisis. In the end, our world is nothing more than a fading monument to all things gone wrong—the inspiring triumph of failure, in every sense. I see this as an exciting parable. And of course, it is an undeniable fact that the US, through their influence in world economy, international policies and general attitude towards the rest of the planet is the largest structure waiting to collapse. I think we are all secretly awaiting that moment of splendor, even americans. It'll be disastrous and as nasty as it can get, but it will also be liberating and incredibly inspirational. Not just because it’s the US but because it'll prove that absolutely everything is susceptible to fall. And not only that, most importantly, it would confirm that radical change may actually be possible and not just one more of the unfulfilled promises modernity has left us to struggle with on our own. BWS: I want to talk first about two of your works in particular: Hey, America... and The Inaugural Address . I feel like your more recent work has a subtle —or even hidden—sinisterness, but these two works are perfect examples of how brutally confrontational your earlier work has been. When we showed Hey, America... at Mexico City's Zona Maco art fair in 2010, there were at least a couple visitors to our stand who were absolutely ready to punch me in my gringo face for having done so. Certainly the shock value of these works is crucial to their central ideas, but can you tell me more about your intentions and how these works relate to your general oeuvre? JS: So funny. Perhaps we do deserve to be punched in the face. I think that's what I'm sometimes looking for, but I hardly ever get it. I do think of such works as some sort of logical trap, a somewhat perverse ambush waiting for someone to walk into head-on. I think what I tried to do with those two specific works, as well as some other past projects, is just emphasize issues or themes that do disturb or make me uneasy and restless. I consider my essential intention a need to make clear that we do not have to look the other way, ignore or forget. We must address, understand and solve these manifestations of senseless violence and absurdity because if we don't confront them this way, they'll end up consuming us. In other words, I do consider these works as a personal need of coming to terms with the nonsense of the world we all are living in. I don't particularly consider myself to be someone with a clear set of beliefs. Perhaps my only certainty would be that everything is there to be denied, demolished and obliterated—even my supposed unquestionability of that particular 'dogma.' My practice is a reflection of that paradox, and I do think that's how these two pieces relate to a wider body of work. Every democratic system and so-called developed contemporary society is deeply flawed on the inside, and that is because each has swept things under the rug. Of course, there's tolerance, good will and eagerness to make a difference but there's also hatred, pain and fear lingering all around. We must learn to relate to both sides of the spectrum. In a way, I approach the themes behind these particular works in what I think to be a non-biased, somewhat 'neutral' way. I do think there's an encryption process going on in the way I work, some sort of formal refinement of this somewhat outrageous content. A digest of infamy, if we can refer to it that way. It is up to the individual experiencing the work to decide which way these pieces lean. They can easily be seen from both positions and I'm ok with that. If you look closely at these works, there's nothing that establishes an unrelenting position—neither support nor rejection. I don't want my personal political views to directly set an agenda for the spectator as that’s essentially propaganda, which is one of the things I absolutely despise. To sum it up, I strive for the spectator to complete the piece in that sense. The work then becomes a reflection of his or her own contradictions, a playground of the mind. I'm interested in achieving a deadpan and deadlock state in the observer. So, in a way, those visitors threatening to beat the shit out of you unconsciously became that particular issue the work is alluding to. Just blind and senseless reaction to god knows what people feel must be defended, the overwhelming virtue of ambiguity. Beautiful. Perhaps you can also think of my practice as a uber-sophisticated and snobbish version of Punk'd. And you wouldn't be far from what I'm trying to convey. Untitled (Disturbance Scenarios #2) . 2010. BWS: To me, an important transitional marker in the overall trajectory of your work is the series, Disturbance Scenarios , which evokes a similar generalized state of panic, paranoia, and impending doom through its incorporation of sensationalist newspaper headlines, yet also suggests this slyly mysterious meta-narrative via the context in which the newspaper itself is placed. How did you arrive at this series and why did you choose photorealistic painting as the medium for it? JS: I consider this series to be a by-product of the process I follow when making work. I spend an important part of my time just doing research, going through documentation and accumulating visual or historical references for the themes or episodes I'm interested in, in that particular moment. These are, of course, valuable assets that connect among themselves in a mysterious and almost undetectable manner, sometimes a few years between one and the other. I've employed similar production strategies in the past, in ongoing series like Random Moments of Urban Decay , in which I document what I consider to be physical traces of ethnic, religious or ideological violence in the form of text graffiti, invisibly scattered in different cities of the world, mostly in the US. Disturbance Scenarios was started in early 2010, following a particularly intense period of traveling here and there that lasted for most of the year. I've always felt compelled by text, as I find quite intriguing the idea of how words can create equally intense evocations of what I call a mental panorama of uneasiness than those produced by aesthetically-charged imagery; of course, if handled right. I have a close relationship to print media—due both to my academic background and to my attraction to its ubiquity and almost unlimited influence, which in the end, is nothing else but power—so I found myself with a growing archive of newspaper headlines snapshots from cities like Melbourne, Auckland, London, and LA. Going through them, I noticed that they had in common a very specific thematic slant: they were all about some sort of conflict: energy crisis, political unrest, local episodes of domestic violence, you name it. So as you very well put it, I felt they all connected through this feeling of anxiety and anguish and I decided to start thinking of them as a body of work. Basically, I felt an interest in creating what I think of as my personal fragmented prefigurements of the end of civilization. There were few elements on the shots that could give away its actual location, geographically speaking, and I liked that. I find this sensation of vagueness and uncertainty quite alluring. The more subtle, the more perverse. The formal resolution of the series—as photo-realistic painting—is linked to my intention of creating distance between me as the artist and the themes I work with. I rarely execute my own work, and that is more a personal choice as I'm more interested in the ideas I mingle with than in the actual outcome of that process, understood as an "art-object" with certain market value. I did some tests with light-jet prints of those snapshots and I found them devoid of that nightmarish, disturbing indistinctness that I felt was so important for them to be able to project the turmoil I experienced upon encountering them and in conceiving of them as a series. So I thought that photorealistic painting would be an interesting resource to play with, as I hardly had worked with that medium before because of my lenient animosity toward painters and their craft. So they were executed like that and I think it turned out to be just right. Homemade (Napalm #2) . 