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LANGUAGE THEORIES.   Term Paper ID:22811 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan & Sigmund Freud related to linguistic, psychological & semiotic interpretations of the individual & culture.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan & Sigmund Freud related to linguistic, psychological & semiotic interpretations of the individual & culture. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan, and Sigmund Freud as they relate to linguistic, psychological, and semiotic interpretations of the individual and of the culture as a whole. The plan of the research will be to set forth a summary of Saussure's theory of semiotics and the outlines of Freudian psychological theory, and then to discuss the connection between the work of Lacan and Freud in regard to analysis of human subjectivity, as well as the connection between Lacan's work to linguistic theory in general and Saussurian semiotics in particular. According to Saussure, language has a dual function. One is public, or a logical and social, while the other is private, imaginative, or psychological. It is in the second manner that creative and imaginative processes may surface, including the impul Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. [4]Ibid., 82-3. . Instead, Lacan looks at howexpressions of anxiety, involving linguistic form and gesture, are formedaround a language and culture of sex. He seesthe tension between Oedipal impulses and Oedipal guilt (howeverunconscious) as dominating the whole of culture, including the indexes,symbols, and signs with which human experience is associated, is groundedin the neurotic, ambivalent incest wish. But Freud's focus is less on thecultural consequences of anxiety than on its source in the subjective,psychological self. [2]Casey, 2 8-1 . As he puts it, "What gives some likelihoodto what I am arguing, that is, that the woman knows nothing of thisjouissance [essence of female sexuality "beyond" the phallus], is that eversince we've been begging them--last time I mentioned women analysts--begging them on our knees to try to tell us about it, well, not aword."[1 ] Freudian and Lacanian theories coincide, of course, in theirpreoccupation with sexuality and subjective human experience. [1 ]Ibid., 146. That is the interpretation of Casey, whoquotes Saussure's statement that sign or signifier is "not being animage."[2] In other words, a signifier stands for something beyond(beneath) itself; something, indeed, more culturally or socially importantthan the signifier is happening, even though the immediate signifier mayseem to have intrinsic significance. It is the perception which the ego has of being watched over in this way, the assessment of the tension between its own strivings and the demands of the super- ego.[4] For "topographical variety" and "symptom," read "sign" or perhaps"semiotic indicator." This seems consistent with Saussure's connectionbetween deep and manifest structure. Barrett H. Thesesigns and symbols, by the way, may be both psychological and physical; thefocus is on finding out the truth of what is expressed. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961) 81. Freud, therefore, offers a psychological critique ofthe individual subject in order to account for individual dysfunctionalexperience in the culture. But his emphasis is on analyzing the subjective psyche. From the vantage point of semiotics,Hamlet's anxiety is manifest in his persistent delay in taking revenge, inthe "sign," as it were, that Hamlet cannot make up his mind. The process of decoding what is beneath to explain whatis above implies that semiotics can be employed in social criticism orcultural analysis in terms of the signs or symbols that dominate culture.This can include human social behavior, artistic expressions, andlinguistic expressions. [12]Lacan, 158. [11]Arrive, passim; Yishai Tobin, Wico J. For Saussure,the culture is not merely a representation of what, so to speak, "causes"it, but has a structure of something stronger, which is a designator or areferent of the deeper structure. [T]he sense of guilt is at bottom nothing else but a topographical variety of anxiety . James Leader. It was ofcourse seen with regard to neurotics. To be sure, the linguistic forms thatsurround evidence of Oedipal import in human experience are indicators ofcontent of a highly subjective psychological response to a particularcategory of psychic experience. For Freud, "neurotic symptoms are, in their essence,substitutive satisfactions for unfulfilled sexual wishes."[5] Hisdiscussion of Oedipus and Hamlet is a famous illustration of that point.Because of Oedipal feelings, for example, Hamlet delays killing Claudius."Hamlet is able to do anything but take vengeance upon the man who did awaywith his father and has taken his father's place with his mother."[6] Onone hand, Hamlet seeks revenge against Claudius's murdering his father. According to Saussure, language has a dual function. . Hecites Freud's statement that the individual's Oedipal impulses aretransmuted into maturing sexuality when "narcissistic interest in the penisgets the better of libidinal investment in parental objects. [3]Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Disconents, College Edition(New York: W.W. That is,says Casey, Lacan wants to get beyond the sexual image or indeed beyond theimage filled with meaning and content (the "sign"), to the core of meaning.So does Freud, but Lacan appears to be saying that the sexualityexplanation is, from a cultural standpoint, "merely" metaphorical orimaginative. But[Lacan adds] at the same moment the Oedipus complex is not only repressed,it is literally destroyed."