Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-22T08:57:03.640Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Doing, Making, Meaning: Toward a Theory of Verbal Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Paul Hernadi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

All discourse evolves in all three dimensions of verbal practice: doing, making, and meaning. While there are special links between speaking and action, between writing and creation or production, and between quasi-verbal thinking and signification, we should avoid reducing any instance or type of discourse to nothing but action, creation, or signification. The analogous triad of intersubjective culture, objective nature, and subjective identity likewise points to three complementary modes of existence: the social, the physicobiological, and the personal. At any given time, we tend to experience human beings, including ourselves, in just one mode: as players of socially assigned roles, as physically situated and genetically determined organisms, or as free and responsible selves. Yet we should not turn any of these ways of experiencing into a master doctrine designed to debunk the other two as mere delusions.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 103 , Issue 5 , October 1988 , pp. 749 - 758
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. 1962. 2nd ed. Ed. Urmson, J. O. and Sbisa, Marina. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “The Problem of Speech Genres.” “Speech Genres” and Other Late Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson, Vern W. McGee. Ed. and Holquist, Michael. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986. 61–102.Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne, and Macherey, Pierre. “On Literature as an Ideological Form: Some Marxist Propositions.” Untying the Text: A Post-structuralist Reader. Ed. Young, Robert. London: Routledge, 1981. 79–99.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” The Responsibility of Forms. Trans. Howard, Richard. New York: Hill, 1985. 21–40.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Miller, Richard. New York: Hill, 1974.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L., and Luckmann, Thomas. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1967.Google Scholar
Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. “Literary Competence.” Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975. 113–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. Trask, Willard R. 1953. Princeton: Bollingen-Princeton UP, 1973.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Limited inc abc.” Glyph 2 (1977): 162–254.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Signature Event Context.” Glyph 1 (1977): 172–97.Google Scholar
Emerson, Caryl. “The Outer Word and Inner Speech: Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and the Internalization of Language.” Critical Inquiry 10 (1983): 245–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felman, Shoshana. The Literary Speech Act: Don Juan with J. L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages. Trans. Porter, Catherine. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. “Interpreting the Variorum.” Critical Inquiry 2 (1976): 465–85. Rpt. in Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980. 147–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. Bouchard, Donald F. Bouchard. Trans. Donald F. and Simon, Sherry. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977. 113–38.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. Strachey, James. Vol. 19. London: Hogarth, 1964. 24 vols. 1953–74.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Garrett Barden, and ed. and Cumming, John. New York: Seabury, 1975.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. “Ideology as a Cultural System.” The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic, 1973. 193–233.Google Scholar
Godzich, Wlad, and Kittay, Jeffrey. The Emergence of Prose: An Essay in Prosaics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson. Of Mind and Other Matters. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Gurwitsch, Aron. Introduction. Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy. By Alfred Schutz. Ed. Schutz, Ilse. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966. xi–xxxi. Vol. 3 of Collected Papers. 3 vols. 1962–66.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. McCarthy, Thomas. Boston: Beacon, 1984. Vol. 1 of The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols. 1984–87.Google Scholar
Hernadi, Paul. Interpreting Events: Tragicomedies of History on the Modern Stage. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman. “Unity Identity Text Self.” PMLA 90 (1975): 813–22.Google Scholar
Ingarden, Roman. The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Literature. Trans. Grabowicz, George G. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973.Google Scholar
Oakeshott, Michael. The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind. London: Bowes, 1959.Google Scholar
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders. “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.” Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. Ed. Hartshorne, Charles and Weiss, Paul. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1934. 156–89. Vol. 5 of Collected Papers. 8 vols. 1931–58.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Schutz, Alfred. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Trans. Walsh, George and Lehnert, Frederick. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1967.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. “Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida.” Glyph 1 (1977): 198–208.Google Scholar
Strawson, Galen. Freedom and Belief. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.Google Scholar
Watson, John B. Behaviorism. 1924. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1970.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, W. K., and Beardsley, Monroe C. “The Intentional Fallacy.” The Verbal Icon. By Wimsatt. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1954. New York: Noonday, 1958. 3–18.Google Scholar