Abstractable Time Lines
Seymour Chatman. "What Can We Learn from Contextual Narratology?" Poetics Today 11:2. p. 312
[Chatman is arguing against an undermining the discourse-story distinction.]This distinction, for me, can be considered as one of the theory-building primitives (as in not developed or derived from anything else) of systems of interpretation. I tend to think that such a split is not merely a feature of story telling but also a metadiscursive dimension of language applicable to other contexts:
All that narratology argues is the difference between the act of telling (or showing) and the object told, and between their different temporal orders. All that it presumes is that these time-orders are abstractable for discussion.
As demonstrated by Émile Benveniste in his essay "Sémiologie de la langue", the sign system of verbal language possesses not only a communicative function, it exists also in a relation of interprétance to other semiotic systems. He links the metalinguistic element of verbal language to its ability to form interpretative relations between semiotic systems.Whatever is presented is open to interpretation: analysable.
And so for day 1429
11.11.2010
