Bøker av Paul J. Thibault

This book addresses the dynamic interplay between creativity and continuity in communication.Though conventionalisation is essential to any understanding of the foundation of interaction and language, thus far it has not been the subject of any substantial collective effort. New research presented here seeks to redress this. An introductory chapter critically reviews the theoretical assumptions and pitfalls of twentieth-century approaches to communication and conventionalisation. The successive chapters are by scholars from different theoretical backgrounds within language and literature. They study the processes of conventionalisation from the complementary perspectives of linguistic and literary research traditions and cover a diverse field of cognitive, social, and historical aspects of language.The target readership of the book is scholars and students of language and communication – including literacy and literary studies and philosophy of language – who are interested in foundational issues and their profound implications for empirical analysis.

Through a detailed re-reading of Saussure's work in the light of contemporary developments in the human, life and physical sciences, Paul Thibault provides the means to redefine and refocus our theories of social meaning-making.

Concentrating on the literary text, Thibault aims to build a unifying discourse for understanding the processes by which human meaning is formulated. He develops a detailed form of textual analysis which is sensitive to the social context of human activities based on semiotic theories.