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Formal Models in Narrative Analysis

David Herman

Apostolos Doxiadis and Barry Mazur (eds)

in Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative

This chapter considers formal models of narrative and the nature of the theory of narrative. After discussing the diachronic and synchronic approaches to investigating the role of formal models in ... More

This chapter considers formal models of narrative and the nature of the theory of narrative. After discussing the diachronic and synchronic approaches to investigating the role of formal models in narrative analysis, the chapter looks at those ideas about models and modeling as a kind of bridge between humanistic and technoscientific discourse. It then evaluates descriptive and functional classifications of models, along with a range of perspectives on mathematical models and modeling. It also presents a case study in metanarratology, with a particular focus on modeling practices that have been brought to bear on focalization. It also analyzes some instances of the confluence of the formal study of narrative and mathematics, including the use of permutation groups, as well as the synergy between mathematically based theories of structural linguistics and early work on story grammars.Less

Going Native: History, Language, and Culture

Kerwin Lee Klein

in From History to Theory

This chapter begins with a discussion of the New Cultural History, a movement commonly described as history's response to the growing influence of radical, continental conceptions of language. It ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of the New Cultural History, a movement commonly described as history's response to the growing influence of radical, continental conceptions of language. It argues that cultural history's reception of French structural linguistics and post-structuralism was shaped by earlier linguistic turns in American anthropology and analytic philosophy. It notes that language, along with culture, perhaps the most important keyword of the human sciences in the twentieth century, had a lengthy history in North America, where academic and popular studies of linguistics were strongly formed by ethnographic encounters with racial difference. It discusses that some of the most radical renditions of language came not from the deconstructive inclinations of literary critics but from analytical philosophy's encounters with popular anthropology. As a result, when historians began to borrow idioms and phrases from anthropology, they entered a semantic field in which language, art, and racial difference had grown tightly together.Less

What Can Statistical Learning Tell Us About Infant Learning?

Jenny R. Saffran

in Learning and the Infant Mind

This chapter uses statistical learning as a model system to consider broader issues and implications pertaining to the role of learning in development. Statistical learning is an old idea, with roots ... More

This chapter uses statistical learning as a model system to consider broader issues and implications pertaining to the role of learning in development. Statistical learning is an old idea, with roots in mid-20th-century fields of inquiry as diverse as structural linguistics, early neuroscience, and operant conditioning paradigms. Two broad claims underlie the statistical learning literature. First, important structures in the environment are mirrored by surface statistics. Second, organisms are in fact sensitive to these patterns in their environments. This combination of environmental structure and learning mechanisms that can exploit this structure is the central tenet of theories focused on learning — in this case, the potent combination of informative statistics in the input paired with processes that can make use of such statistics.Less

Lévi-Strauss's Saussure

Roy Harris

in Saussure and his Interpreters

This chapter analyses anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss' interpretation of Ferdinand de Saussure's ideas about linguistics, explaining that Lévi-Strauss is commonly cited as one of the most ... More

This chapter analyses anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss' interpretation of Ferdinand de Saussure's ideas about linguistics, explaining that Lévi-Strauss is commonly cited as one of the most prominent examples of the influence of Saussure's teachings outside the domain of linguistics proper. It discusses Lévi-Strauss' view that Saussure's linguistics is structuralist, and provides an account of the relationship between the ideas of Lévi-Strauss and Saussure.Less

Music, phenomenology, time consciousness:: meditations after Husserl

David Clarke

in Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives

Husserl's phenomenology in general and his study of time consciousness in particular retain currency in present-day thought, not least for consciousness studies. Therefore, and also because of its ... More

Husserl's phenomenology in general and his study of time consciousness in particular retain currency in present-day thought, not least for consciousness studies. Therefore, and also because of its recurring references to music, it promises a productive place from which to launch an inquiry into music and consciousness. This chapter uses Husserl's rich insights to draw out the possibilities that music and consciousness offer for a reciprocal understanding, while at the same time not being oblivious to the various lacunae and (productive) theoretical contradictions of the Phenomenology. The analysis is conducted through three musico-philosophical meditations, each identifying a different standpoint from which to consider Husserl. The first draws on the ‘microgenetic’ theory of Jason Brown; the second on the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson; and the third on Derrida's seminal critique of Husserl. These meditations are to a degree autonomous; each pursues its own line of argument to its own conclusion, and tends to unfold as an essay in its own right. Yet, while the intention is not to create a higher synthesis between these three studies, there are connections between them, and their effect is cumulative.Less

American Linguistics, 1900–1940

John A. Goldsmith and Bernard Laks

in Battle in the Mind Fields

This chapter looks at the rise of American linguistics in the first four decades of the twentieth century, contrasting the very different views of Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield. Sapir ... More

This chapter looks at the rise of American linguistics in the first four decades of the twentieth century, contrasting the very different views of Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield. Sapir encouraged the study of the relationship of language and culture, while Bloomfield explored how linguistics could become more like other sciences by eliminating the role of mental descriptions in the grammars that linguists wrote. They both saw the definition of the phoneme as a signal contribution of linguistics to the mind sciences.Less

Introduction

Mark Olssen

in Constructing Foucault’s ethics: A poststructuralist moral theory for the twenty-first century

The Introduction seeks to state the scope and nature of the study in more extended terms, and to establish the importance of historical ontology to Foucault’s complex view of history as necessary to ... More

The Introduction seeks to state the scope and nature of the study in more extended terms, and to establish the importance of historical ontology to Foucault’s complex view of history as necessary to constructing an ethics. After presenting a very schematic survey of complexity theory, it utilizes Alain Badiou’s approach to ethics to construct the contours of the approach that I intend to take with regard to Foucault. It concludes by stating the intention to utilize research in both the Continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions.Less