Language Awareness And The Evolution Of Linguistic Criticism

The present dissertation intends to investigate the evolution of western linguistic criticism in the context of "linguistic turn". Concentrating on the evolution and setting the language awareness as a basic perspective, the dissertation combs and analyzes the theoretical spectrum of Russian Formalism, the New Criticism, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, explores their different differences in forms, features and connotation of language awareness, and also displays the overall thinking, research scopes and research methods of the linguistic criticism theories. At the same time, the dissertation distinguishes the three stages of this evolution:linguistic form stage ("form" and "semantic")—linguistic structure stage ("structure")—linguistic action stage ("text" deconstruction and "discourse" practice), by analyzing respectively their leading tendencies and "subversion" factors in the literary study, it also reveals the organic connections and the specific distinctions among the three stages. Furthermore, with the above as the basis the dissertation illustrates the inherent logical venation of the evolution:from concerning the "aesthetic self-discipline of linguistic forms" to focusing on the "cultural construction of linguistic actions".Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the dissertation is divided into four chapters. Among them, both Chapter One and Chapter Two discuss the linguistic form stage. Chapter Three explores the linguistic structure stage. These two stages roughly correspond to the "aesthetic self-discipline of linguistic forms"(period), they both focus on the characteristics and attributes of the literature language itself, which are regarded as the basis for the interpretation of literature and literary activities; the fourth chapter mainly analyzes the linguistic action stage, which is associated with the "cultural construction of linguistic actions"(period). This stage focuses on the impact and restrain that the quality of language acts makes on literature and literary activities, the understanding and interpretation of literature at this stage is based on the operating mechanism of literary production. The following is the specific content of each part.On the basis of defining "linguistic criticism" and "language awareness", Introduction points out the serious "misreading" of literary language study in Chinese academic circle is the reason why the author chooses this topic. Then it combs the domestic and foreign research related to the topic, and explains the in contents, methods and innovation of this research. In this dissertation,"linguistic criticism" mainly refers to the critical theory that studies literature in the perspective of language dimension;"language awareness" refers to the opinion that literary criticism have on the concept of "language", and the awareness of problem that arouses by exploring the relationship between literature and language. In addition, the major force and clue of the evolution of linguistic criticism lie behind the significant differences or even oppositions of different critical theories on language awareness.Chapter One:Literary Aesthetics and Unique Performance of Linguistic Form. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the language awareness of Russian Formalism. Questioning the literature concepts and research paradigms in traditional literary theories, Russian formalists, hold high the flag of "literature return to its own" and "resurrection of the Word", and call for the establishment of literary science research carried out in accordance with the inherent law of literature and art. As a result, they confine the object of study to the "literariness" or literary language. In their view, linguistic form is the only element of literary aesthetics. Based on this view, they try to find out how the form affects literature in the sense of aesthetics, by asking questions like what reflects the particularity of literary language, how the particularity comes into being, how it operates, and how to identify the relationship between various elements of the particularity.With these questions,"language awareness" of Russian Formalism of appears as such a development:"formâ†'devicesâ†'function"."Form" distinguishes literary language from everyday language on the level of speech sound, fixing the particularity of literature on the language manifestations;"Devices" includes two aspects:(1)"devices of de-familiarization", which emphasizes that the unique form of literary expression is formed through the de-familiarizing means of art that works on everyday language.(2)"formalization of material", which, breaking through the traditional "form/content" dichotomy, demonstrate how artistic skills, process language materials ("content"), so as to constitute a literary work;"Function" emphasizes literary language from the perspective of structure and function. It sees language as a dynamic functional system, and believes that all techniques play different roles rather than stack up mechanically. At this stage, Russian Formalists realizes the systematical feature of literature, they begin to comb of Saussure’s theory of linguistics, and then there emerges a transition trend from "form" to "structure".From the perspective of the evolution of linguistic criticism, Russian Formalism’s major contribution is the "rediscovery" of the importance of language ("form") for literature. The formalists consider the language study as an essential prerequisite and basis of the literary study, and thus in the whole transform the problem awareness, the knowledge structure and the research paradigm of literary theory and criticism, and promote the "linguistic turn" of