Registres religieux et esthetique classique. Comportement religieux et comportement linguistique.... more Registres religieux et esthetique classique. Comportement religieux et comportement linguistique. Contenu denotatif du registre sacre. La semantique de M., semantique du flou qui reduit la possibilite meme de la metaphorisation. L'univers poetique et politique de M. se fonde sur la notion de l'ordre.
War, Literature and the Arts in Sixteenth-Century Europe, 1989
During the sixteenth century the French lived through two contrasting periods of war. The first w... more During the sixteenth century the French lived through two contrasting periods of war. The first was a period of expansive ambition and the consolidation of an increasingly powerful royal authority in the face of rival European powers. It ended in 1559 with the Treaty of Câteau Cambresis. Three years later religious riots announced France’s turning inward to a self-destructive period of intermittent bloody civil war. French literature of the Renaissance cannot easily be separated from these events. Humanism, especially as represented by Erasmus, gave French literature an impetus; but the Republic of Letters that crossed national boundaries vied with an emergent national literature in the vernacular. The tension between Erasmian pacifism and a militant patriotism can be discerned in the work of certain writers in the first decades of the century, especially those such as Clement Marot and Marguerite de Navarre who were close to the centre of national affairs. The tensions are especially apparent in Rabelais, as we shall see. French Renaissance poetry was dependent on princely and royal patronage, and the Pleiade poets, in particular Du Bellay and Ronsard, had to combine their vision of the freely inspired poet-seer with the role of publicists and propagandists in a period of conflict. The Protestants had their polemic poets (Marot himself had contributed to the vernacularsalm paraphrases), and in 1616) Agrippa d’Aubigne’s Tragiques (written during the civil wars but only published in 1616) their visionary epic of Huguenot suffering and victory.
FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts, 2019
This article aims to connect three topics: Brexit, Boris and the decay of democracy. What connect... more This article aims to connect three topics: Brexit, Boris and the decay of democracy. What connects this trio is talk, talk, talk. Language and politics are tightly and necessarily intertwined. Indeed, as the Greeks thought, language is intertwined with democracy itself. The twenty-first century has brought unprecedented complexity to human ways of communication, and yet the old rhetorical tricks and oratorical stunts, first described and practised in the ancient world, are still capable of turning heads. As we learn more about how human language works in social and political settings, we can see even more clearly a few of the factors that enable lying politicians to acquire power. But we are still far from drawing practical lessons that could be relevant to our current political crisis.
The CP paradox A currently favoured way to think of 'meaning' in language is to imagine it in two... more The CP paradox A currently favoured way to think of 'meaning' in language is to imagine it in two parts, fuzzily separated. The first part is a relatively stable semantic 'core', and it can be considered by linguists (and probably is implicitly so considered by speakers) in terms of necessary truth-conditional entailments. The second part is relatively less stable, and is dependent on context (including under that term speaker's and hearer's social position, and their background assumptions). In broad outline, context-dependent meaning comes about through the drawing of inferences by the hearer, given linguistic and non-linguistic information. The most influential theory in recent research in this area is that of H.P. Grice (1975). Grice's theory concerns the way people tLse language. To explain the possibility of communicative behaviour Grice postulates a Cooperative Principle. There are ethical, and indeed political implications in this notion, although linguists on the whole have tended to avoid them-indeed the linguist's desire for the scientist status has often tended to reify the social practice of language. But care is needed in defining the ethical content of the notion of the Cooperative Principle (the CP). The Principle rests on the premise that communicators are rational agents, whose conversational acts are coordinated for the purpose of communicating meaning of various types, including interpersonal meanings such as attitude, affect, commitment, and so forth. The desire for, and the pressure to seek out, communicative meaning is thus fundamental. The theory is hearer-oriented in the sense that it spells out the ways in which a hearer arrives at meaning. These means rely on deductive computations (for the most part unconscious whose premises are what Grice terms 'maxims of conversation'. It is important for one's general assumptions about communication, in particular if one is approaching international communication, to notice that meaning on this account does not pop up in discrete chunks, or 'signals' between 'receiver' and 'sender'. Rather, it depends on active computational work, indeed guesswork with attendant risks of communicative misfires, trouble, malentendus. What is more, and this is neglected by linguists, the inverse of the malentendu is the intendedly misleading communication. In international communication study it is noteworthy that calculation time is greater than in face-to-face interaction, and is built into the various institutions that concern themselves with analysing verbal and other date from 'the other side'. What we are suggesting here is that linguistic pragmatics may contribute to the understanding of the processes of international communication, and to better perception of intended and unintended miscommunication. Let us now examine the CP, which can be laid out (after Grice, 1975) as follows: make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk on which you are engaged.