2010. BWS: Though Disturbance Scenarios remains ongoing, it's an interesting contrast to another series of yours, Homemade, which are these beautifully banal photographs of the ingredients used to make improvised explosives. Whereas Disturbance Scenarios still confronts the viewer aggressively with its visual emphasis on loaded texts, in Homemade , you've dropped the surface-level bravado entirely. They're pieces that require explanation to someone not already versed in the fine art of amateur explosive-making. You weren't known for subtlety in your past work; why this change in direction? JS: I'm personally convinced that these are just two angles of the same conceptual preoccupation. I mentioned before my obsession with the idea of encryption. I'm quite enticed by how these processes of translation can politically and semantically alter and deviate purportedly subversive materials such as the ones these works allude to. I do think subversion is futile. I was really troubled by that thought for some time, but I think now I understand that it's not really that important. What is really significant is to elaborate on these alternate views, to envision and refine possible escape routes. It doesn't really matter if they go nowhere, but that is because nothing really matters. A "mute" artwork is a notion that captivates me. When you look at the works you mention, you know there's something off, but it's not fully clear how and why that is. I rely on that insecurity—on that moment of hesitation. And that can also be achieved through an approach like the one I'm now interested in. Let's just call it a smoke screen, a surrogate ruse to get to the same point: to talk about impotence and defeat in contemporary life. The notion that readily accessible information is actually a weapon is a double-edged fallacy: sure, you can make use of whatever resources you can lay your hands on, but that doesn't set you free because freedom is impossible. Still, that doesn't mean you can't blow up stuff during the process, metaphorically or not. I didn't understand the nature of subtlety before. I used to think that you needed to be loud and manifest anger and unconformity in the most aggressive manner possible. Then I finally realized that you can actually permeate and rarify a battleground—because after all, this is low-intensity war—if you actually aim at silently building up the contradictions and making the symbolic value of ideas and acts clash within themselves. Or perhaps it is that I am just getting old. I guess I used to be an angry kid until recently. Now I think of myself as a disenchanted post-teenager, and of course that reflects in my work and my approach to art-making. Kind of a rite of passage and I laugh at it because, overall, it has been overwhelmingly fun. And that doesn't mean that I'm not ready to stick it in someone or something's face again if I feel like it. BWS: You're now taking the subtlety of the Homemade series even further with your newest series, Definitive Reader For a Botched Revolution , in which you photograph a series of politically-charged books side-on, negating their content entirely—essentially reducing them to purely aesthetic objects in which the subject matter is only revealed in the title of the work. Can you talk about the ideas behind this series? Furthermore, is your recent interest in this idea of the "botched revolution" an indication of a general attitudinal or philosophical shift you've since adopted? JS: This new series of works is the logical outcome of a brief period I went through. Probably the last couple years, in which due to a number of circumstances that don't really have to do with my art-making, I was forced to renegotiate my ideas, my beliefs and practically everything that surrounds me. It was quite distressful and turbulent, but in the end, I think it was also almost epiphanic. I came to terms with myself and now I'm calm and serene. That is, of course, my personal take on it but I mention it because I do think it's important to address this shift you mention. The idea of an artwork as a container for latent revelations enthralls me quite a bit. That's how I see these particular works: art as an incendiary agent. It's up to the artist and the spectator to do whatever they please with it. I think the detachment and almost surgical cleanliness from the Definitive Reader series is also my take at poking fun of the way some art is totally innocuous and uncompromising. These images may be pleasing to the eye, but there's something twisted and rotten within them, well hidden beneath. You'll either see it or not, but without a doubt, it will not cancel its presence. This series is intrinsically linked to Homemade . I'm pretty much horsing around with similar ideas and statements here. And well, yes, I do think any revolution is a botched one. There's nothing too heavy about their own downfall. Decay and breakdown are here and will not go away. Perhaps we must learn to embrace them in one way or another, for our own sake. L: Untitled (T.A.Z.). R: Untitled (United States Marine Guidebook of Essential Subjects) . 2011. BWS: Finally, let's discuss the near future. You've got an upcoming solo show at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros [SAPS] in Mexico City this summer. What can we expect from that? What else do you have planned? JS: I'll go and get seafood as soon as I'm done with this interview. It's pretty good here in Guadalajara. That's my top priority at this very moment. About my solo project at SAPS, it's due to open in late July. I'm quite looking forward to it. I'm still closely working with the curator on the general feel for the show but I can say that it'll be more of a revision of past works that have not been shown in Mexico City except for a couple pieces. It definitely won't be a showcase for new projects, although we may include one or two previously unseen works. What you can expect is a rereading of what I've been working on during the past few years. In a way, that's exciting to me because for some reason I don't really care about, I'm not that active in Mexico City even though that's where I lived and work for years. I've hardly shown there after my solo project at Yautepec in February of 2010. It'll be nice to see how it all comes together and I'm more thrilled about it because I totally love the space and I think they're doing an excellent job with their programming and its direction. And in a certain way it feels like going back home. About everything else, I need a period to reflect and fully understand what I've been thinking and working on. I've got a few group shows here and there: New York, San Francisco, and Melbourne are the ones happening soon. I will present my censored project Untitled ( Gringo Loco ) as part of the programming of the Museo de Arte de Zapopan in Guadalajara, two years after being escorted at gunpoint from the installation site by police sent by the extreme right-wing mayor of the city, which I found pretty amusing for an otherwise typical Saturday afternoon. I'm also involved in a couple "curatorial" projects. In my case, "curatorial" means that I help put together stuff I like and I'm interested in. One of them will open in late September of 2011 at Arena Mexico Arte Contemporaneo, and I will work with three of whom I consider to be some of the best artists in a lively and active scene such as the one here in Guadalajara. But most importantly, I've been doing heavy research so there are also a number of projects that I've yet to finalize. That'll be my main focus during the rest of the year, even though I really enjoy procrastination. There'll be time for that later. Or maybe not. We'll see. About Joaquin Segura The action, installation, intervention and photographic work of Joaquin Segura (b. Mexico City, 1980) has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Some spaces that have featured his work include La Panaderia, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Centro de la Imagen and Ex-Teresa Arte Actual in Mexico City; El Museo del Barrio and apexart, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; and Palace Adria in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2008 and 2009, Segura was an artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, NY and at the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA. He is represented YAUTEPEC in Mexico City and by Arena Mexico Arte Contemporáneo in Guadalajara. Further Reading Joaquin Segura’s website YAUTEPEC artist page for Joaquin Segura Capps, Kriston. “ID-ENTITY: Washington, DC.” ART PAPERS . 2009. (shrink)

