Stuff About Books and Literature

We are surrounded by numerous types of signs and sign systems that we may not be fully aware of. How we interpret these signs and react to our understanding of them gives them meaning. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) formulated the innovative triadic model of the sign, emphasizing in his theory that the way we interpret a ‘sign’ is what allows it to be signified – what gives it its meaning. Therefore, when creating a sign system the main attributes of any sign need to be clear enough to relay their intended meaning, or else they will be valueless. What are signs? Peirce’s theory does not focus on just material or concrete signs, but any kind of sign. For example, if a bus driver announces that the next stop is Central Station and a passenger rings the bell, lighting up the ‘stop’ sign  – then the sign system here has been understood. The message contained  in the driver’s announcement is the sign that he will drive straight past that terminal if no one responds. His announ

Texts – built from other texts. Image by National Library in Paris The theory of intertextuality is based on the idea that all signifying systems are a product of previous signifying systems; it proposes that texts are not the original product of one author, but of their connection with other texts, both written and spoken, and to the structure of language. The idea of intertextuality, a concept originated by French semiotician Julia Kristeva in the late 1960s, was founded on Ferdinand de Saussure’s  (1857-1913) theories of semiology and Mikhail Bakhtin’s  (1895-1975)  interests in the social aspects of language and his ideas of dialogism which he theorised in the 1920s. The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, viewed language as a socially-conceived structured system of elements, rules, and meanings. His theories of signs inspired the idea of structuralism, “the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations,”  and

What are you really reading? Image by  Pedro Ribeiro Simões How do you approach reading? Do you passively consume the words on the page or screen in front of you, or do you interact with the writing? Linguist Roland Barthes had something to say on our conception of written language. French Philosopher, Linguist and Semiotician Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was one of the leading structuralist thinkers of the 20th century. He built his concept of the transformation of our approach to literary works based on the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Julia Kristeva, and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). Barthes noticed back in the 1970s that a change was taking place in how we approach language and literary written works, pointing out that disciplines were breaking down their borders and beginning to interact. Barthes viewed this move as part of the development of thought on  linguistics, anthropology, Marxism, and psychoanalysis – and he pointed out that the adjustment in attitu

Palimpsests. What are you really reading? Image by Adam Jones How do you read texts? Are you sure your interpretation and understanding of what you are reading is only coming from the text in front of you or is some of the meaning being transferred from elsewhere? The idea of transtextuality suggests that it is. French literary critique Gerard Genette (1930) took the idea of Bakhtin and Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality - that texts are not the original product of one author- one step further; his work Palimpsests proposes and defines ‘transtextuality’ as a more comprehensive term that determines “all that which puts one text in relation, whether manifest or secret, with other texts.” In other words, Genette’s theory of transtextuality describes the numerous ways a later text prompts readers to read or remember an earlier one. He puts forward five types of transtextual relations which I have described in my article for Decoded Science , " What is Transtextuality? Unde