[7] In this regard, Mitchell and Rose commentthat Lacan acknowledges the participation of girls equally with boys inOedipal feelings, "not as something to be resolved, but as an issue whichdemands a reformulation of the theory of the unconscious and sexuality intheir relation to language."[8] Unlike Freud, therefore, Lacan does notconcentrate on analysis of the universally shared subjective conditioninforming the experience of anxiety. . .The price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happinessthrough the heightening of the sense of guilt."[3] By and large, Freudsays, this guilt is unconscious, or anyway unacknowledged, and that itarises largely from lack of sexual fulfillment. Freud assertsthat Hamlet's inaction reflects ambivalent (perhaps unconscious) impulsesof Shakespeare as well toward enacting behavior that signifies steppingoutside fundamental psychical boundaries. In his discussion of manifest anxiety in civilization,Freud says that a widespread, but nevertheless subjective, sense of guiltis "the most important problem in the development of civilization and . This is why it is not necessarily aneasy task to figure out what the signifier does signify. This is difficult todetermine for certain because, as it appears, both Freud and Saussure aredescribing what can be unconscious processes. Lacking a means of reaching the core of meaning, we use metaphorsand signs and linguistic forms (typically) associated with sex. "The Semiotics of Cultural Texts." Semiotica 18 (1976) 1 1-156. Instead, he looks at how linguistic formsare actually used, with a view toward showing how their function indicatesor signifies meaning here and now. Juliet Mitchell andJacqueline Rose, trans. Van Mourik, and Pieter VanSteijn, "Semiotics, Linguistics, and Psychoanalysis: Keeping High and Dryor Getting Your Feet Wet!" Semiotica 1 2 (1994) 126ff; but note: Tobin, eta do not agree that Arrive properly analyzes the differences between theapproaches of Saussure and Lacan. . [6]Sigmund Freud, "Oedipus and Hamlet," European Theories of theDrama, ed. Anxiety is always present somewhere or other behind every symptom; but at one time it takes noisy possession of the whole of consciousness, while at another it conceals itself so completely that we are obliged to speak of unconscious anxiety or, if we want to have a clearer psychological conscience, since anxiety is in the first instance simply a feeling, of possibilities of anxiety. Saussure is not concerned to chroniclethe manner in which the use of linguistic forms, including speech and othermethods of communication, evolved, although historical and evolutionaryfactors may have been at work. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1992.Tobin, Yishai, Van Mourik, Wico J., and Van Steijn, Pieter. Casey, "The Image/Sign Relation in Husserl andFreud," The Review of Metaphysics 3 (December 1976) 2 8f. 123.[9]Lacan, 157. Trans. Clark (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1965) 3 6. However, he makes the case that we speak ofdysfunction or feeling or psychic experience in terms of sex because thesigns and symbols of sexuality are pervasive and provide a familiarsymbolic platform. However, in overall emphasis, Freud seems moreconcerned with the subjective experience of the individual vis-à-vis theculture than with what the cultural structure means to the individual.Lacan, whose later work interprets that of Freud, has a still differentemphasis, a point to which we shall return. The sense of guilt, the harshness of the super-ego, is thus the same thing as the severity of the conscience. Neurosis is dream rather than perversion. James Leader (Amsterdam: John Benjamins,1992), passim; Edward S. There may be manyinterpretations or descriptions of what underlies the signifiers of asocial or culture structure. The effects of signifiers, rather than (as Freud would haveit) signifiers as effects, appear to be Lacan's principal areas of concern.As he notes, in discussing Freud's attempts to explain human [i.e., Phallic-centered] sexuality and mental illness which resulted in the formulationsof psychoanalysis, What was seen, but only from the side of the man, wasthat What he relates to is the objet à [i.e., Woman], and that the whole ofhis realisation in the sexual relation comes down to fantasy. One is public, ora logical and social, while the other is private, imaginative, orpsychological. The plan of the research will be to set forth a summaryof Saussure's theory of semiotics and the outlines of Freudianpsychological theory, and then to discuss the connection between the workof Lacan and Freud in regard to analysis of human subjectivity, as well asthe connection between Lacan's work to linguistic theory in general andSaussurian semiotics in particular. It is in such manner that semiotic theory becomesconnected to linguistic, psychological, sociological, and aesthetic theory. How do neurotics make love? In other words, Saussure is emphasizingthe manifestations in social experience of what expressions seek toaccomplish, with a view toward uncovering certain deeply internalpsychological or communicative processes are at work.