Sky Marsen proposes a new way of reading philosophy, through the lens of narrative semiotics she highlights the similarities between creative and philosophical writing and shows how theoretical texts, such as philosophy, rely to a large extent on strategies of communication present also in fictional narratives.

In Nietzschean Narratives, Gary Shapiro explores the narrative structure that informs Nietzsche's thinking and writing. Shapiro's primary aim is to show that Nietzsche's celebrated critiques of subjectivity and authority are perfectly consistent with his deployment of a unified narratology: "As a philologist, Nietzsche is always suspicious of the claims to originality, authenticity and exclusivity accompanying the grand stories or metanarratives that would provide a final accounting of first and last things. The task of the studies that follow is to (...) show, however, that such suspicion does not exclude narrative strategies, styles, or views of the world from Nietzsche's work". Shapiro proposes the narrative as an alternative to the two models most commonly invoked for Nietzsche's texts: the epistemically suspect metanarrative popularized by Heidegger, and the radically indeterminate fragment suggested by Derrida. Although the latter model is presently more influential, Shapiro takes less seriously the charge that the "postmodern" currents of Nietzsche's epistemology drown his texts in différance and discontinuity: "If one were... to read those books which [Nietzsche] published under his signature, the appearance of radical indeterminacy would be more difficult to establish". To the more serious charge that Nietzsche is a purveyor of metanarratives, Shapiro responds that "Nietzsche's path of thinking and writing maintains a constant vigilance with regard to the possibility and limits of narrative". (shrink)

For nearly a century, the French have entertained an unshakable conviction that their ability to recognize themselves-to know and transmit the essence of Frenchness-depended on the teaching of the history of France. In effect, history was a discourse on France, and the teaching of history-"la pédagogie centrale du citoyen"-the means by which children were constituted as heirs and carriers of a common collective memory that made them not only citizens, but family. In this essay, I examine the rhetorical and conceptual (...) effects on history writing that emerge out of this preoccupation with the elaboration of a continuous, coherent national identity. Focusing on schoolbooks, I begin by looking at the dominant, nearly hegemonic model of French history created by Ernest Lavisse in the 1890s-a model informed by the dream of a unified, unitary French nation, embodied in and articulated through the history of France-and at the disruption of this paradigm in the aftermath of the Great War. I then consider a text written in the 1990s specifically to repudiate the kind of nationalist narratives that prevailed for most of this century-a new supranational history of Europe. I argue that, in their different experiments with fixing history, both Lavisse and the contemporary textbook authors did not so much repair a deficient history as produce a historical fixation, creating mythicized histories that are complete, closed, predictable, and at bottom ahistorical. Finally, I turn to a recent World War I novel, A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot, in order to suggest ways in which the narrative strategies of a fiction writer may be useful to historians in thinking about a different kind of historical project. (shrink)

The text offers an examination of socio-political bases, modes of functioning, and of the consequences of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on Serbian disunity. The first section of the paper deals with what is being expressed and what is being done socially when narratives on Serbian disunity are invoked in everyday discourses. The next section investigates what political actor sty, by publicly replicating them, or by basing their speeches on key words of those narratives. The narratives on Serbian disunity (...) are then related to their historical and social contexts, and to various forms of identity politics with which they share common traits. The nineteenth century wars over political and cultural identity, intensified by the struggle between contesting claims to political authority, further channeled by the development of party politics in Serbia and radicalized by conflicts of interest and ideology together provided the initial reasons for the apparition of modern discourses on Serbian disunity and disaccord. Next, addressed are the uninnally solidifying or misinterpreting really existing social problems, or because of intentionally exploiting popular perceptions of such problems, the constructive potential related to existing social conflicts and splits can be completely wasted. What results is a deep feeling of frustration, and the diminishing of popular trust in the political elites and the political process in general. The contemporary hyperproduction of narratives on disunity and disaccord in Serbia seems to be directly related to the incapacity of the party system, and of the political system in general, to responsibly address, and eventually resolve historical and contemporary clashes of interest and identity-splits. If this vicious circle in which the consequences of social realities are turned into their causes is to be prevented, conflicts of interest must be discursively disassociated from ideological conflicts, as well as from identity-based conflicts, and all of them have to be disentangled from popular narratives on splits and disunity. Most important of all, the practice of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on disunity and disaccord has to be gradually abandoned. U radu se istrazuju istorijske i drustvene osnove narodskih prica o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi, kao i posledice njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Paznja se prvo usmerava na ono sto se narodskim pricama o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi najcesce postize u svakodnevnoj komunikaciji. Narodskim pricama se, pre svega, ukazuje na pretpostavljeno nepromenljivo svojstvo srpskog identiteta. Njima se odredjuje i glavni uzrok poraza ili neuspeha, u kom slucaju one neretko prerastaju u jeremijade nad istorijskom sudbinom Srba. Najzad, nesloga se moze predstaviti i kao posledica jednog, ili citavog niza faktora, od mentaliteta ili kulture Srba, pa do tudjinske zavere. U sledecem segmentu rada, istrazuju se vidovi politickog instrumentalizovanja narodskih prica o neslozi i ne jedinstvu Srba, odnosno njihova upotreba kao ogleda, modela i velova. U prvom slucaju, politicki akter narodsko vidjenje stanja stvari koristi kao izgovor za svoje neuspehe, ili kako bi naglasio razlike izmedju sebe, svojih takmaca i pobornika. Narativi o neslozi omogucuju akteru i da usmerava publiku na zeljeni nacin, bilo da zeli da unese nove podele u grupu, zaostrava sukob vec postojecih frakcija i povezuje se sa nekom od njih, ili a uspostavlja izgubljeno jedinstvo grupe. Obe prethodne mogucnosti akter moze iskoristiti da bi obezbedio retoricki veo kojim ce prikriti svoje prave namere. Analiza se potom pomera ka ispitivanju istorijskih i drustvenih osnova prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu. Ratovi oko politickog identiteta iz sredine i druge polovine devetnaestog veka, pojacani trvenjima izmedju rivalskih pretenzija na politicki autoritet, dodatno usanceni razvojem stranackog sistema, i radikalizovani novim oblicima sukoba izmedju interesa, vrednosti i identiteta na pocetku dvadesetog veka, zajedno su uslovili razvoj narativa o srpskom ne jedinstvu i rascepima. Na takvu osnovu su se potom nadovezivali rascepi izazvani dinastickim, konfesionalnim ili nacionalnim razlikama, svi zajedno zacementirani iskustvima ratova i revolucija. Analiza se najzad pomera ka nenameravanim posledicama narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu i razlicitih oblika njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Zbog pogresnog predstavljanja ili objasnjavanja stvarnih problem a, karakteristicnog za narodske price, a pogotovu zbog politicke zloupotrebe narodskih prica o tim problemima, konstruktivni potencijal vezan za drustvene konflikte i njihovu narativizaciju biva ozbiljno ugrozen. Sledi duboki osecaj frustracije i opadanje poverenja u politicke elite i politicki proces uopste. U zakljucku se skrece paznja na cinjenicu da je savremeno umnozavanje narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu, kao i prakse njihove politicke instrumentalizacije, povezano sa nesposobnoscu srpskog partijskog sistema i politickog sistema uopste da se odgovorno suoci sa, a pogotovu da razresi splet istorijskih i savremenih sukoba interesa i identitetskih rascepa koji su izvoriste narodskih prica. (shrink)

