Vimarsh

"meaning is often a matter of construal" -Kiki Nikiforidou & Demetra Katis The above quote comes from the work of linguists Kiki Nikiforidou and Demetra Katis, who are associated with Cognitive Linguistics particularly construction grammar and related approaches.   WHAT "CONSTRUAL" MEANS IN THIS CONTEXT In Cognitive Linguistics, drawing heavily from Ronald Langacker's framework, construal refers to the different ways speakers can conceptualize, structure, and present the same underlying situation or content through language. Meaning is not a fixed, objective mapping from words to the world; instead, it involves active mental processes of HOW we view and package reality.   Key aspects of construal include:   ATTENTION AND SALIENCE : What we highlight or background, for example, "The vase broke" vs. "The child broke the vase".   PERSPECTIVE OR VIEWPOINT: From whose standpoint we describe events, for example, shifting deictic anchors like ...

“a text strives to make its readers confirm to itself, to force on them its own system of codes, and the readers respond in the same way.” - Yuri Lotman   The quotation comes from the Russian-Estonian semiotician and cultural theorist Yuri (or Juri) Lotman (1922–1993), a key figure in structuralism, semiotics, and the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. It appears in discussions of how texts and readers interact dynamically.   CORE MEANING This quotation describes a bidirectional, active relationship between a literary, artistic, or cultural text and its audience, rather than passive consumption.   THE TEXT’S SIDE : A text is not neutral or inert. It actively tries to impose or “force” its own semiotic codes , i.e., systems of signs, conventions, rules, and structures for generating and interpreting meaning, onto the reader. It invites or compels the reader to enter ITS world, adopt ITS logic, and decode it using the frameworks it provides or presupposes. F...

Explain the following quote: In order to exist a person had to add semiotic existence to his physical existence. -Yuri Lotman   The quote means that purely biological or physical existence is not enough for full human personhood or "existence" in a meaningful sense. Humans must also construct and inhabit a layer of meaning, signs, language, and culture—a "semiotic existence"—to truly be who they are.   CONTEXT AND LOTMAN'S THINKING Yuri Lotman (1922–1993), a key figure in cultural semiotics and founder of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School, viewed humans as embedded in systems of signs. His major work, Universe of the Mind , from which this quote is drawn, develops ideas like the semiosphere —the total semiotic space or "atmosphere" of signs and meanings that surrounds and enables human culture, analogous to the biosphere for living organisms.   PHYSICAL EXISTENCE : This is the biological body—your material, organic self that exists in the natural world,...