| A taxinomia is a table of process rules for the existence of relations between words and things. In this dissertation, I develop a general taxinomia of communication and culture. Culture is broadly defined as a set of commonplace existences that have significance for a collection of persons. Communication is narrowly defined as the preconscious analog condition for human speech as existential expression.;Using a phenomenological research protocol, I develop a taxinomia which follows three process rules, namely identity, difference, and embodiment. The result of the rule of identity is the theory of suture, popularized in film studies and based in part of psychoanalytic principles, represented by Jacques Lacan. Suture creates a case of the Imaginary World. The result of the rule of difference is the theory of rupture, a theory I develop for television studies. The theory of rupture emerges from postmodern frontiers exemplified in literary criticism, represented by Julia Kristeva. Rupture creates a case of the Symbolic. The result of the rule of embodiment is the theory of metabola, a theory I develop to account for the regulation and distribution of human speech within the context of the existential choice of the person speaking, represented by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his student Michel Foucault. The metabola creates a case of human speech that marks the Imaginary World, making it Symbolic. The theory of suture operates according to a tropology, a four step simultaneity, and is represented by four tropes of speech. The tropes are apophasis, prosopopoeia, asyndeton, and metonymy. Tropes that suture are all forms of the so-called master trope metonymy. Metonyms represent the process conditions for the existence of culture. The theory of rupture operates according to a tropology, also a four step simultaneity, and is represented by four tropes of speech. The tropes are catachresis, simile, irony, and metaphor. Tropes that rupture are all forms of the so-called master trope metaphor. Metaphors represent the process conditions for the existence of communication. This dissertation transcends the postmodern concern with rupture and suture and defines the condition called modernity--thus, I speak the Imaginary World made Symbolic. |
