Answer one of the following questions:

Saussurean Linguistics

1. Explain why Saussure's model of signification may be described as "revolutionary."  (To answer this question, you should compare the extract which you have read from his Course in General Linguistics with traditional models of signification such as Plato's "Cratylus," Aristotle's De Interpretatione, and / or Book III of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, etc.)

The Structuralist Model of Cultural Identity

2. Carefully explicate the Structuralist model of cultural identity offered by Claude Levi-Strauss in "Language and the Analysis of Social Laws" and / or "Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology."

The Paradigmatic Axis: the Semiotics of Representation and Authorship

3. "Subjectivity is less the origin of language than the effect thereof."  Use Benveniste’s essays "The Nature of Pronouns" and "Subjectivity in Language" to discuss, in the light of this statement, the challenge posed to the concept of ‘self-expression’ by the Saussurean critique of the sign.  (In answering this question, students should demonstrate a detailled knowledge of Sassure’s radical revisioning of traditional conceptions of the nature of the sign.)

4. "If meaning in language rises not from the reference of signs to something outside words but from differential relations among the signs themselves, then the notion of a literary text as existing in a one-to-one correspondence to (or reflecting) some iindependent social, historical or psychological reality can no longer be taken for granted."  Use Barthes’s essays "Myth Today" and "The Reality Effect" to explore, in the light of this statement, the challenge posed to the concept of realism by the Saussurean critique of the sign.  (In answering this question, students should demonstrate a detailled knowledge of Sassure’s radical revisioning of traditional conceptions of the nature of the sign.)

The Syntagmatic Axis: Structuralist Narratology / Linguistics and Poetics

5.Compare the Structuralist approach to narratology advanced by Todorov in "Structural Analysis of Narrative" and "The Grammar of Narrative" with earlier Neo-Aristotelian approaches. 

6.What does Jakobson mean when he writes that the "poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination"?  Discuss some of the consequences of this view for the study of poetry.

Deadline: 6 pm, Thursday October 31, 2002 (late submissions will be penalised)  ALL ESSAYS MUST BE SUBMITTED TO ME IN PERSON

Length: approx. 10 pages (I will not read anything that exceeds this limit):

• the paper should be type-written
• the paper should be double-spaced
• pages should be numbered
• please insert a word count at the end

Documentation: all references in your essay must be correctly documented

Bibliography: your essay must be accompanied by a correctly compiled List of Works Consulted

Advice:

• Essays must be written according to the guidelines laid out in The MLA Handbook.  These guidelines are summarised in the Faculty of Humanities and Education Essay-Writing Guidelines and in my own Essay Writing Guide.  Poorly presented and documented essays will be penalised.

• Please do not submit your paper in any plastic folder or any other kind of covering: the paper itself is sufficient.

• For advice on essay writing in general, see my set of resources entitled Essay Writing, Marking, Reading, Etc.
• You should keep a copy of the term paper for yourself in case the one submitted gets lost.
• You should not merely regurgitate material drawn from my handouts: essays should demonstrate evidence of engagement with the primary texts listed as required reading.
• Since Module I is tested by this assignment, the final exam will test knowledge of the remaining two modules: Module II and Module III.