Describing a Mundus Novus was a very singular task in the sixteenth century. It was an effort shaped by a permanent inherent tension between novelty and normality, between the immense variety of new facts and the demand of credibility. How did these inner strains affect the narrative style of the first descriptions of the natural world of ‘the Indies’? How were the first European observers of the nature of America able to simultaneously transmit the idea of immensity and regularity, (...) and that of novelty? How did they attempt to describe new worlds knowing that there was a lot – perhaps too much – to tell? This paper focuses not on the much-discussed epistemological issues related to those questions, but on their narrative and stylistic consequences. We argue that the first Europeans meeting the new realities of the Americas or India had to meet new challenges, and these translated into texts with specific characteristics. Thus, their first descriptions are essentially different from the texts about the natural world that were written before or after the ‘discovery’. We show that they adopted very specific discursive approaches, and were deeply influenced by the credibility strategies of the medical profession in which they had been trained. (shrink)

In the article on material of seventeen texts, the problem of world outlook strategy in the American novel of the 21th century is studied. The most influential author’s models are considered: neodecadence, post-apocalyptic humanity, personal versions of social and psychological realism and existentialist consciousness. The main attention is paid to the description and interpretation of the general for modern American novels of a national picture of the world. The family history remains the stable level of a narration. At other level, (...) there is a depressive or protest word about a condition of life, about the absolute beginnings dooming the person to suffering. In the narrative center, there is a hero, who has to solve personal problems in the context of the opened emptiness capable to get metaphysical meanings or to replace them. Reducing dynamics of a plot and formation of character, the novel becomes a form of the image of a steady state. For this state, the complex combination of two literary archetypes is characteristic: Job and Hamlet. The love to the world is not provided, the problem of finding of arguments for continuation of life is perceived by writers as main. If the classical American novel has positioned itself between dream and the tragedy, the modern novel settles down between everyday life and emptiness. The key paradox of the studied art texts is connected with it: two forms of fatigue - not only from the Absolute responsible for weight of existence, but also from its absence connect in one complex. The hero does not know with whom he does not agree: God or with essentially subjectless life depriving any God of will, power and sense. Search of new moral rituals is represented in this situation quite natural. (shrink)

This paper on Umberto Eco’s contribution to the narration process, tries to identify the mainstream of modern studies of the text. I have tried to separate it as an entity, which together with other textual techniques and strategies shall create applicable theoretical messages towards an artistic creation. Eco’s work itself, gives an opportunity to exemplify his theoretical claims. Using my examples, I have tried to show how a work of art can be rendered narrative, a subject to (...) contemporary techniques and cooperativeness with the reader. One of the main issues I have explained is the time factor, seen from the linguistic and semiotic prospective. I consider that Eco’s treatment of the relation between reality and fiction is of a semiotic nature. One of the main elements it contains, is the time factor. The delay part treats works of art separately, and gives one of the ways to render artistic works readable, worth having an aesthetic value, in their way to transmitting a message to the audience. (shrink)

Collegiality among nurses is necessary for the accomplishment of the tasks of care, for safety and quality improvement and for professional self‐regulation. Nurses, especially in hospitals, are more likely to work in groups than other professionals, yet those relationships have not been well explored. Bullying, intimidation and fear are frequently identified, while respectful disagreements are rarely described. In this paper, a single story by a nurse about her conversational conflict with another nurse is given a close reading. I use the (...) ‘triadic line’ of William Carlos Williams to format an extended excerpt of interview text, in order to make visible the rhythms and organization of spoken language. Mills' concept of a ‘vocabulary of motives’ is used to examine the rhetorical strategies deployed by each nurse. Finally, I analyze the narrative structure of the story, highlighting the ways that moral certainty and uncertainty function to involve the reader in the story, and the complex role of virtue in nursing discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the claim that Nietzsche was already mad (or on the verge of madness) when he wrote Ecce Homo, arguing that this assumption, not the book’s quasi-autobiographical style, has been the chief impediment to a serious philosophical consideration of the text. I briefly take up several recent treatments of the work that attempt to counter the claim of madness commonly made about it, noting that while each of them gives us a good partial rejoinder, they (...) all miss a crucial approach that helps make a great deal more sense of the text. Ecce Homo’s exceedingly bombastic claims, and much of its strange style, can be best explained by noticing Nietzsche’s incorporation of several traditional elements of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic narratives: a first-person narrative describing a revelatory disclosure (and the subsequent interpretation of that revelation); a cosmic dualism of forces (Dionysus and “the Crucified”) and radical eschatological worldview; and an exhortation to shift our cognitive and behavioral comportment to reflect the altered perspective on the world disclosed in that revelation. Thus construed, the text is no more a work of “madness” than the book of Revelation. It is, rather, the ironic appropriation and redeployment of a series of literary techniques and stylistic elements that highlight the importance of Nietzsche’s life and work as the destined surmounting of the (ostensibly) life-denying Christian worldview. (shrink)

This text gives a critical account of various, often conflicting interpretations of slash fiction - stories based on characters from popular TV show, The Star Trek, written by fans. What makes slash fiction, a subgenre of fan fiction, specific is a homoeroticization of characters that in the original narratives are either explicitly or implicitly heterosexual. Whether such?homoerotic pairing? has any foundation in the original Star Trek narrative, remains an open question. Answers to this question vary greatly. An affirmative (...) answer, however, begs a further question: whether these narratives are?homosexual representations? in a strict gay/lesbian sense? The authors propose that slash represents a non-hegemonic narrative which transgresses borders set up in the original narrative - queering, reexamining thus both sex and gender. (shrink)