literature study. Moreover, in the late Russian formalism an "out-turn" germinates. Literature is viewed and analyzed as a system of symbols that co-exist with other social and historical systems. However, due to the dominant tendency, Russian Formalism does not free itself from the aesthetic on the idea that literature is an autonomous territory. Therefore, it emphasizes "self-purpose" and purity of literary language. In the pursuit a scientific literary study, it is unable to resolve or it suspends the problems of value judgment and meaning generation. It is New Criticism and Structuralism who respectively address the two issues from other aspects of the linguistic form.Chapter Two:Organic Unity of Linguistic form and Semantic plurality. This chapter is designed to investigate the language awareness of Anglo-American New Criticism. Like Russian Formalism, New Criticism also transforms literary problems into language issues, believing that the literary aesthetic lies in the linguistic forms. However, compared with Russian formalism, New Criticism pays more attention to the semantic features of literary language than its manifestation. Therefore, New Criticism calls for "text"-oriented method in literature study, in other words, it calls for an "internal study" aiming at the text itself own instead of the "external study".This kind of language awareness is mainly reflected in two aspects. The first aspect is the composition of the ontology of literature. New criticism distinguishes between the literary (emotional) language from science language and everyday language, and makes one by one the following theoretical definitions:"false statementsâ†'framework and textureâ†'the organic structureâ†'multilayer structure". Based on this, it combines the aesthetic form of literary works with the non-conceptualization of meaning, saying that the ontology of literature is the unique "semantic structure" of literary work, the particularity of literary language is its plurality. The secondly aspect, emphasizes the indirect denotation of signifier, focusing on the analysis of the semantic effect brought by rhetoric skills. In New Criticism’s opinion,"ambiguity" and "paradox","irony" and "metaphor" and "tension" and other phenomena are not only the specific manifestations of the unique quality of the literary language, but also the language rhetoric ways that make the text semantic structure complex and meaning rich, the same time they constitute a unique critical strategy:"semantic close reading". By this strategy, New Criticism involves "external" factors of texts and vaguely aware of the constraints on thinking caused by linguistic rhetoric. This means that the "internal study" is not an absolutely closed form analysis, it has not completely cut off the link between texts’ internal and external factors. In fact, the basic characteristic of those critical theories which value the literary form is that they have never thought literature is equivalent to the linguistic forms, but thought there are some factors beyond the scope of pure form.As a period of forming linguistic criticism discourse, New Criticism not only overcomes the limitations of Russian formalism——ignoring value judgment and meaning problems, also it makes a far-reaching impact on the framework of traditional theories, making language awareness deeply seep into literary study. However, in its understanding of language problems there are serious contradictions and problems, which are primarily displayed in three aspects:(1) it requests that literary study should have "text" as something it can depend on, but it is isolated and inadequate of the study to analyze a text on its own. At the same time, on the language’s emotional characteristics, it has not yet got out of the limitations of the "language of representation" theory;(2) it emphasizes the complex ambiguity or non-clarity of the text semantic structure, but there is always a belief in the text as an organic unity;(3) it only establishes literary semantics, but cannot resolve the problem of meaning generation. The existence of these contradictions, makes the New Criticism, contain a development tendency of self-deconstruction. This is precisely why it is "substituted" by structuralism and post-structuralism.Chapter Three:Meaning Generation and Structural Mode of Literary Language. This chapter focuses on the language awareness of Structuralism. Based on the study of Russian Formalism, Structuralism criticism overcomes the inadequacy of New Criticism limits itself to individual work, thus it emphasizes the structure and Synchronicity of literary language. In Structuralism, the concept of "structure" is not the genre structure or entity structure as defined in the early linguistic criticism, but the abstract structure form. Due to the differences in the language awareness, on the discussion of language problems, it has been more than looking for form elements that make literature aesthetical, but asking where the literature meaning comes from. Therefore, in the linguistic analysis, Structuralism does not focus on art form or semantic features of concrete works, but attempts to, taking Saussure’s linguistic mode as an example, analyze the process of "meaning" generation in literature, and then according to the language systematic mode, builds a literary structure, regarding it a constant pattern for literary study.To summarize, genre study of literary structure in Structuralism criticism covers two aspects:the linguistic mode and the semiotic mode. The former is represented by Jacobson’s poetry function analysis, as well as narrative structure or "grammar" analysis proposed by Claude Levi Strauss, Todorov, Greimas and other theorists. The latter is manifested by early Roland Barthes’s literary semiotics