Debating+the+Text

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 Debating the Text: rant Students may deliver on this assessment with a rant. It gives the opportunity to express pro and con opinions about a text

Here is a framework


 * To Debate in the Humanities and Social Sciences **

__ Theoretical context __

// Main article: //[|//Interpretive discussion//] Interpretive argumentation is a dialogical process in which participants [|explore] and/or [|resolve] interpretations often of a [|text] of any medium containing significant [|ambiguity] in meaning. Interpretive argumentation is pertinent to [|the humanities], [|hermeneutics] , [|literary theory] , [|linguistics] , [|semantics] , [|pragmatics] , [|semiotics] , [|analytic philosophy] and [|aesthetics]. Topics in [|conceptual interpretation] include [|aesthetic], [|judicial] , [|logical] and [|religious] interpretation. Topics in [|scientific interpretation] include [|scientific modeling].
 * Interpretive argumentation ** [ [|edit] ]

semantics is also closely linked to the subjects of representation, reference and denotation. The basic study of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of [|signs], and the study of relations between different linguistic units and [|compounds] : [|homonymy] , [|synonymy] , [|antonymy] , [|hypernymy] , [|hyponymy] , [|meronymy] , [|metonymy] , [|holonymy] , paronyms.

__ Words or images as indicators of meaning not carriers __ The limits of language are the limits of philosophy ( Wittgenstein)
 * factors external to language, i.e. language is not a set of labels stuck on things, but "a toolbox, the importance of whose elements lie in the way they function rather than their attachments to things." [|[5]] This view reflects the position of the later [|Wittgenstein] and his famous //game// example, and is related to the positions of [|Quine], [|Davidson] , and others.

A concrete example of the latter phenomenon is semantic [|underspecification] – meanings are not complete without some elements of context. To take an example of one word, //red//, its meaning in a phrase such as //red book// is similar to many other usages, and can be viewed as compositional. [|[6]] However, the colours implied in phrases such as //red wine// (very dark), and //red hair// (coppery), or //red soil//, or //red skin// are very different. Indeed, these colours by themselves would not be called //red// by native speakers. These instances are contrastive, so //red wine// is so called only in comparison with the other kind of wine (which also is not //white// for the same reasons). This view goes back to [|de Saussure] : Each of a set of synonyms like //redouter// ('to dread'), //craindre// ('to fear'), //avoir peur// ('to be afraid') has its particular value only because they stand in contrast with one another. No word has a value that can be identified independently of what else is in its vicinity. [|[7]]