Rarely has the history or philosophy of mathematics been written about by mathematicians, and the analysis of mathematical texts themselves has been an area almost entirely unexplored. _Figures of Thought_ looks at ways in which mathematical works can be read as texts, examines their textual strategies and demonstrates that such readings provide a rich source of philosophical issues regarding mathematics: issues which traditional approaches to the history and philosophy of mathematics have neglected. David Reed, a professional mathematician himself, offers (...) the first sustained and critical attempt to find a consistent argument or narrative thread in mathematical texts. In doing so he develops new and fascinating interpretations of mathematicians' work throughout history, from an in-depth analysis of Euclid's Elements, to the mathematics of Descartes and right up to the work of contemporary mathematicians such as Grothendeick. He also traces the implications of this approach to the understanding of the history and development of mathematics. (shrink)

Certain Greek texts depict Helen in a manner that connects her elusive body with the elusive maneuvers of the persuasive story. Her too-mobile body signals in these texts the obscurity of agency in the seduction scene and serves as a device for tracking the dynamics of desire. In so doing this body propels poetic narrative and gives structure to persuasive argumentation. Although the female figure in traditional texts is always the object of male representation, in this study I examine (...) a set of images of a female body whose representation ultimately seems to frustrate the narrative strategies for which its depiction was created. What emerges in the fifth century as a rhetorical technique begins in Book 3 of the Iliad as a narrative strategy that uses Helen's cloaked and disappearing body to catalyze plot, and develops in Sappho's fr. 16 into a logic of desire shaped by the movement of Helen's and other bodies in the visual field. Gorgias, in the Encomium of Helen, transforms these depictions of Helen into an argument that is structured by Helen's body, an argument that Helen herself employs in Euripides' Troades, where her own body serves as the anatomy of her argument. These texts all associate Helen's body with a type of persuasive narrative that repeatedly invokes the field of vision, describing physical presence in terms that aim at attracting the eye. At the same time this verbal portraiture disrupts the audience's perspective by depicting bodies as cloaked, mobile, and/or half seen, and by obscuring distinctions between desirer and desired, viewer and viewed. As both subject and object in this viewing process, Helen's body comes to be associated with the double vision of seduction and the distracting power of persuasive images, which seduce the mind's eye while eluding the mind's grasp. (shrink)

This article argues that claims of divine kinship play a central role in the Bacchic gold tablets of the late classical period. While many scholars have interpreted these tablets in reference to the Orphic Zagreus myth, I contend that key details of their texts are better understood as assertions of a familial link with the gods that assured postmortem happiness. The tablets develop the Hesiodic idea of human-divine fellowship, expanding this theme to include claims of identity or kinship with the (...) gods through a variety of narrative strategies. This aspect of the tablets finds a parallel in Empedocles, who (under Orphic-Pythagorean influence) elaborates traditional human-divine fellowship into a claim that humans are exiled gods who can hope to rejoin divine society. Following this interpretive approach, I suggest that the puzzling expression “I/you fell into milk” in some tablets expresses a symbolic relation to the gods via divine breast milk. (shrink)

Rarely has the history or philosophy of mathematics been written about by mathematicians, and the analysis of mathematical texts themselves has been an area almost entirely unexplored. _Figures of Thought_ looks at ways in which mathematical works can be read as texts, examines their textual strategies and demonstrates that such readings provide a rich source of philosophical issues regarding mathematics: issues which traditional approaches to the history and philosophy of mathematics have neglected. David Reed, a professional mathematician himself, offers (...) the first sustained and critical attempt to find a consistent argument or narrative thread in mathematical texts. In doing so he develops new and fascinating interpretations of mathematicians' work throughout history, from an in-depth analysis of Euclid's Elements, to the mathematics of Descartes and right up to the work of contemporary mathematicians such as Grothendeick. He also traces the implications of this approach to the understanding of the history and development of mathematics. (shrink)

Digital games have matured substantially as a narrative medium in the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done to more fully understand the poetics of story-based-games. Game narrative remains an important issue with significant cultural, economic and scholarly implications. In this article, we undertake a critical analysis of the design of narrative within Mass Effect 2: a game whose narrative is highly regarded in both scholarly and vernacular communities. We follow the classic (...) humanities methodology of “close-reading”: the detailed observation, deconstruction, and analysis of a text. Our close-reading employs a critical framework from our previous work to isolate and highlight the central narrative design parameters within digital games. This framework is grounded in the scholarly discourse around games and narrative, and has been tested and revised in the process of close-reading and analyzing contemporary games. The narrative design parameters we examine are character, storyworld, narrativized interface, emotion, and plot coherence. Our analysis uses these parameters to explicate a series of design decisions for the effective creation of narrative experience in Mass Effect 2, and by extension, for game narratives in general. We also expand our previous methodology through a focused “edge-case” strategy for exploring the limits of character, action, and story in the game. Finally, we position our analysis of Mass Effect 2 within contemporary discourses of “bounded agency”, and explore how the game negotiates the tension between player-expression, and narrative inevitability to create opportunities for sophisticated narrative poetics including tragedy and sacrifice. (shrink)

Digital games have matured substantially as a narrative medium in the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done to more fully understand the poetics of story-based-games. Game narrative remains an important issue with significant cultural, economic and scholarly implications. In this article, we undertake a critical analysis of the design of narrative within Mass Effect 2: a game whose narrative is highly regarded in both scholarly and vernacular communities. We follow the classic (...) humanities methodology of “close-reading”: the detailed observation, deconstruction, and analysis of a text. Our close-reading employs a critical framework from our previous work to isolate and highlight the central narrative design parameters within digital games. This framework is grounded in the scholarly discourse around games and narrative, and has been tested and revised in the process of close-reading and analyzing contemporary games. The narrative design parameters we examine are character, storyworld, narrativized interface, emotion, and plot coherence. Our analysis uses these parameters to explicate a series of design decisions for the effective creation of narrative experience in Mass Effect 2, and by extension, for game narratives in general. We also expand our previous methodology through a focused “edge-case” strategy for exploring the limits of character, action, and story in the game. Finally, we position our analysis of Mass Effect 2 within contemporary discourses of “bounded agency”, and explore how the game negotiates the tension between player-expression, and narrative inevitability to create opportunities for sophisticated narrative poetics including tragedy and sacrifice. (shrink)

