no natural connection between sign and signified (versus plato: "dog" = instrinsic connection with dog)
This link has been bookmarked by 4 people . It was first bookmarked on 21 Oct 2008, by Mike Wesch.
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19 May 10
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06 Oct 09
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Ancient philosophers reasoned about language the way we do about mythology.
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he contradiction was surmounted only by the discovery that it is the combination of sounds, not the sounds themselves, which provides the significant data.
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Add Sticky NoteSaussurean principle of the
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arbitrary character of linguistic signs
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myth is language: to be known, myth has to be told; it is a part of human speech. In order to preserve its specificity we must be able to show that it is both the same thing as language, and also something different from it.
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But what gives the myth an operational value is that the specific pattern described is timeless; it explains the present and the past as well as the future.
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It is that double structure, altogether historical and ahistorical, which explains how myth, while pertaining to the realm of parole and calling for an explanation as such, as well as to that of langue in which it is expressed, can also be an absolute entity on a third level which, though it remains linguistic by nature, is nevertheless distinct from the other two.
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the mythical value of the myth is preserved even through the worst translation
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Whatever our ignorance of the language and the culture of the people where it originated, a myth is still felt as a myth by any reader anywhere in the world. Its substance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells. Myth is language, functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practically at "taking off" from the linguistic ground on which it keeps on rolling.
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following claims: (1) If there is a meaning to be found in mythology, it cannot reside in the isolated elements which enter into the composition of a myth, but only in the way those elements are combined. (2) Although myth belongs to the same category as language, being, as a matter of fact, only part of it, language in myth exhibits specific properties. (3) Those properties are only to be found above the ordinary linguistic level, that is, they exhibit more complex features than those which are to be found in any other kind of linguistic expression.
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two consequences will follow: (1) Myth, like the rest of language, is made up of constituent units. (2) These constituent units presuppose the constituent units present in language when analyzed on other levels—namely, phonemes, morphemes, and sememes—but they, nevertheless, differ from the latter in the same way as the latter differ among themselves; they belong to a higher and more complex order. For this reason, we shall call them gross constituent units.
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How shall we proceed in order to identify and isolate these gross constituent units or mythemes
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we should look for them on the sentence leve
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very core of our argument: The true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated relations but bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and combined so as to produce a meaning.
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Relations pertaining to the same bundle may appear diachronically at remote intervals, but when we have succeeded in grouping them together we have reorganized our myth according to a time referent of a new nature corresponding to the prerequisite of the initial hypothesis, namely a two-dimensional time referent which is simultaneously diachronic and synchronic, and which accordingly integrates the characteristics of langue on the one hand, and those of parole on the other. To put it in even more linguistic terms, it is as though a phoneme were always made up of all its variants.
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Myth is an intermediary entity between a statistical aggregate of molecules and the molecular structure itself.
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21 Oct 08
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From a theoretical point of view the situation remains very much the same as it was fifty years ago, namely, chaotic. Myths are still widely interpreted in conflicting ways: as collective dreams, as the outcome of a kind of esthetic play, or as the basis of ritual. Mythological figures are considered as personified abstractions, divinized heroes, or fallen gods. Whatever the hypothesis, the choice amounts to reducing mythology either to idle play or to a crude kind of philosophic speculation.
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Add Sticky Noteit will be claimed that in such a society grandmothers are actually evil and that mythology reflects the social structure and the social relations
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vs. structural-functionalism
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Add Sticky Notebut should the actual data be conflicting, it would be as readily claimed that the purpose of mythology is to provide an outlet for repressed feelings.
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vs. psychoanalytic (Freud, Jung, Campbell)
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Therefore the problem: If the content of a myth is contingent, how are we going to explain the fact that myths throughout the world are so similar?
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it is the combination of sounds, not the sounds themselves, which provides the significant data
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Let us consider, for instance, Jung’s idea that a given mythological pattern—the so-called archetype—possesses a certain meaning.
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everybody will agree that the Saussurean principle of the arbitrary character of linguistic signs was a prerequisite for the accession of linguistics to the scientific level.
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Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole, one being the structural side of language, the other the statistical aspect of it, langue belonging to a reversible time, parole being non-reversible.
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t is that double structure, altogether historical and ahistorical, which explains how myth, while pertaining to the realm of parole and calling for an explanation as such, as well as to that of langue in which it is expressed, can also be an absolute entity on a third level which, though it remains linguistic by nature, is nevertheless distinct from the other two.
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Add Sticky Note
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the translator is a traitor
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f there is a meaning to be found in mythology, it cannot reside in the isolated elements which enter into the composition of a myth, but only in the way those elements are combined
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Myth, like the rest of language, is made up of constituent units.
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The technique which has been applied so far by this writer consists in analyzing each myth individually, breaking down its story into the shortest possible sentences, and writing each sentence on an index card bearing a number corresponding to the unfolding of the story.
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each gross constituent unit will consist of a relation.
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The true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated relations but bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and combined so as to produce a meaning.
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Now for a concrete example of the method we propose. We shall use the Oedipus myth
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But if we want to understand the myth, then we will have to disregard one half of the diachronic dimension (top to bottom) and read from left to right, column after column, each one being considered as a unit.
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blood relations which are overemphasized
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third column refers to monsters being slain
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difficulties in walking straight and standing upright.
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denial of the autochthonous origin of man
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the persistence of the autochthonous origin of man
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The myth has to do with the inability
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to find a satisfactory transition between this theory and the knowledge that human beings are actually born from the union of man and woman.
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born from one or born from two?
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born from different or born from same?
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To discover a suitable pattern of rows and columns for those cards, special devices are needed, consisting of vertical boards about six feet long and four and a half feet high, where cards can be pigeon-holed and moved at will. In order to build up three-dimensional models enabling one to compare the variants, several such boards are necessary, and this in turn requires a spacious workshop, a commodity particularly unavailable in Western Europe nowadays. Furthermore, as soon as the frame of reference becomes multi-dimensional (which occurs at an early stage, as has been shown above) the board system has to be replaced by perforated cards, which in turn require IBM equipment, etc. -
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Public Stiky Notes
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