Monday, September 6, 2010

Daniel Chandler’s Semiotics: the Basics: Challenging the Literal, 2002

Summary: Daniel Chandler’s Semiotics: the Basics: Challenging the Literal, 2002

Daniel Chandler uses the chapter, Challenging the Literal, of his book, Semiotics: the Basics, to describe and define the four “master tropes”. Chandler contextualizes semiotics regarding written and visual examples and expresses the danger of attempting to “denaturalize cultural assumptions” by reducing tropes to the literal. Chandler explains that it is useful to deconstruct tropes, but they cannot be finite in definition or boundary. Most of the text defines the tropes of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Each of these terms loosely fits within the umbrella of the metaphor.

Discussion Questions: Daniel Chandler’s Semiotics: the Basics: Challenging the Literal, 2002

Why does Chandler write so much about other peoples’ ideas and so little about his own point of view?

Is the main point of Challenging the Literal that there is no truly literal or denotative meaning to any trope because objectivity is impossible?

Why doesn’t Chandler discuss the third meaning more?

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