[1] What the manifestation implies = what the sign means, and this leadsto semiotics or semiology, which is the study of signs and symbols. However, like Freud, he remains preoccupied with assigningsignificance to female sexuality, as a practical matter, with reference toneurosis or the phallus as sign. . [5]Ibid., 86. . It is necessary to know two basics of Freud's interpretation offundamental human impulses and actions, which includes an analysis of humansociety. Neurotics have noneof the characteristics of the pervert. A rather different approach to this same issue is taken by Lacan. Freud appears to take the view that a particularspecies of shared, subjective sexual dysfunction explains the anxiety thatindividuals feel in everyday experience. [7]Jacques Lacan, Feminine_Sexuality, ed. [8]Mitchell and Rose, Notes, p. Norton & Company,1983) 1 1. The psychoanalysis work of Freud is not entirely inconsistent withthat of Saussure, and his theory includes attention to the meanings ofsymbolic experience. But really, according to Lacan, the truth of the contentis more profound and fundamental than all the talk about sex wouldindicate. They simply dream that they have.[9] The implication is that Lacan is concerned with what the signsmanifest about the potential of the human condition more than with Freud'sview that manifest signs are the result of what is true about the humancondition. Saussure offers a critique of culture itselfthat can be located in individual anxiety--which, because of Saussure'semphasis, could itself have its source in the culture. The purpose of this research is to examine the theories of Ferdinandde Saussure, Jacques Lacan, and Sigmund Freud as they relate to linguistic,psychological, and semiotic interpretations of the individual and of theculture as a whole. "The Image/Sign Relation in Husserl and Freud." TheReview of Metaphysics 3 (December 1976) 2 7-225.----------------------- [1]Michel Arrive, Linguistics & Psychoanalysis: Freud, Saussure,Hjelmslev, Lacan & Others, trans. It was impossible not to notice that therewas a correlation with perversions--which lends support to my objet à,since, whatever the said perversions, the à will be there as their cause.The funny thing is that Freud originally attributed perversions to thewoman . . Freud's view is that Hamlet'ssubjective Oedipal psychology is universal. Saussure would take the view thatcultural and social dysfunction more generally reflects or signifies theexperience of anxiety. . Linguistics & Psychoanalysis: Freud, Saussure, Hjelmslev, Lacan & Others. Onthe other, because Hamlet unconsciously wished to supplant his fatherincestuously in his mother's bed (which Claudius has done consciously), hefeels unworthy to avenge the death. . This is adeparture from theories of Saussure, which focus on the relationships, notbetween the subject and the world in which the individual finds himself,but between the structures of individual experience vis-à-vis the structureof culture as a whole. In other words,semiotics seeks to account for, or so to speak "decode," what is seen orexpressed overtly. Casey, Edward S. "Semiotics, Linguistics, and Psychoanalysis: Keeping High and Dry or Getting Your Feet Wet!" Semiotica 1 2 (1994) 125-147.Winner, Irene Portis, and Winner, Thomas G. For the present, let us examineFreud's views of the way the human mind responds to the wash of experience,with reference to his view of signs and symbols. . That waswhere the whole thing started. This suggests that it iscultural. Truly a confirmation that when one is a man, one sees in one'spartner what can serve, narcissistically, to act as one's own support.Except that what came after gave ample opportunity for realising thatperversions, such as one had thought to locate them in neurosis, were nosuch thing. It is in the second manner that creative and imaginativeprocesses may surface, including the impulse to respond to and express orinterpret the social or logical structure of language use on the part ofthe culture, or indeed of others. . Saussure's view that the deeper structure of culture can be uncoveredin terms of cultural signs or signifiers means that interpretation of whatis underneath is essentially at one with what is manifest. The first is the power of the unconscious (including dreamstates), and the second is the fundamental position of sexuality in thehuman condition. Jacqueline Rose (New York: W.W. . That is, the individualsundergoing the experience, or manifesting their experience by way ofspecific linguistic customs and forms, are hardly conscious of whethertheir behavior reflects or determines the reality of cultural anxiety.Lacan, meanwhile, sees that subjective experience implies and aggravates,more than explains, social-cultural chaos, and that human experienceattempts to find ways of describing, interpreting, or signifying the humancondition so as to arrive at something different from cultural chaos ordysfunction.[11] This at any rate appears to be in the background ofLacan's statement that "the fact that love is impossible, and that thesexual relation founders in non-sense, not that this should in any waydiminish the interest we feel for the Other."[12]BibliographyArrive, Michel. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.