Literature and Language

HENEVER QUESTIONS about the language of literature, about the distinctiveness of are being asked, some predictable difficulties occur. is quite possible to describe a certain type of language with more than adequate precision, as Cyril Birch does in his article on Chinese literature or, to some extent, Isaac Rabinowitz in his study on the language of the Old Testament-although, in the latter case, ominous questions are very close to making their appearance over the horizon of the text. But this works only as long as one describes the species without getting too close to the genus: taking for granted there is such a thing as literary language, one can describe a particular subset of the class, but as soon as one confronts the question of defining the specificity of language as such, complications arise. The more theoretical among the studies on literature and language published in this and in recent issues of New Literary History should allow us to speculate on the systematization of this difficulty. The juxtaposition of these essaysI reveals a recurrent narrative pattern may well be more than a mere result of chance or a commonplace of academic exposition: all of the essays suggest the study of language could progress if only we could rid ourselves of misconceptions have hampered it persistently in the past. The tone is one of impatience with recurrent errors of definition: It is evident, writes Seymour Chatman, that stylistics, like linguistics before it, must rid itself of normative preoccupations if it is ever to get

Linguistics · Philosophy · Translation Studies and Practices

• Semiotics of literary meaning

  Open Access•Ibrahim Taha•Semiotica•2002

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