Figures of Thought looks at how mathematical works can be read as texts and examines their textual strategies. David Reed offers the first sustained and critical attempt to find a consistent argument or narrative thread in mathematical texts. Reed selects mathematicians from a range of historical periods and compares their approaches to organizing and arguing texts, using an extended commentary on Euclid's Elements as a central structuring framework. He develops fascinating interpretations of mathematicians' work throughout history, from Descartes (...) to Hilbert, Kronecker, Dedekind, Weil and Grothendieck. Reed traces the implications of this approach to the understanding of the history and development of mathematics. (shrink)

À primeira vista, parece óbvia a mensagem contida no episódio em que o profeta Elias, ao fugir para o deserto, alcança o monte Horeb. Há os que percebem na narrativa uma clara referência a uma jornada interior, empreendida pelo profeta, com vistas à renovação de seu chamado ou mesmo como um retorno às fontes da fé. No entanto, a análise das estratégias de construção da narrativa pode levar ao propósito da mensagem conforme engendrada pelo narrador. O presente artigo consiste em (...) uma leitura de 1 Reis 19,1-21. O objetivo é questionar o texto a partir do instrumental oferecido pelo método da análise narrativa, com vistas a explicitar as estratégias escolhidas pelo narrador e seus efeitos sobre o leitor implícito, procurando não perder de vista as particularidades da narrativa bíblica. Além disto, pretende-se identificar o caminho que está proposto ao leitor atual, destacando a catequese envolvida na perícope. O medo na vida do fiel pode conduzi-lo para fora do lugar da obediência. No entanto, a intervenção divina acena a possibilidade de correção da rota assumida por pensamentos distorcidos acerca de si, de sua missão e de Deus. Palavras-chave: Profeta Elias. Narrativa bíblica. Análise narrativa.At first glance, the message contained the episode in which the prophet Elijah flees to the desert and reaches the Mount Horeb seems to be obvious. There are some who face the narrative as a clear reference to an inner journey undertaken by the Prophet in order to renew his call or return to the sources of faith. However, the analysis of narrative strategies can lead to the message purpose as designed by its narrator. This article presents a reading of 1 Ki 19,1-21. It aims to question the text by using the tools offered by narrative analysis method in order to highlight chosen strategies and their impact on implied reader, considering the particularities of biblical narrative. The goal is also to identify the path or catechesis proposed to the current reader. The presence of fear in the believer’s life can lead him astray from obedience place. Divine intervention, however, indicates the possibility of getting back on track believer’s distorted thoughts about himself, his mission and God. Keywords: Prophet Elijah. Biblical narrative. Narrative analysis. (shrink)

The Jamesian mode of writing, it has been claimed, actively works against an understanding of the way truth, history and power circulate in his texts. In this collection of essays, leading scholars of James analyse the strategies James used to address these crucial issues. Enacting History in Henry James claims that, because the type of knowledge available in James's fiction is never of a cognitive kind, the reader can never know 'truth' in any verifiable sense. James's writing instead promises (...) an experiential type of knowledge, one that is attained by participating in the power games and moral dramas that unfold within the text. This collection argues that reading James ultimately requires not just an emotional responsiveness, but also an ethical assumption of responsibility for the act of reading. By placing James's work in a fresh theoretical context, this book throws new light on this most enigmatic of writers. (shrink)

O conceito de intriga que tratamos neste artigo estar fundamentado numa epistemologia hermenêutica narratológica, que compreende a literatura disponível nos estudos contemporâneos, na qual se encontram as ciências da linguagem, tais como, filosofia da linguagem, linguística textual e hermenêutica de texto, que abordam os estudos da narrativa de ficção como estratégia de mediação do sentido do texto literário. Observaremos o que é específico de uma narrativa, no que diz respeito a sua ordem de composição como também sua efetivação pragmática a (...) partir de uma metodologia demonstrativa por meio dos contos selecionados. Desta forma, desenvolveremos nosso propósito de investigação acerca do conceito em estudo. E, ainda, explicitar o conjunto das proposições que evidencia a construção do sentido expresso na relação constitutiva das ações quanto ao problema da compreensão do todo. Daí a necessidade da sistematização do conceito de intriga na narrativa de ficção.: The concept of plot to cover in this article is based on a hermeneutic epistemology narratological, comprising the available literature in contemporary studies, in which are the language sciences, such as philosophy of language, textual linguistics and text hermeneutics, broaching the fictional narrative studies as a strategy for mediating the meaning of the literary text. We will see what is specific to a narrative, regarding to its order of composition and also its pragmatic effectiveness from a demonstrative methodology through selected tales. Therefore, we will develop our purpose of investigation about the concept under study. And yet explicit the set of propositions that highlights the construction of the expressed meaning in the constitutive relation of actions to the problem of understanding the whole text. Thence the need for systematization of the concept of plot in the fiction narrative. Keywords: Hermeneutics. Plot. Mediation. Language. (shrink)

This text gives a critical account of various, often conflicting interpretations of slash fiction - stories based on characters from popular TV show, The Star Trek, written by fans. What makes slash fiction, a subgenre of fan fiction, specific is a homoeroticization of characters that in the original narratives are either explicitly or implicitly heterosexual. Whether such?homoerotic pairing? has any foundation in the original Star Trek narrative, remains an open question. Answers to this question vary greatly. An affirmative (...) answer, however, begs a further question: whether these narratives are?homosexual representations? in a strict gay/lesbian sense? The authors propose that slash represents a non-hegemonic narrative which transgresses borders set up in the original narrative - queering, reexamining thus both sex and gender. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyze Lost from the perspective of transmedia storytelling and to propose a taxonomy of transmedia expansion/compression strategies. In the first section, the article presents the basic components of transmedia storytelling from a theoretical point of view that combines narratology and semiotics. After describing the most important components of Lost's transmedia fictional universe in the second section, the article presents a general description and taxonomy of expansion/compression narrative strategies based on traditional (...) rhetorical categories. The article also analyzes “compressed texts” – like recapitulations – and their role inside the expansive strategies. (shrink)

