Re: Definitions- help!

From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Fri Aug 20 1999 - 17:03:44 EDT


Ed,

Not a big greek but here goes.

As Humpty Dumpty would say, "structuralism" and "post-modern" mean what
ever I want them to mean.

Structuralism is very confusing because it is both a school of
linguistics which goes back to F. de Saussure (d. 1913) who never
publish a book but his lectures (Course in General Linguistics) were
compiled posthumously by his students and it is also a school of
literary criticism. There is some cross pollination between the
linguistics and the literary criticism but one must take care to keep
the two schools sorted out our you will end up talking nonsense which is
the norm in literary critical circles when discussing F. de Saussure (to
talk nonsense).

A current title that will help confuse you on this issue "Is there a
meaning in this Text", Kevin Vanhoozer, Zondervan 1998, spends 500 pages
talking about structuralism and post-structuralism mostly from the
standpoint of literary criticism. Vanhoozer will not help you understand
linguistic structuralism because Vahnoozer reads Saussure through the
eyes of J. Derrida which is a major mistake. To understand how to avoid
reading Saussure through the eyes of J. Derrida you should seen "Against
Deconstruction" by John M. Ellis, Princeton 1989. Ellis is not the last
word on J. Derrida but he does point out some very significant things
about the difference between literary structuralism and post
structuralism and linguistic structuralism.

To understand literary post-modernism you must first understand literary
structuralism and post-structuralism. This can become a big project
taking up a lot of your time. Not sure it is worth it unless you have a
taste for the bizarre and the obscure.

Clay

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062

---------- >From: "Ed Gorham" <aekalm@a-znet.com> >To: Biblical Greek <b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu> >Subject: Definitions- help! >Date: Fri, Aug 20, 1999, 4:23 PM >

> In some recent threads on the merits of different grammars, I have seen > terms such as "structuralism" and "post-modern" thrown around. I know what > these terms refer to in other contexts, but could some of you Big Greeks > define what these mean linguistically? Thanks in advance. > Ed Gorham > aekalm@a-znet > > --- > B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek > You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net > To unsubscribe, forward this message to > leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu > To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu > >

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