Do something! : conceptualising responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. Chilton, Paul (200... more Do something! : conceptualising responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. Chilton, Paul (2002) Do something! : conceptualising responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. ... ID Code: 8503. Deposited By: Professor Paul Chilton. Deposited On: 28 Apr 2008 16:27. ...
CDA (critical discourse analysis) has become widespread not only in Europe but also in the intern... more CDA (critical discourse analysis) has become widespread not only in Europe but also in the international arena. The concept and practice of the ‘critical’ may become problematic when they cross cultural, social and political boundaries. This paper focuses on the meanings of the English word critical (and cognates) and on the Chinese words used to translate it. We assume that
Part 1 Language, text, discourse: the war against peacemongering, Roger Fowler and Tim Marshall p... more Part 1 Language, text, discourse: the war against peacemongering, Roger Fowler and Tim Marshall pragmatics of speeches against the peace movement in Britain, Kay Richardson rhetoric of defence in the USA, Peter Moss discourses, texts, readers and the pro-nuclear arguments, Gunther Kress. Part 2 The discourse of deterrence: the logic of deterrence, William van Belle and Paul Claes words, discourse and metaphors, Paul Chilton. Part 3 Aspects of media discourse: getting the message across, Bob Hodge cultural silence, Peter Moss disintegrating narrative, Peter Jeffrey and Michael O'Toole "nothing left to laugh at...", Bob Hodge and Alan Mansfield. Part 4 Towards a critical linguistics: the concept of context and the theory of action, Erich Steiner.
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 2014
After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects ... more After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life in China. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by the political elites. Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for the authority to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society. Written by an international team of leading scholars, this volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences. In particular, the volume focuses on the interplay of politics and media. The book’s intended readership is academics and students of Chinese studies, language and discourse, and media and communication studies.
The term “critical”, as used by scholars writing under the banner of Critical Discourse Analysis ... more The term “critical”, as used by scholars writing under the banner of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), is in need of review in a new global intellectual environment in which diverse philosophical and political traditions are increasingly in contact with one another. This essay is particularly concerned with the question of how a shared understanding of the concept of the critical can be developed among Western and Chinese scholars. To this end the paper gives an overview of notions of critique in the historical traditions of China and the West, addressing issues of conceptualisation, discourse practice and translation. This leads us to consider, from a “critical” point of view, what the appearance of the “critical” approach may mean in the Chinese context. The need for continued dialogue oriented to a deepened understanding of existing ideas and approaches is highlighted.
Registres religieux et esthetique classique. Comportement religieux et comportement linguistique.... more Registres religieux et esthetique classique. Comportement religieux et comportement linguistique. Contenu denotatif du registre sacre. La semantique de M., semantique du flou qui reduit la possibilite meme de la metaphorisation. L'univers poetique et politique de M. se fonde sur la notion de l'ordre.
War, Literature and the Arts in Sixteenth-Century Europe, 1989
During the sixteenth century the French lived through two contrasting periods of war. The first w... more During the sixteenth century the French lived through two contrasting periods of war. The first was a period of expansive ambition and the consolidation of an increasingly powerful royal authority in the face of rival European powers. It ended in 1559 with the Treaty of Câteau Cambresis. Three years later religious riots announced France’s turning inward to a self-destructive period of intermittent bloody civil war. French literature of the Renaissance cannot easily be separated from these events. Humanism, especially as represented by Erasmus, gave French literature an impetus; but the Republic of Letters that crossed national boundaries vied with an emergent national literature in the vernacular. The tension between Erasmian pacifism and a militant patriotism can be discerned in the work of certain writers in the first decades of the century, especially those such as Clement Marot and Marguerite de Navarre who were close to the centre of national affairs. The tensions are especially apparent in Rabelais, as we shall see. French Renaissance poetry was dependent on princely and royal patronage, and the Pleiade poets, in particular Du Bellay and Ronsard, had to combine their vision of the freely inspired poet-seer with the role of publicists and propagandists in a period of conflict. The Protestants had their polemic poets (Marot himself had contributed to the vernacularsalm paraphrases), and in 1616) Agrippa d’Aubigne’s Tragiques (written during the civil wars but only published in 1616) their visionary epic of Huguenot suffering and victory.
FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts, 2019
This article aims to connect three topics: Brexit, Boris and the decay of democracy. What connect... more This article aims to connect three topics: Brexit, Boris and the decay of democracy. What connects this trio is talk, talk, talk. Language and politics are tightly and necessarily intertwined. Indeed, as the Greeks thought, language is intertwined with democracy itself. The twenty-first century has brought unprecedented complexity to human ways of communication, and yet the old rhetorical tricks and oratorical stunts, first described and practised in the ancient world, are still capable of turning heads. As we learn more about how human language works in social and political settings, we can see even more clearly a few of the factors that enable lying politicians to acquire power. But we are still far from drawing practical lessons that could be relevant to our current political crisis.