Inspired by Judith Butler's conceptualization of drag as ‘gender parody’, I develop the conceptual frame of ‘textual drag’ in order to define and examine the relationship between parody, satire and gender. I test this frame by reading two seminal feminist works, Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Monique Wittig's Le Corps lesbien. Both texts lend themselves particularly persuasively to analysis with this frame, as they each use parodic strategies to facilitate proto-queer satirical critiques of reductive gender norms. Orlando deploys an exaggerated (...) nineteenth-century biographical style, which foregrounds the protagonist's gender fluidity and her developing critique of the norms and systems that surround her, while Le Corps lesbien rewrites canonical romance narratives from a lesbian perspective, challenging the heterosexism inherent in these narratives and providing new modes of thinking about gender, desire and sexual interaction. (shrink)

Resumen Esta investigación aborda el “texto autoetnográfico” entendido como una indagación epistémica que realiza un sujeto respecto de procesos vitales que busca dar sentido. Estos textos se caracterizan por integrar diferentes voces o puntos de vista que crean y representan un significado moral y, que, en el marco de una perspectiva pos/decolonial, actúan combinando o infiltrando elementos y conceptos indígenas para crear autorrepresentaciones destinadas a intervenir en los modos metropolitanos de comprensión y representación del “otro”.Desde este punto de vista, este (...) trabajo sostiene que estos tipos de textos emergen como una nueva estrategia del discurso artístico y literario indoamericano en respuesta al imaginario colonial, cuyos mecanismos de reificación se invierten mediante complejos procesos retóricos, desestabilizando los significados legitimados por la institucionalidad colonial. Para observar este proceso se analiza el discurso visual y poético del pueblo mapuche, abriendo una discusión acerca de los nuevos procesos de representación del arte indígena actual.This investigation addresses the “autoethnographic text”, understood as an epistemic enquiry that a subject provides about vital processes that it seeks to give meaning to. These texts are characterized by the integration of different voices and/or points of view, that create and represent a moral meaning and that, within the framework of a post/decolonial perspective, act by combining or infiltrating indigenous elements and concepts to create self-representations designed to intervene in the metropolitan modes of understanding and representation of the “other”. From this point of view, this work maintains that these types of texts emerge as a new strategy of Indo-American artistic and literary discourse in response to the colonial imaginary, whose mechanisms of reification are reversed by complex rhetorical processes, destabilizing the meanings legitimized by colonial institutionality. In order to observe this process, the visual and poetic speech of the Mapuche people is analyzed, opening up a discussion about the new processes of representation of current indigenous art. (shrink)

This essay studies Genesis 12:10–13:2 with a literary close reading approach that takes seriously the text’s literary, historical and theological constituent elements. After a brief history of interpretation, it situates the narrative in its historical context, which is followed with a narrative critical reading of the text. The analysis of the text unveils the dissimulations of Abram, who manipulated his wife, Sarai, into thinking her beauty posed a threat to him, while his primary motive rested (...) with the pursuit of economic gain in the face of the severe famine that had impoverished him in Canaan. Abram also succeeded in making Pharaoh believe that Sarai was his sister, on which account he exchanged her for material again. This analysis affords insight into the insecurity, anxiety, feelings of alterity of immigrant populations in their liminal conditions, the mistrust of immigrants by the state and host communities, and the ensuing power play with its concomitant perils. Through these, the passage speaks anew to contemporary communities of faith in view of the prevalent and ever-increasing migratory trends of the 21st century. (shrink)

Throughout the prefixed letters and narrative of 2 Maccabees, a frequent overemphasis is discovered on certain concepts within every section or pericope. This is a logical product of such a highly rhetorical work, as this links to the overarching narrative aim of the text. These emphases subsequently lead to the question of their significance specific to this text and its subject matter. This article consequently notes, firstly, that 2 Maccabees deals with sensitive or innovative ideas and (...) moves to drastic ways of conceptualising history in order to substantiate these ideas. It is no surprise, therefore, that in 2 Maccabees 9, one would find an overemphasis on the supernatural drive of world events to prove that the God of the Jews duly and appropriately deals with the enemies of his people. In order to explicate and unfold this process, the main ideas will be highlighted, communicative strategy investigated and the possible impact on the reader and/or hearer outlined. (shrink)

Neste artigo, nossa tarefa será estudar a estratégia literária usada na composição da narrativa do encontro de Jesus com a mulher samaritana, famosa passagem do quarto capítulo do evangelho de João. Defenderemos a hipótese de que o autor fez, para a construção desta narrativa sobre Jesus, uso de um enredo arquétipo, uma cena-padrão do Antigo Testamento que era usada todas as vezes que se pretendia contar uma história de casamento. Veremos os elementos que constituem tal enredo padrão e alguns exemplos (...) textuais, para então analisar o evangelho de João demonstrando em detalhes como o evangelista manipulou este gênero literário popular para atingir seus próprios objetivos. Metodologicamente falando, é a análise narrativa ou narratologia que conduzirá nossas reflexões e análises exegéticas, mantendo o foco desta investigação sempre na figura do “leitor implícito” da narrativa bíblica, que é quem deveria surpreender-se ao notar que o texto conduzia Jesus ao próprio casamento, até uma reviravolta criativa do autor no final. Palavras-chave : Exegese; Narratologia; Bíblia; Cristianismo Primitivo; Evangelho de João.In this article, our task will be study the literary strategy used in composition of the narrative of meeting among Jesus and the Samaritan woman, famous episode of fourth chapter of John’s Gospel. We’ll defending the hypothesis that the author made, for to construct this narrative about Jesus, use of a master-plot, a standard scene of the Old Testament that was used all times when someone wished to tell a marriage store. We’ll see the compositional elements of this standard plot and some textual examples, and then, we can to analyze the John’s Gospel and show how the evangelist manipulated the popular literary genre for reach your own objectives. Methodologically speaking, the narrative analysis (or narratology) going to drive our reflections and exegetical analysis, keeping the focus of this research always in “implicit reader” of biblical narrative, who would to feel the surprise through to see the text driving Jesus to the own marriage, until the creative author’s turnaround at the end. Key words : Exegesis; Narratology; Bible; Primitive Christianity; John’s Gospel. (shrink)

The paper discusses the role of tense and time from a cross-linguistic perspective by comparing English and Mandarin. Multiple translations of the same literary piece are used to test the correspondence between the tense, the perfective aspect and temporal adverbials. In English, tense marking is found to work with at least two language-specific stylistic means, clause interpolation and inversion, to create a mixed narrative viewpoint. In Mandarin, neither the perfective aspect nor temporal adverbials, i.e., constructions that invoke time, are (...) systematically used across the renditions, which shows the Mandarin system’s overall indifference to time in managing viewpoint in discourse. The Mandarin renditions, in addition to an overall indifference to time, feature consistent and frequent use of reduplication as the system’s distinctive viewpoint strategy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the cognitive consequence of a language using an obligatory marking system to piggyback the function of viewpointing narratives. (shrink)

