Download or read book Performatively Speaking written by Debra J. Rosenthal and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Performatively Speaking, Debra Rosenthal draws on speech act theory to open up the current critical conversation about antebellum American fiction and culture and to explore what happens when writers use words not just to represent action but to constitute action itself. Examining moments of discursive action in a range of canonical and noncanonical works—T. S. Arthur's temperance tales, Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick—she shows how words act when writers no longer hold to a difference between writing and doing. The author investigates, for example, the voluntary self-binding nature of a promise, the formulaic but transformative temperance pledge, the power of Ruth Hall's signature or name on legal documents, the punitive hate speech of Hester Prynne's scarlet letter A, the prohibitory vodun hex of Simon Legree's slave Cassy, and Captain Ahab's injurious insults to second mate Stubb. Through her comparative methodology and historicist and feminist readings, Rosenthal asks readers to rethink the ways that speech and action intersect.
Download or read book Performative Linguistics written by Douglas Robinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Douglas Robinson introduces a new distinction between 'constative' and 'performative' linguistics, arguing that Austin's distinction can be used to understand linguistic methodologies. Constative linguistics, Robinson suggests, includes methodologies aimed at 'freezing' language as an abstract sign system, while performative linguistics explores how language is used or 'performed' in those speech situations. Robinson then tests his hypothesis on the act of translation. Drawing on a range of language scholars and theorists, Performative Linguistics consolidates the many disparate action-approaches to language into a new paradigm for the study of language.
Download or read book Excitable Speech written by Judith Butler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-29 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘When we claim to have been injured by language, what kind of claim do we make?’ - Judith Butler, Excitable Speech Excitable Speech is widely hailed as a tour de force and one of Judith Butler’s most important books. Examining in turn debates about hate speech, pornography and gayness within the US military, Butler argues that words can wound and linguistic violence is its own kind of violence. Yet she also argues that speech is ‘excitable’ and fluid, because its effects often are beyond the control of the speaker, shaped by fantasy, context and power structures. In a novel and courageous move, she urges caution concerning the use of legislation to restrict and censor speech, especially in cases where injurious language is taken up by aesthetic practices to diminish and oppose the injury, such as in rap and popular music. Although speech can insult and demean, it is also a form of recognition and may be used to talk back; injurious speech can reinforce power structures, but it can also repeat power in ways that separate language from its injurious power. Skillfully showing how language’s oppositional power resides in its insubordinate and dynamic nature and its capacity to appropriate and defuse words that usually wound, Butler also seeks to account for why some clearly hateful speech is taken to be iconic of free speech, while other forms are more easily submitted to censorship. In light of current debates between advocates of freedom of speech and ‘no platform’ and cancel culture, the message of Excitable Speech remains more relevant now than ever. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author, where she considers speech and language in the context contemporary forms of political polarization.
Download or read book Literary Theory written by Jonathan Culler and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Literary Theory? Is there a relationship between literature and culture? In fact, what is Literature, and does it matter?These are the sorts of questions addressed by Jonathan Culler in a book which steers a clear path through a subject often perceived to be complex and impenetrable. It offers discerning insights into theories about the nature of language and meaning, whether literature is a form of self-expression ora method of appeal to an audience, and outlines the ideas behind a number of different schools: deconstruction, semiotics, postcolonial theory, and structuralism amongst them.
Download or read book Geography Speaks Performative Aspects of Geography written by Rob Sullivan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geography Speaks is an investigation of how geography is informed by speech act theory and performativity. Starting with a critical analysis of how J.L. Austin's speech act theory probed the permeability between fact and fiction, it then assesses oppositional interpretations by John Searle and Jacques Derrida, and in doing so, it explores the fictional aspects within scientific knowledge. The book then focuses on five key aspects of the geographical discipline and analyses them using the theories of speech acts and performance: the performative aspects of the creation of place; speech act performances and geopolitics; acts of cartographical construction as variations of speech act performance; the performative aspects of the creation of public and private space, and, finally; the history of the discipline as a sequence of performative acts that attempt to establish geography as being constitutive of this or that type of disciplinary method or scientific viewpoint. Geography Speaks is an interdisciplinary text with a distinct and clear focus on cultural geography while also synthesizing into geography ideas germane to historiography, the philosophy of language, the history of science, and comparative literature.
