Paul de Man died of cancer in 1983 at the relatively early age of sixtyfour. Towards the end of those sixty-four years he had begun to emerge as a literary critic and philosophical thinker of international standing. At his memorial service the French philosopher Jacques Derrida described his friend’s achievement as a transformation of ‘the field of literary theory, revitalising all the channels that irrigate it both inside and outside the university, in the United States and Europe’ (Derrida 1989, vxii).
Roland Barthes is a crucial figure in modern literary and cultural theory. His work has been influential in a wide variety of theoretical trends and practices, including structuralism, semiology, post-structuralism, cultural studies and psychoanalytical literary criticism. Barthes is one of a handful of writers who can be said to have established the foundations for modern literary and cultural theory. To understand theory today one must come to know about and engage with his work.
In this first sustained critique of current-traditional rhetorical theory, Sharon Crowley uses a postmodern, deconstructive reading to reexamine the historical development of current-traditional rhetoric. She identifies it (as well as the British new rhetoric from which it developed) as a philosophy of language use that posits universal principles of mind and discourse. Crowley argues that these philosophies are not appropriate bases for the construction of rhetorical theories, much less guides for the teaching of composition. She explains that current-traditional rhetoric is not a rhetorical theory, and she argues that its use as such has led to a misrepresentation of invention.
Talking about action comes easily to us. We quickly make distinctions between voluntary and non-voluntary actions; we think we can tell what intentions are; we are confident about evaluating reasons offered in rational justification of action. Berent Enç provides a philosopher's sustained examination of these issues: he portrays action as belonging to the causal order of events in nature, a theory from which new and surprising accounts of intention and voluntary action emerge. Philosophers and cognitive scientists alike will find How We Act a provocative and enlightening read.
Semiotics: Theory and Applications (Languages and Linguistics: Media and Communications-Technologies, Policies and Challenges)
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches: Semantics, Syntactics, and Pragmatics.