The propositional content of a reference is the proposition attributing to the referent the properties that correspond to the nouns and modifiers in the reference (for example, the propositional content of `Mary' is that the referent is named`Mary'). During language comprehension, the hearer or reader must determine the set of beliefs with respect to which the propositional content of a reference is to be understood. In the prototypical case, this set consists of the propositions that she believes that the speaker (...) or writer believes that she and the speaker or writer mutually believe. This paper identifies two contexts in which the propositional content of a specific reference is not understood with respect to this set--subjective and objective sentences in third-person fictional narrative text--and identifies some implications of this for understanding specific references in these contexts. (shrink)

Verb tenses play an important role in managing deictic relations between the narrator, the audience and the events happening in the story world. Across languages, the Simple Past is considered the conventional story-telling tense, reflecting the prototypical deictic configuration of stories in which the narrator is positioned at some distance from the events unfolding in the story. The Simple Present, on the other hand, is considered a marked option for narration, assumed to automatically result in a shift to a subjective (...) perspective. This paper reports on an analysis of a corpus made up of Dutch fictional short stories, news reports and feature articles. The results suggest that conventions for use and interpretation of verb tenses in narrative contexts are in fact genre-dependent. In the news genres, the Simple Present tense dominated in narration. This did not automatically result in a subjective mode or narration, but was naturally used to express a default narration of story events that temporally overlap with the temporal deictic center of the communicative ground. These findings suggest that previous analyses of verb tenses in relation to narration reflect an over-generalization based on the situational characteristics of prototypical narrative genres such as literary fiction and personal anecdotes. (shrink)

This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being (...) tested by the cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

We investigate how short and long-range word length correlations evolve in Chinese narrative texts. The results show that, for short-range word length correlations, no significant linear evolutionary trend was found. But for long-range correlations, there are two opposite tendencies for two different regimes: the Hurst exponent of small-scale word length correlations decreases over time, and the exponent of large-scale shows an increasing tendency. The increase of word length is corroborated as an essential regularity of word evolution in written Chinese. (...) Further analyses show that a significant correlation coefficient is obtained between Hurst exponents from the small-scale correlations and mean word length across time. These indicate that word length correlation evolution possesses different self-adaptive mechanisms in terms of different scales of distances between words. We speculate that the increase of word length and sentence length in written Chinese may account for this phenomenon, in terms of both the social-cultural aspects and the self-adapting properties of language structures. (shrink)

Resumen En este trabajo se aborda el estudio de un corpus de textos narrativos constituido por dos obras de ficción y una de no ficción, correspondientes a tres autores nacidos en el decenio comprendido entre los años 1959 y 1968: un argentino, un español y un estadounidense traducido al español. Se considera a estos autores como informantes cualificados, como antropólogos que describen la cultura de una comunidad y como narradores privilegiados que reproducen expertamente las voces de sus personajes. Para estudiar (...) las actividades de imagen nos basamos principalmente en las teorías de Goffman, Brown y Levinson, Haverkate y Bravo, así como de otros autores que han utilizado textos literarios para el estudio de este tipo de fenómenos. También tenemos en cuenta las propuestas de Mey para analizar las voces de los personajes creados en las obras literarias de ficción. (shrink)

The deceptive clues in the impossible puzzle film confirm the viewer’s internal expectations and allow retrospective attributing. In the film, a transcendental object negates an internal expectation, causing a retrospective blockage. Retrospectivity does not stop there; the transcendental object reinterpreting deceptive clues in the associative area leads to repeated attribution. This article consists of three parts. First, it discusses impossible puzzle films in the context of complex narrative classification. The following section introduces the Jungian concept of synchronicity and illustrates (...) how it works. The article concludes with a case study of Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), which contains more complicated puzzles and explains how mind-game narrative techniques create deceptive clues and induce deceptive retrospective attribution. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Heft: Ahead of print.

Engaging stakeholders in policy making and supporting policy development with advanced information and communication technologies including policy simulation is currently high on the agenda of research. In order to involve stakeholders in providing their input to policy modeling via online means, simple techniques need to be employed such as scenario technique. Scenarios enable stakeholders to express their views in narrative text. At the other end of policy development, a frequently used approach to policy modeling is agent-based simulation. So (...) far, effective support to transform narrative text input to formal simulation statements is not widely available. In this paper, we present a novel approach to support the transformation of narrative texts via conceptual modeling into formal simulation models. The approach also stores provenance information which is conveyed via annotations of texts to the conceptual model and further on to the simulation model. This way, traceability of information is provided, which contributes to better understanding and transparency, and therewith enables stakeholders and policy modelers to return to the sources that informed the conceptual and simulation model. In this paper, we present the consistent conceptual description (CCD) as conceptual modeling approach to bridge the gap between narrative texts and formal policy models. The CCD meta-model with the underlying vocabulary for describing policy contexts is detailed. A case study introduces the application of the approach in the Open Collaboration for Policy Modeling project. (shrink)

This article analysed the Indonesian government’s strategy in eradicating terrorism and radicalism. This study was designed with quantitative methods within the framework of normative legal research using anti-terrorism-related regulations as the sample. Data analysis was carried out with content analysis to identify the conception of terrorism, radicalism and deradicalisation in the legislation. The research found that most of Indonesia’s counter-terrorism regulations associate terrorism with criminal actions. However, regulatory developments also present a decreasing association between terrorism and acts of violence alone (...) as terrorism is growingly being conceptualised by policymakers not only as a virulent action to an increasing extent but also ideologically based on the process of radicalisation. Consequently, various regulations after 2013 accommodate many prevention-based ideas and soft approaches. Newest regulations also accommodate deradicalisation as an important strategy in countering terrorism. This finding practically would imply including counter-narratives through education and deradicalisation strategies. It is also projected through counter-propaganda as a strategic deradicalisation approach. Its incorporation into regulations is needed as digital technology advances, making it easier for young people to be exposed to radical ideas through internet channels. Contribution: This study deepens empirical evidence regarding the need for an alternative soft approach strategy in dealing with religious doctrine-based radicalism. Apart from preventive measures through law enforcement which should be continuously strengthened, the findings in this research encourage preemptive methods in deradicalisation through counter-narrative, counter-propaganda and counter-ideology. (shrink)