Man in Relation with Nature and Culture in English
Literature: a Diachronic Perspective
Man in Relation with Nature and Culture in English
Literature: a Diachronic Perspective
Author(s): Doina CmeciuSubject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts
Published by: Editura Alma Mater
Keywords: discourse; relation(ship), relatedness; semiotic square; B/being; nature; culture; conceptual metaphors; identity
Summary/Abstract: The paper aims at revealing the way the three semiotic concepts of relation, relationship and relatedness work when a human being’s identity is shaped through the roles s/he performs and the attitudes s/he takes towards nature and culture. Starting from theories such as Greimas’s semiotic square, the Tartu School’s studies on how cultures are encoded in/through language and how they are understood by others and by themselves, the mechanisms of representing the world vision of a specific community through models and codes (Eco 1976; Sebeok 1994; Sebeok and Danesi 2000; Peirce’s concept of semiosis) and the functions of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff 1987; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Lakoff & Turner 1989), the author tries to map the traits which define a historically-rooted cultural model. We consider that the becoming of a community’s identity built up through its relation to nature and culture may be best represented by literary, particularly metaphorical, discourse, pursued in its diachrony.
Journal: Cultural Perspectives - Journal for Literary and British Cultural Studies in Romania
- Issue Year: 2015
- Issue No: 20
- Page Range: 19-44
- Page Count: 25
- Content File-PDF