An exploration of the Syntactic structures involved in Denotation, Metaphor and Irony. This paper... more An exploration of the Syntactic structures involved in Denotation, Metaphor and Irony. This paper utilises venn diagrams to visually conceptualise the notion of the 'semantic field' and explores how the interrelation of certain terms in these fields is utilised in the processes of Denotation, metaphor and Irony. Literary examples are drawn from the work of John Donne, Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Purloined Letter' and Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'.
Wordplay and unusual language usage have frequently caused problems for both translators and theo... more Wordplay and unusual language usage have frequently caused problems for both translators and theorists. A particularly interesting example is that of Nonsense verse, which it has been suggested constitutes a semiotic 'catastrophe' (Parsons 1994: 63) due to its apparent avoidance of conventional signification. The poststructuralism movement undermined long held notions of strong linguistic reference by; 'refusing to assign to the text… an ultimate meaning' (Barthes 2013: 5), and it is now accepted within the translation community that; 'a language utterance does not possess an inherent meaning that is readily available to all who simply open their eyes to it.' (Delabastita 1993: 2) Despite this we should draw a distinction between highlighting the weakness of signification in traditional language use, and its intentional avoidance in Nonsense verse. As Douglas Hofstadter states;
An exploration of the Syntactic structures involved in Denotation, Metaphor and Irony. This paper... more An exploration of the Syntactic structures involved in Denotation, Metaphor and Irony. This paper utilises venn diagrams to visually conceptualise the notion of the 'semantic field' and explores how the interrelation of certain terms in these fields is utilised in the processes of Denotation, metaphor and Irony. Literary examples are drawn from the work of John Donne, Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Purloined Letter' and Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'.
Wordplay and unusual language usage have frequently caused problems for both translators and theo... more Wordplay and unusual language usage have frequently caused problems for both translators and theorists. A particularly interesting example is that of Nonsense verse, which it has been suggested constitutes a semiotic 'catastrophe' (Parsons 1994: 63) due to its apparent avoidance of conventional signification. The poststructuralism movement undermined long held notions of strong linguistic reference by; 'refusing to assign to the text… an ultimate meaning' (Barthes 2013: 5), and it is now accepted within the translation community that; 'a language utterance does not possess an inherent meaning that is readily available to all who simply open their eyes to it.' (Delabastita 1993: 2) Despite this we should draw a distinction between highlighting the weakness of signification in traditional language use, and its intentional avoidance in Nonsense verse. As Douglas Hofstadter states;
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