Signergy
By: edited by C. Jac Conradie ... [et al.].
Contributors: Conradie, C. J.
Series: Iconicity in language and literature -- v. 9
Publisher: John Benjamins Pub. Company; Benjamins Publishing Company, John
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Philadelphia, Pa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 420
ISBN-13: 9789027243454; 9789027288417
Subjects: Iconicity (Linguistics); Poetics
Description: The title of this volume strives to capture the dynamic scope and range of the essays it contains, applying insights into the workings of iconicity to texts as far removed from each other in time as the Medieval tale of a bishop-fish and the war-poems of 20th century Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti, and as thematically diverse as the Pilgrim's Progress and the poetry of e.e. cummings. Applications reference both language and linguistics as well as literature and literary theory - and related fields such as sign language and translation; the former approached from the point of view of Japan Sign Language, the latter with reference to translations of the Koran and the Sesotho Bible, as well as modern German and English Bible translations. On the language side, the intricate relationships between sound symbolism and etymology, and between analogy and grammaticalization are examined in depth. On the literary side, the iconic effects of techniques such as enjambment and metrical --

inversion are considered, but also the ways in which an understanding of iconicity can open up meanings in complex poetry, like that of the Afrikaans poet T.T. Cloete - in this particular instance three poems inspired by figures as diverse as Dante, Paul Klee and the pop icon Marilyn Monroe. In view of the fact that form is able to mime meaning and meaning itself can be mimed by meaning, the theoretical question is asked - on the basis of a wide range of examples from literature, language, music and other sign-systems - whether meaning can also mime form. An introduction to the work of H.C.T. Muller, an early scholar in the field of iconicity, highlights a regrettably little known South African contribution to the development of iconicity theory. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Preface and acknowledgements; title: List of contributors; title: Introduction: signergy / Ronél Johl, Jac Conradie and Marthinus Beukes; title: Part I. Theoretical approaches: Literary practices and imaginative possibilities: toward a pragmatic; title: Understanding of iconicity / Vincent Colapietro; title: The bell jar, the maze and the mural: Diagrammatic figurations as textual performance / Christina Ljungberg; title: Iconicity as meaning miming meaning, and meaning miming form / Lars Elleström; title: A view from the margins: Theoretical contributions to an understanding of iconicity from the Afrikaans-speaking research community / Ronél Johl; title: Part II. Visual iconicity: Iconic and indexical elements in Italian Futurist poetry: F. T. Marinetti's 'words-in-freedom' / John J. White; title: Taking a line for a walk: Poetic contour drawings and contoured poems / Heilna du Plooy; title: Iconicity and naming in E. E. Cummings's poetry / Etienne Terblanche; title: Bunyan and the physiognomy of the Wor(l)d / Matthias Bauer; title: From icon to index and back: A 16th century description of a 'sea-bishop' / C. Jac Conradie; title: The poem as icon of the painting: poetic iconicity in Johannes Vermeer and Tom Gouws / Marthinus Beukes; title: Part III. Iconicity and historical change: Iconicity and etymology / Anatoly Liberman; title: Iconicity typological and theological: J. G. Hamann and James Joyce / Strother Purdy; title: An iconic, analogical approach to grammaticalization / Olga Fischer; title: Part IV. Iconicity and positionality: Iconic signs, motivated semantic networks, and the nature of conceptualization: What iconic signing spaces can tell us about mental spaces / Bill Herlofsky; title: Iconicity and subjectivisation in the English NP: The case of little / Victorina González-Díaz; title: Metrical inversion and enjambment in the context of syntactic and morphological structures: Towards a poetics of verse / Wolfgang G. Müller; title: Part V. Iconicity and translation: Translation, iconicity, and dialogism / Susan Petrilli; title: Iconicity and developments in translation studies / Jacobus A. Naudé; title: Author index; title: Subject index.