The literal, the metaphorical, and the price of semiotics: An essay on philosophy of language and the doctrine of signs
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John Deely
John Deely (b. 1942). His main research interest is the role of the action of signs in mediating objects and things, in particular the manner in which experience itself is a dynamic structure or web woven of triadic relations (signs in the strict sense) where elements (representamens, significates, and interpretants) interchange positions and roles over time in the spiral of semiosis. His most recent principal publications include
Four Ages of Understanding (2001);What Distinguishes Human Understanding (2002);The Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics (2003); andWhy Semiotics? (2004). HisBasics of Semiotics (1990) is now in its fourth edition with translations in Japanese, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Ukranian, and Italian. German and Bulgarian editions are in preparation.
Abstract
This article examines the status of human language as constituting one system of signs among others, with a particular aim to establish the sense in which the classical distinction between ‘literal’ and ‘metaphorical’ ought best to be understood in the context of semiotics today.
About the author
John Deely (b. 1942). His main research interest is the role of the action of signs in mediating objects and things, in particular the manner in which experience itself is a dynamic structure or web woven of triadic relations (signs in the strict sense) where elements (representamens, significates, and interpretants) interchange positions and roles over time in the spiral of semiosis. His most recent principal publications include Four Ages of Understanding (2001); What Distinguishes Human Understanding (2002); The Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics (2003); and Why Semiotics? (2004). His Basics of Semiotics (1990) is now in its fourth edition with translations in Japanese, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Ukranian, and Italian. German and Bulgarian editions are in preparation.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- The literal, the metaphorical, and the price of semiotics: An essay on philosophy of language and the doctrine of signs
- Meaning, metaphor, and interpretation: Modeling new worlds
- Creation: Algorithmic, organicist, or emergent metaphorical process?
- The stuff metaphor is made on
- The sense implication hypothesis and idealized cognitive models
- Metaphor, concept formation, and esthetic semeiosis in a Peircean perspective
- A review of prominent theories of metaphor and metaphorical reference revisited
- Metaphor and poetic logic in Vico
- Yuri Lotman on metaphors and culture as self-referential semiospheres
- Metaphors we teach by: An embodied cognitive analysis of No Child Left Behind
- Learning theories as metaphorical discourse: Reflections on second language learning and constructivist epistemology
- Basic kinds of iconic metaphor in the theatre and other iconic arts
- Approaches to metaphor: Structure, classifications, cognate phenomena
- Metaphors we die by
- Waterproof fire stations? Conceptual schemata and cognitive operations involved in compound constructions
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- The literal, the metaphorical, and the price of semiotics: An essay on philosophy of language and the doctrine of signs
- Meaning, metaphor, and interpretation: Modeling new worlds
- Creation: Algorithmic, organicist, or emergent metaphorical process?
- The stuff metaphor is made on
- The sense implication hypothesis and idealized cognitive models
- Metaphor, concept formation, and esthetic semeiosis in a Peircean perspective
- A review of prominent theories of metaphor and metaphorical reference revisited
- Metaphor and poetic logic in Vico
- Yuri Lotman on metaphors and culture as self-referential semiospheres
- Metaphors we teach by: An embodied cognitive analysis of No Child Left Behind
- Learning theories as metaphorical discourse: Reflections on second language learning and constructivist epistemology
- Basic kinds of iconic metaphor in the theatre and other iconic arts
- Approaches to metaphor: Structure, classifications, cognate phenomena
- Metaphors we die by
- Waterproof fire stations? Conceptual schemata and cognitive operations involved in compound constructions