study. In these two aspects of linguistic analysis, besides emphasizing the identity of structure and the priority of signified, Structuralism critics pay more or less attention to the complicated relationship between structure and behavior, plural meaning and cultural "context", signifier and signified, thus present a theory pattern that interweaves aesthetics and cultural analysis, construction and deconstruction.On the pedigree of linguistic criticism discourse, Structuralism is in a connecting position. On the one hand, it’s an extremely static form of language study, for it solves the meaning generation problem within the internal linguistic structure, breaking away from the aesthetic context of "how literature, how to reflects life"; On the other hand, the structural analysis paradigm locks literary study into the abstract language world, making it almost entirely out of ultra-linguistic areas. This mainly displays in three aspects:(1) in relationship between literary system and concrete work,"structure" has become the only ultimate model;(2) it denies the existence of the "subject" factor in the literary activities while deposing author-centered theory;(3) it ignores the diachronic contextual factors and excludes non-structural systems while following closely the synchronic structure factors. As a result, it cannot resolve the problem of meaning generation in the context, either. That also contributes the reflection of Structuralism on its own limitations. In this sense, those deconstruction factors that appear within Structuralism deconstruction of factors are the dilemma that structuralism critics have been aware of, and trying to resolve.Chapter Four:Literary Production and Cultural Construction of Linguistic Actions. This chapter discusses the language awareness of Post-structuralism. As far as the full meaning of "linguistic turn", language study not only means the great interest to the language problem, but reconsideration of the relationship between language and reality, thus the "mirror-language theory" since Plato is broken. In this view, although the period of linguistic form study turns literature study into a literary language symbol system, it is still in the cage of "mirror-language theory". In response to the "linguistic turn" of philosophy, Post-structuralism changes the specific ideas and methods of literary language investigation. By re-associating internal and external factors of a text through language acts, it achieves a shift of linguistic criticism. This shift is "text" deconstruction approach started by Derrida, and Michel Foucault’s discourse practice paradigm.Jacques Derrida, starting from the deconstruction of logocentrism, deconstructs the consistency of "structure" and sign, and the hierarchical relationship between writing and speech, literary and non-literary language. He then further stresses that language act refers to signifier difference, and text is a significance chain of infinite dissemination of the meaning. In this way, he gives redefinitions of literary language and "literariness". Under his influence, Deconstructionism in the United States, with Paul De Man as the representative, emphasizes the rhetoricity in literary language, advocates a rhetorical reading, dedicates to the analysis the indeterminacy of textual meaning caused by the tension between rhetoric and grammar-logic as well as caused by performative contradiction, and reveals the function of ideological construction function in rhetoric activities. However, the textuality theory of Post-structuralism, with late Barthes and Kristeva as the representatives see literary language as an ultra-linguistic signifying practice. It shows great concern over how the cultural norms and customs shape the literature texts, and how linguistic actions construct the subjectivity. It believes that the text reflects certain ideologies, but literature can eliminate these ideologies through linguistic actions.However, since the "text" approach usually reduces the control of the political, economic, and ideological factors to various aspects of the signifying practice process, and confines itself in the territory of the traces of intertextuality, it largely ignores the fact that the real "power"(dominant ideology) plays its role in linguistic actions. It is the thinking and analysis made by Foucault on the relationship between language, knowledge and power that make up for the weakness of "text" approach. He places linguistic actions into the broad cultural and historical field to inspect the operation of the discourse practice mechanism, and then exposes the complicity between discourse/knowledge and power/ideology. Inspired by him, critical theories like Feminism, New Historicism and Post-colonialism and so on, have made further misappropriation, modification, learning and absorption of "discourse" paradigm, and put it into literary study, thus fully implements the turn of linguistic criticism. Edward Said’s Orientalism discourse study is a concentrated representation of this turn. In this sense, the appearance of "cultural turn" is not the replacement of "linguistic turn", but the fractured continuity of the development of "linguistic turn".Concluding section briefly discusses the characteristics and enlightenment of the linguistic criticism evolution. This dissertation insists that linguistic criticism is not the same as pure "formalism", literary language study does not only focus on the linguistic forms, and cultural criticism is not a type of research that is unrelated to or is the replacement of linguistic criticism. In the Chinese knowledge context of21st century, linguistic criticism that takes into account both the "aesthetic" and "cultural" dimension should have a broader space for development.