Download or read book The Romantic Performative written by Angela Esterhammer and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Romantic Performative" develops a new context and methodology for reading Romantic literature by exploring philosophies of language from the period 1785-1835. It reveals that the concept of the performative, debated by twentieth-century theorists from J. L. Austin to Judith Butler, has a much greater relevance for Romantic literature than has been realized, since Romantic philosophy of language was dominated by the idea that something "happens" when words are spoken. By presenting Romantic philosophy as a theory of the performative, and Romantic literature in terms of that theory, this book uncovers the historical roots of twentieth-century ideas about speech acts and performativity. Romantic linguistic philosophy already focused on the relationship between speaker and hearer, describing speech as an act that establishes both subjectivity and intersubjective relations and theorizing reality as a verbal construct. But Romantic theorists considered utterance, the context of utterance, and the positions and identities of speaker and hearer to be much more fluid and less stable than modern analytic philosophers tend to make them. Romantic theories of language therefore yield a definition of the "Romantic performative" as an utterance that creates an object in the world, instantiates the relationship between speaker and hearer, and even founds the subjectivity of the speaker in the moment when the utterance occurs. The author traces the Romantic performative through its diverse development in the moral, political, and legal philosophy of Reid, Bentham, Kant and the German Idealists, Humboldt, and Coleridge, then explores its significance in literary texts by Coleridge, Godwin, Holderlin, and Kleist. These readings demonstrate that Romantic writers mounted a deeper investigation than previously realized into the way the act of speaking generates subjective identity, intersubjective relations, and even objective reality. The project of the book is to read the language of Romanticism as performative and to recognize among its achievements the historical founding of the discourse of performativity itself.
Download or read book Excitable Speech written by Judith Butler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender, Judith Butler turns her attention to speech and conduct in contemporary political life, looking at several efforts to target speech as conduct that has become subject to political debate and regulation. Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites.
Download or read book The Performance Tradition of the Medieval English University written by Thomas Meacham and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a truly paradigm-shifting study that reads a key text in Latin Humanist studies as the culmination, rather than an early example, of a tradition in university drama. It persuasively argues against the common assumption that there was no "drama" in the medieval universities until the syllabus was influenced by humanist ideas, and posits a new way of reading the performative dimensions of fourteenth and fifteenth-century university education in, for example, Ciceronian tuition on epistolary delivery. David Bevington calls it "an impressively learned discussion" and commends the sophistication of its use of performativity theory.
Download or read book Analysis of Performative Language Use at the Nzema Taditional Courts in Ghana written by Seth Nretia Essien and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master's Thesis from the year 2023 in the subject African Studies - Linguistics, , language: English, abstract: This thesis examines language use in the Nzema Traditional courts. It specifically identifies performative use of Nzema language using the Speech Act and the Discourse Analyses theory to analyse ten texts, which were recorded from various Chief Palaces in Elembele and Jomoro Districts. Having transcribed the text into written form and translated into English, the researcher applies two theories for the analyses and the findings obtained indicate that many people lack the concept of performative expressions of language, in which utterances constitute acts or doings. These usually put them into trouble among themselves, during which the case is settled at the traditional courts. Among such performative use of language that bring litigations are the most common ones such as; cursing a fellow, threatening, accusing someone, making false allegation. The study finally recommends that society should be educated by the elders on the implications of such uses of language so that members of the society become aware and avoid them.
Download or read book Language on Display written by Ingunn Lunde and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the effects of colonialism and independence on modern Arab autobiography written in Arabic, English and French.
Download or read book Ruth Hall A Domestic Tale of the Present Time written by Fanny Fern and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ruth Hall - A Domestic Tale of the Present Time" is an 1854 novel by American writer Fanny Fern. The story revolves around Ruth Hall—a fictionalized version of the author—and follows her happy marriage, destitute widowhood, and eventual success as a newspaper columnist. Sara Payson Willis (1811–1872), also known as Fanny Fern, was an American novelist, humorist, newspaper columnist, and children's writer during the 1850s and 1870s. Fern's novels became incredibly popular and, by 1855, she was the highest-paid US columnist. In 1854, Fern signed a contract to write a full-length novel, and within just a few months, she had finished "Ruth Hall". One of her most celebrated works and a popular subject among feminist literary scholars, "Ruth Hall", is highly recommended for those interested in feminism and feminist literature. Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this classic novel now in a brand new edition complete with the introductory essay "Sara Payson Willis Parton" by Frances Elizabeth Willard & Mary Ashton Rice Livermore.
