Criticism.Com: Technology, Media Culture, Critical Theory
Criticism.com presents papers and essays on technology, media culture, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, literature, and literary criticism.
Max Weber’s View of Objectivity in Social Science: This essay seeks to shed light on Weber’s view of the applicability of objectivity by answering a question that dogs Weberian scholarship: Was Weber an advocate of value-free social science?
Interpretation and Indeterminacy in Discourse Analysis: This essay argues a hard line: the exact meaning of a speaker’s utterance in a contextualized exchange is often indeterminate. Interactional linguistics, however, reduces the indeterminacy and yields a more principled interpretation than other approaches to discourse analysis.
A Wittgensteinian Approach to Discourse Analysis: This essay takes Wittgenstein’s influence on discourse analysis a step further by using his writings as the theoretical foundation for an approach to analyzing discourse that is distinct from speech act theory, which stems from the analytic tradition in philosophy. The essay suggests that a Wittgenstein-inspired approach is closer in spirit and content to that of an unlikely candidate whose views, in contrast to the analytic school, harbor a distinctly Continental flavor and influence critical theory: Mikhail Bakhtin.
Saussure’s Sign: The sign, the signifier, and the signified are concepts of the school of thought known as structuralism, founded by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, during lectures he gave between 1907 and 1911 at the University of Geneva. His views revolutionized the study of language, inaugurated modern linguistics, and influenced critical theory. The central tenet of structuralism is that the phenomena of human life are unintelligible except through their network of relationships, making the sign and the system (or structure) in which the sign is embedded primary concepts. As such, a sign–for instance, a word–gets its meaning only in relation to or in contrast with other signs in a system of signs.
The Myth of Psychoanalysis: Wittgenstein Contra Freud: In this essay, my central thesis is that if, as Wittgenstein says, Freudian psychoanalysis is based in myth, its application to actual psychological problems does not, indeed cannot, resolve them. Instead, all it can do is clarify them or present them in a different light. Implicit in my argument is that this is how Wittgenstein thought of the results of psychoanalysis, much like he thought of the application of his philosophical technique to philosophical problems, especially those of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. As such, Wittgenstein is also subverting a larger myth: that the insights gained in psychoanalysis lead to the scientific resolution of psychological problems. Read on …
Image over Substance: An Example of Postmodern Politics
Foucault: A Lover’s Discourse About Madness and the Media
An Analysis of Kellner’s Theory of Media Culture
Philosophy of Language: Questions and Answers
Abstract: Topical Structure Analysis of Accomplished English Prose
Topical Structure Analysis of Accomplished English Prose
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