Literary Theory: Meaning, Language, and Interpretation

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers concepts from Jonathan Culler's lecture on literary meaning, structuralist linguistics by Saussure, and semiotics by Roland Barthes.

Jonathan Culler

A famous literary scholar associated with Deconstruction who addresses whether literature is distinct language or language treated with special attention.

Poetics

A project modeled on linguistics that investigates how a text's meaning or effect is produced by focusing on literary devices like plot structure and figures of speech.

Hermeneutics

A tradition of interpretation originating in the study of law and sacred texts that seeks to uncover the deeper, hidden meaning or what a work tells us about the human condition.

Reader-Response Criticism

A school of criticism claiming that the meaning of a text is the experience of the reader and that a text must be "actualized" by a reader to take on meaning.

Horizon of Expectations

The historical, cultural, and personal background that a reader brings to a text, which determines how they actualize its meaning.

Author's Intention Approach

An approach to meaning that faces shortcomings because writers are products of their society, may have unintended elements in their work, and their thoughts are inaccessible.

Structuralism

A scholarly approach influential in disciplines like anthropology and sociology that focuses on the text itself rather than the author's biography or historical background.

Poststructuralism

A group of critical schools, including Deconstruction, that grew out of Structuralism and focuses on the internal mechanics of the text.

Ideology (in Literature)

A view of the world shared by speakers of a language that literature both manifests and serves as a site to question or undo.

Linguistic Sign

According to Saussure, a combination of a form (signifier) and a concept (signified).

Signifier

The form of a linguistic sign, such as a sound-image or a combination of letters.

Signified

The concept or the idea/meaning that is evoked by a signifier.

Arbitrary

The characteristic of the relationship between the signifier and signified, meaning there is no natural or logical connection, only convention.

System of Differences

The Saussurean idea that each sign assumes meaning by its difference from other signs; its characteristic is to be "what others are not."

Langue

Saussure's term for language viewed as a complete system.

Parole

Saussure's term for individual speech events or what is actually said or written by a person.

Synchronic Perspective

Looking at language as a system at a particular moment in time.

Diachronic Perspective

Looking at how language develops and changes over time.

Semiology (Semiotics)

The general science and study of linguistic and non-linguistic sign systems.

Mythologies (1957)

A work by Roland Barthes that treats any significant unit, whether verbal or visual, as a kind of speech or sign system.

Signifier vs. Sign (Barthes)

In Barthes' analysis, the signifier is "empty," while the sign is "full," representing the associative total of signifier and signified that carries meaning.