Two Ways Of The Linguistic Turn And Their Influence To The Literary Theory

It is widely acknowledged that linguistic turn has special influence upon literary theories ever since20th century.Linguistic turn started from study of semiotics developed by Saussure. In Course on General Linguistics, Saussure creatively regards language as signs, and figures out that language essentially refers to "thing" rather than "tool". His contribution to linguistic turn is also reflected in redefinition of sign system which in his version is a bipartite union of a signifier and a signified and of complete arbitrary. He clarifies that values are generated from differences and meaning-imbued signs are functioned by syntagmes and association of linguistician. As a whole, Saussure’s linguistic theories establish insights crucial and valuable for linguistic turn.Inspired by Saussure’s insights, literary theorists extend their researches into this new dimension, and thus gain fruitful achievements with this theoretical foundation concerning literary theories. Not exaggeratedly, almost all significant theoretical findings in literary from20th century are closely related to linguistic turn. Those achievements overall can be divided into findings of poetics and politics, since when literary theories find its way growing and systematized. This paper concerns causes of linguistic turn and development of literary theories from the separate aspects, namely poetics and politics which are mentioned above, under linguistic turn.Under framework of poetics, this paper includes examples that illustrate Shklovsky’s defamiliarization, Jacobson’s metaphor and metonymy, Roland Bathes’ narratology and Jonathan Culler’s extension of deconstruction poetics, and further explains mechanisms that wakens poetry and produces meanings by sign organization. It is equally valuable to notice that Foucault first realizes language can yield dominant power, which gives rise to the question "why language is power". Foucault’s construction of knowledge/power theory provides theoretical foundation and space for inspiration to researches concerning text politics, and further leads to emergence of post-colonialism, postmodern feminism and identity politics.With representative examples of literary theories selected from the perspectives of poetics and politics respectively, this paper explores and analyzes the profound influence of linguistic sign exerting on literary theories’ being since20th century.