The CP paradox A currently favoured way to think of 'meaning' in language is to imagine it in two... more The CP paradox A currently favoured way to think of 'meaning' in language is to imagine it in two parts, fuzzily separated. The first part is a relatively stable semantic 'core', and it can be considered by linguists (and probably is implicitly so considered by speakers) in terms of necessary truth-conditional entailments. The second part is relatively less stable, and is dependent on context (including under that term speaker's and hearer's social position, and their background assumptions). In broad outline, context-dependent meaning comes about through the drawing of inferences by the hearer, given linguistic and non-linguistic information. The most influential theory in recent research in this area is that of H.P. Grice (1975). Grice's theory concerns the way people tLse language. To explain the possibility of communicative behaviour Grice postulates a Cooperative Principle. There are ethical, and indeed political implications in this notion, although linguists on the whole have tended to avoid them-indeed the linguist's desire for the scientist status has often tended to reify the social practice of language. But care is needed in defining the ethical content of the notion of the Cooperative Principle (the CP). The Principle rests on the premise that communicators are rational agents, whose conversational acts are coordinated for the purpose of communicating meaning of various types, including interpersonal meanings such as attitude, affect, commitment, and so forth. The desire for, and the pressure to seek out, communicative meaning is thus fundamental. The theory is hearer-oriented in the sense that it spells out the ways in which a hearer arrives at meaning. These means rely on deductive computations (for the most part unconscious whose premises are what Grice terms 'maxims of conversation'. It is important for one's general assumptions about communication, in particular if one is approaching international communication, to notice that meaning on this account does not pop up in discrete chunks, or 'signals' between 'receiver' and 'sender'. Rather, it depends on active computational work, indeed guesswork with attendant risks of communicative misfires, trouble, malentendus. What is more, and this is neglected by linguists, the inverse of the malentendu is the intendedly misleading communication. In international communication study it is noteworthy that calculation time is greater than in face-to-face interaction, and is built into the various institutions that concern themselves with analysing verbal and other date from 'the other side'. What we are suggesting here is that linguistic pragmatics may contribute to the understanding of the processes of international communication, and to better perception of intended and unintended miscommunication. Let us now examine the CP, which can be laid out (after Grice, 1975) as follows: make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk on which you are engaged.
Do something! : conceptualising responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. Chilton, Paul (200... more Do something! : conceptualising responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. Chilton, Paul (2002) Do something! : conceptualising responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. ... ID Code: 8503. Deposited By: Professor Paul Chilton. Deposited On: 28 Apr 2008 16:27. ...
CDA (critical discourse analysis) has become widespread not only in Europe but also in the intern... more CDA (critical discourse analysis) has become widespread not only in Europe but also in the international arena. The concept and practice of the ‘critical’ may become problematic when they cross cultural, social and political boundaries. This paper focuses on the meanings of the English word critical (and cognates) and on the Chinese words used to translate it. We assume that
Part 1 Language, text, discourse: the war against peacemongering, Roger Fowler and Tim Marshall p... more Part 1 Language, text, discourse: the war against peacemongering, Roger Fowler and Tim Marshall pragmatics of speeches against the peace movement in Britain, Kay Richardson rhetoric of defence in the USA, Peter Moss discourses, texts, readers and the pro-nuclear arguments, Gunther Kress. Part 2 The discourse of deterrence: the logic of deterrence, William van Belle and Paul Claes words, discourse and metaphors, Paul Chilton. Part 3 Aspects of media discourse: getting the message across, Bob Hodge cultural silence, Peter Moss disintegrating narrative, Peter Jeffrey and Michael O'Toole "nothing left to laugh at...", Bob Hodge and Alan Mansfield. Part 4 Towards a critical linguistics: the concept of context and the theory of action, Erich Steiner.
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 2014
After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects ... more After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life in China. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by the political elites. Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for the authority to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society. Written by an international team of leading scholars, this volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences. In particular, the volume focuses on the interplay of politics and media. The book’s intended readership is academics and students of Chinese studies, language and discourse, and media and communication studies.
The term “critical”, as used by scholars writing under the banner of Critical Discourse Analysis ... more The term “critical”, as used by scholars writing under the banner of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), is in need of review in a new global intellectual environment in which diverse philosophical and political traditions are increasingly in contact with one another. This essay is particularly concerned with the question of how a shared understanding of the concept of the critical can be developed among Western and Chinese scholars. To this end the paper gives an overview of notions of critique in the historical traditions of China and the West, addressing issues of conceptualisation, discourse practice and translation. This leads us to consider, from a “critical” point of view, what the appearance of the “critical” approach may mean in the Chinese context. The need for continued dialogue oriented to a deepened understanding of existing ideas and approaches is highlighted.
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