Download or read book Philosophy and Language in the Islamic World written by Nadja Germann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during the 8th/9th century. However, in contrast to contemporary philosophy, they were not tackled by scholars adhering to only one specific discipline. Rather, they were addressed across multiple fields and domains, no less by linguists, legal theorists, and theologians than by Aristotelian philosophers. In response to the different challenges faced by these disciplines, highly sophisticated and more specialized areas emerged, comparable to what nowadays would be referred to as semantics, pragmatics, and hermeneutics, to name but a few – fields of research that are pursued to this day and still flourish in some of the traditional schools. Philosophy of language, thus, has been a major theme throughout Islamic intellectual culture in general; a theme which, probably due to its trans-disciplinary nature, has largely been neglected by modern research. This book brings together for the first time experts from the various fields involved, in order to explore the riches of this tradition and make them accessible to a broader public interested both in philosophy and the history of ideas more generally.
Download or read book How to Do Things with Words written by John Langshaw Austin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work sets out Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an exhaustive examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, Austin here finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of 'illocutionary forces' of utterances which has important bearings on a wide variety of philosophicalproblems.
Download or read book Judith Butler Ethics Law Politics written by Elena Loizidou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-04-11 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first to use Judith Butler’s work as a reading of how the legal subject is formed, this book traces how Butler comes to the themes of ethics, law and politics analyzing their interrelation and explaining how they relate to Butler’s question of how people can have more liveable and viable lives. Acknowledging the potency and influence of Butler’s ‘concept’ of gender as process, which occupies a well developed and well discussed position in current literature, Elena Loizidou argues that the possibility of people having more liveable and viable lives is articulated by Butler within the parameters of a sustained agonistic relationship between the three spheres of ethics, law and politics. Suggesting that Butler’s rounded understanding of the interrelationship of these three spheres will enable critical legal scholarship, as well as critical theory more generally, to consider how the question of life’s unsustainable conditions can be rethought and redressed, this book is a key read for all students of legal ethics, political philosophy and social theory.
Download or read book For Derrida written by J. Hillis Miller and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book—the culmination of forty years of friendship between J. Hillis Miller and Jacques Derrida, during which Miller also closely followed all Derrida’s writings and seminars—is “for Derrida” in two senses. It is “for him,” dedicated to his memory. The chapters also speak, in acts of reading, as advocates for Derrida’s work. They focus especially on Derrida’s late work, including passages from the last, as yet unpublished, seminars. The chapters are “partial to Derrida,” on his side, taking his part, gratefully submitting themselves to the demand made by Derrida’s writings to be read—slowly, carefully, faithfully, with close attention to semantic detail. The chapters do not progress forward to tell a sequential story. They are, rather, a series of perspectives on the heterogeneity of Derrida’s work, or forays into that heterogeneity. The chief goal has been, to borrow a phrase from Wallace Stevens, “plainly to propound” what Derrida says. The book aims, above all, to render Derrida’s writings justice. It should be remembered, however, that, according to Derrida himself, every rendering of justice is also a transformative interpretation. A book like this one is not a substitute for reading Derrida for oneself. It is to be hoped that it will encourage readers to do just that.
Download or read book Words Deeds Bodies L Wittgenstein J L Austin M Merleau Ponty and M Polanyi written by Jerry H. Gill and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Words, Deeds, Bodies, Jerry H. Gill seeks to connect the thought of L. Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, M. Merleau-Ponty, and M. Polanyi in relation to the intersection between language and embodiment.
Download or read book Henry James and the Art of Impressions written by John Scholar and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry James criticized the impressionism movement, yet time and again used the word 'impressio' to represent his characters's consciousness, as well as the work of the literary artist. This book explores this anomaly, placing James's work within the wider cultural history of impressionism.
