Buzzwords of psychoanalysis
- repression
- unconscious
- working through- bringing repression to light.
- neurosis
- latency- a delay that separates an event from its felt effects.
- Interminable- analysis can go on and on
- Free Association-
- Ambivalence
top players of psychoanalysis
freud, Melanie Klein , D.W. Winnicott, Jacques Lacan,
reader Response theory
Reader
Response
Implied Reader
According to theorist Wolfgang Iser, each literary work has an implied reader.
Blank
According to Wolfgang Iser, these blanks are actually really important. Because they stimulate our imagination.
Affective Stylistics
Stanley Fish came up with this term to describe the way in which literary critics must rely on their own subjective or “affective” reaction to a literary text in order to understand it.
Interpretive Community
Stanley Fish, we’re actually part of an interpretive community, a group of readers who not only share the same language but who also share the same reading conventions.
Interaction
Identity
Well, Reader-Response theorists think that when we read, we project our own identities onto the text we’re reading.
Meaning as Event
Subjective Criticism
Affective Stylistics
Stanley Fish
Top Players of Reader Response Theory
Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, and Norman N. Holland
Literature as exploration
Louise Rosenblatt, 1938
buzzwords of semiotics
Referent
Unlike the signified, this is the actual thing.
Codes
Arbitrary
there’s no inbuilt link between signifier and signified. In fact, the relationship between the two is arbitrary. Random.
Charles Sanders Peirce, another signs guy, added that there are different degrees of arbitrariness—i.e., some signs might look like or have a physical link with the thing that they represent. But usually that’s a coincidence. The main thing to remember, though, is that semiotics generally treats signs as arbitrary.
Icon
Semioticians love to distinguish between the words icon, index, and symbol. These are three signifiers most people think of as synonyms, but people who are into these definitions make a big hullaballoo about how they totally have different signifieds.
First of the triad is the icon. An icon, in semiotics land, is a sign that looks like or imitates the thing it’s referring to.
Index
An index is similar, but instead of having a picture that directly depicts an idea, you have to make your own mental leap to figure out the link between the image and the message behind it.
Like road signs with various arrows on them. A “No U-turn” sign isn’t an index because the U-shaped arrow doesn’t have lines on it that make it look like, well, a road, but when you see it hanging next to the traffic light where you’re planning on pulling a U-ie, you know you better make a few rights instead (at least if there’s a cop following you).
Symbol
Here’s where the arbitrary thing comes in. There’s no exact reason why we associate hearts and candy and teddy bears with love. Or at least, that reason isn’t natural—it’s because Hallmark decided to sell those things in bulk around February 14th every year so that people would spend money on mass-produced symbols of affection.
Symbols aren’t always so cynical, but they are the ones with the least obvious link between signifier and signified; it’s a link that’s been constructed over time.
The no-smoking sign icon, the U-turn index, and the symbols of Valentine passion are easy ways to distinguish these three types of signs, but there are lots of others where the dividing line isn’t quite so clear. What you should keep in mind is that there are multiple types of signs and semioticians love to define them in different ways in their forms of analysis.
Multiple forms of analysis, you might ask? Beyond your wildest dreams, dear Shmooper!
Synchronic Analysis
First thing’s first: synchronic refers to something as it exists in one particular point in time. Think synchronized swimming: at any moment, all the swimmers had better look exactly the same if you take a photo.
So, this type of analysis focuses on a sign system as it exists at a particular moment in time. It’s not about changes over the years, but how language is used in a given context. A study of ancient Greek would be one example of synchronic analysis. So would a study of regional dialects in the modern day. Both are about the language at a specific moment in time.
Synchronic analysis is therefore useful in uncovering shared codes and genre conventions, but it has been criticized for being static and failing to consider history as a process. Some people prefer swimming to get from point A to point B instead of as a watery dance, no matter how sassy it can look.
Diachronic Analysis
In contrast to synchronic analysis, this approach focuses on how language and signification change over time. One example is the use of slang. Slang is the sort of language that may seem cutting-edge (or groovy, or sweet, or baller, or rad) at the time, but as the years go by, new words and phrases take over in popularity. Like some of the text speak used these days—will people still communicate in lol’s and omg’s and wtf’s in thirty years time?
Diachronic analysis is useful in highlighting that language is something that’s always changing, and recognizing the importance of social context. Still, like its synchronic cousin, it has been criticized; in this case, for failing to explain how changes come about. So we need another form of analysis? TMSY! (Too much semiotics, yo).
Syntagmatic Analysis
Um, what?
Okay, one step at a time. Syntagmatic has to do with the relationship between different words that are used one after another to create a structure with language.
Still not clear? Well, you know how you put together an outfit or combine different courses to make up a meal? In semiotic terms, we’d see these combos as syntagmatic. You know you can’t wear a green hat with purple shoes, and the dessert course usually is supposed to come after the ratatouille.
The same goes for language: syntagmatic analysis focuses on the relationship between the core ingredients that make up a text. This can mean that you analyze the chain of signifiers contained within a text, or even just within a sentence. In both cases we’re analyzing how signifiers are combined, the overall aim being to reveal the text’s underlying conventions.
It helps to remember that syntagmatic relations work in horizontal way—elements are combined like links in a chain, with word + word + word (and so on) forming a sentence. Just like you pass your dinner plate horizontally across the table—because if it’s vertical, that’s dinner for the dog. And canines totally prefer synchronic to syntagmatic as far as analysis goes.
Paradigmatic Analysis
Yup, another form of analysis. This sort goes beyond the text’s surface to consider the choices that the producer of the text made and what other choices were available at the time. For example, there’s usually more than one word that we could use when putting together a sentence—it’s not like we’re dealing with the math shack where there’s just one right answer and the rest are wrong.
Language is much more diverse than that, and paradigmatic analysis is about exploring the possibilities open to us and the consequences of replacing one word with another. In contrast to syntagmatic analysis, we’re dealing with vertical model here—it’s kind of like rummaging through a pile of clothes and picking something out from all the stuff that’s available. So, the whole horizontal vs. vertical thing is all about tracing the use of words based on how they work together, or how they were selected individually.
So now that we’re versed in all possible forms of analysis, let’s get semiotic!
Implied reader given by
Wolfgang Iser
