The meaning of the wor(l)d

Value, sense, and reference in Not Saussure by Raymond Tallis

Bibliographic Data

ID20156785
AuthorsDavid Schalkwyk (University of Cape Town, corresponding author)
Year1991
Volume7
Issue3-4
Pages193-216
Publication date1991-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
PublisherUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564719108529984
OpenAlexW2024721139
LanguageEN
References cited12

This article is a critical review of the major argument in favour of realism and the concomitant critique of poststructuralism in Raymond Tallis's recent book, Not Saussure: A Critique of Post‐Saussurean Literary Theory. While it is generally sympathetic to Tallis's aim to “refute once and for all the belief that there are logico‐linguistic grounds for denying the possibility of a valid realistic fiction”, it argues both that Tallis overlooks the central weakness of Saussurean theory and that the realism that he offers as an adjunct to his reading of Saussure is seriously flawed. It offers instead a Wittgensteinean view of the relationship between language and the world which, instead of setting out from the assumption that there is a gap between word and world which needs to be bridged, sees the “objects” of language as samples, or aspects of the world that are appropriated in historically and culturally variable ways as rules for the use of words. For Wittgenstein there is no gap between word and object because samples, as rules of “grammar”, are in fact part of the structure of language

Epistemology · Grammar · Linguistics · Realism · Sociology · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications

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