On the linguistic expression of subjectivity: Towards a sign-centered approach
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Barbara Sonnenhauser
Abstract
The various assumptions on which linguistic elements, structures, or usages are subjective in which respect seem to agree in relating subjectivity to a speaking subject. In the communication process, this speaking subject is usually ascribed the agentive role, language is thought of as ready-made object, and the hearer remains a rather passive recipient. However, conceptions of subjectivity relying on these assumptions are circular (in referring to a speaking subject) and tautological (every choice of linguistic entities reflects a speaker's choice).
This article argues for a sign-centred approach to communication as providing the basis for an adequate conception of linguistic subjectivity. Based on a dynamic and dialogical model of sign processes, linguistic signs are regarded not as ready-made objects waiting to be used, but as agents getting and keeping the sign process going. Linguistic signs are provided with an inherent subjectivity potential — their establishing differences between system(s) and environment(s) — which is realized through observation. Subjectivity is to be regarded not as some exceptional case within an objective linguistic code, but as inherent property of the sign system itself.
© 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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Articles in the same Issue
- Théorie du récit et sémiotique: apport d'A. J. Greimas et nouvelles propositions
- Comments regarding Charles Sanders Peirce's notion of consciousness, abduction, and the hypo-icon metaphor
- Purification of medical terms in Turkish: A study on the significance of mother tongue for language and thought
- Terminological equivalence in legal translation: A semiotic approach
- Dissent and environmental communication: A semiotic approach
- From frontrunners, to paper dolls, to fiends: Semiotic analyses of premeditated teacher images
- Wittgenstein as Mastersinger
- Ambiguity and metaphor
- Emotion and community in a semeiotic perspective
- Saussure and the elusive question of the origin
- Towards applied semiotics: An analysis of iconic gestural signs regarding physics teaching in the light of theatre semiotics
- Resistance and rescue in Beauvoir's The Blood of Others and The Mandarins: A semiotic contribution to the thinking of the ‘being-for-other’ existential category
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- Narcissus in language: A semiotic contrast of natural and computer language through self-reference
- Multi safe compound constructions: A reply to Anders Søgaard
- On the linguistic expression of subjectivity: Towards a sign-centered approach
- Semiotics and ancient history
- Textual mapping of imitation and intertextuality in college and university mission statements: A new institutional perspective
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