Parret Herman Parret – författare

The two monumental volumes making up this collection of essays hold the names of the world’s most renowned and respected scholars in the field of semiotics, and does more than full justice to the extraordinary career of Algirdas Julien Greimas. Before this mer á boire of some seventy five essays kicks off, the editors present a state-of-the art introduction, which is followed by a unique bio-bibliography of A.J. Greimas that trails the career of the master writer in unparalleled fashion through the years.

Most of the essays collected in this book were presented at the Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial Congress (Harvard University, September 1989). The volume is devoted to themes within Peirce''s value theory and offers a comprehensive view of less known aspects of his influential philosophy, in particular Peirce''s work on ethics and aesthetics.The book is divided in four sections. Section I discusses the status of ethics as a normative science and its relation with logic; some applications are presented, e.g. in the field of bioethics. Section II investigates the specific position of Peircean aesthetics with regard to classical American philosophy, especially Buchler, to Husserlian phenomenology, and to European structuralism (Saussure, Jakobson). Section III contains papers on internal aspects of Peirce''s aesthetics and its place in his thought. The final section presents applications of Peirce''s aesthetic theory: analyses of visual art (mainly paintings), of literary texts and of musical meaning.

Une phenomenologie de la quotidiennete revele des moments de fracture esthetique. L'interruption du sublime engendre des instants d'allegresse et de bonheur, et confirme notre sentiment d'existence. L'aisthesis quotidienne transcende de loin l'eidetique du regard et de la lumiere; elle n'est comblee que par la synesthesie du gout et du toucher instaurant la fusion et la jonction. Le sublime du quotidien, tributaire de l'esthetique de Kant et de la semiotique de Greimas est concu comme l'eloge de la passion du beau. L'auteur reflechit sur la possibilite d'une biographie situee entierement dans la quotidiennete.

Looking at the ‘semiotic landscape’ – the panorama of constituted semiotics – two traditions seem to have developed separately and without interpenetration. Anglo-Saxon semioticians consider the Peircean framework to provide the adequate conceptual apparatus, whereas so-called ‘Continental’ semioticians refer to the sign theory in Saussure and in its interpretation by Hjelmslev (for instance, the École sémiotique de Paris). Evaluating each other’s projects, methods, and results could lead to a balanced view. The purpose of this monograph is to get the best out of the adequate insights from both sides, and to make suggestions how the semioticians from the Peircean or Saussuro-Hjelmslevian school can be removed from their isolationist positions. A comparison and homologation of these two orientations will be carried out from the angle of the impact of pragmaticism on both semiotic orientations. How intentionality, action, conventionality, interlocution are integrated in both orientations will be given particular emphasis.

This essay deals with the difficulty of understanding understanding, taking the understanding of natural language fragments as a paradigm.

Les lois générales gouvernant la formation des théories sont valable dans la pragmatique comme partout ailleurs où se manifeste l’ambition théorique. La méthodologie adequate, ici come ailleurs, est plutôt celle de la reconstruction et de la découverte que celle de la description et de l’interpretation. Il faut que la noyau théorique, évalué par les critères internes d’adéquation, de cohérence et de simplicité, ait une dynamique reconstructiviste d’expansion. La question à résoudre n’est pas: quel est l’object de ma science, mais bien plutôt: comment est l’object de ma science si ma théorie a de telles propriétés, une telle structure interne? Telle est d’ailleurs le perspective qui oriente le présent volume.

At an international conference held in 1981 at the Universidada Estudual of Campinas (Brazil), a controversial lecture was given by John Searle which presented two conceptual theses: that conversation does not have an intrinsic structure about which a relevant theory can be formulated, and that conversations are not subject to (constitutive) rules. This lecture was first published in 1986 under the title “Notes on Conversation”, and was revised several times afterwards. The present volume offers the most recent version. Because of the importance of the article for conversation analysis, and for pragmatics in general, the editors have put together Searle''s target article, along with eight original comments. The volume closes with a ''reply to replies'' by Searle. In sociolinguistic studies, intralingual code-switching has been given less attention than most other areas, and linguists'' attitudes towards the use of non-standard varieties still often suffer from fallacies of prescriptivism. Czech, a clear case of a language having a Standard and a strong central vernacular with intensive shifting between them, offers many points of general interest to sociolinguists.