“BARREN DESARTS OF ARBITRARY WORDS”: LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION IN COLLIER AND FIELDING'S THE CRY
“BARREN DESARTS OF ARBITRARY WORDS”: LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION IN COLLIER AND FIELDING'S THE CRY
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“任意词语的贫瘠沙漠”：科利尔和菲尔丁的语言和交流
DOI：
10.1080/09699082.2015.1103987
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发表时间：
2016
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Barr
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Barr
摘要本文探讨了简·科利尔和莎拉·菲尔丁的实验作品《哭泣：一个新的戏剧寓言》（1754）中的语言和沟通问题。在科利尔和菲尔丁的作品中，语言作为一种交际工具的功效受到质疑，因为他们的主人公在敌对的误解和不知不觉的滥用词语的背景下追求理解的清晰度。《呐喊》将社会评论和叙事结合起来，剖析了语义和概念混乱的例子，举例说明了“武断的话语”、“反常的解释”和缺乏语言关怀不仅是个人的失败，而且是对社区的冒犯。作者认为，这一合作工作参与了当代辩论的语言和相互理解的可能性之后，约翰洛克的论文关于人类理解（1690年）。阅读《呐喊》和詹姆斯·哈里斯的《爱马仕：或关于语言和普遍语法的哲学探究》（1751），作者展示了这两部作品如何颂扬抽象的力量和心灵的理想化能力，反对他们所认为的洛克的还原唯物主义。《呐喊》以一个特别不令人满意的主体间性的例子结束。本文认为，《呐喊》表面上乌托邦式的结论是深刻的妥协，其作者对两性之间的沟通持怀疑态度。阅读《呐喊》，从语言的角度审视它，可以重新评价其失败的浪漫叙事，并有助于解释其结局故意不令人满意的条款。
ABSTRACT This essay examines the problems of language and communication in Jane Collier and Sarah Fielding's experimental The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable (1754). Throughout Collier and Fielding's work the efficacy of language as a communicative tool is interrogated, as their protagonists pursue clarity of understanding against a backdrop of hostile misinterpretation and imperceptive abuse of words. The Cry’s hybrid of social commentary and narrative anatomizes instances of semantic and conceptual confusion, exemplifying the ways in which “arbitrary words”, “perverse interpretations” and lack of linguistic care are not merely individual failings, but offences against the community. The author argues that this collaborative work participates in contemporary debates about language and the possibilities of mutual intelligibility in the wake of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Reading The Cry alongside James Harris's Hermes: or, A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Language and Universal Grammar (1751), the author shows how both works celebrate the power of abstraction and the idealizing abilities of the mind against what they perceive as the reductive materialism of Locke. The Cry concludes with a peculiarly unsatisfying instance of intersubjectivity. This essay argues that The Cry’s ostensibly utopian conclusion is profoundly compromised by its authors' scepticism about communication between the sexes. Reading The Cry in light of its inquiry into language enables a re-evaluation of its failed romance narrative and helps account for the deliberately unsatisfying terms of its ending.