A Prague School Reader in Linguistics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josef Vachek
Keyword(s):  
Prague School

Continuity in Discontinuity: The Recurrent Motif of Cultural Autonomy in the Development of Czech Sociology of Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 174997552199963
Author(s):  
Marek Skovajsa
Keyword(s):  
Critical Mass ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
Relative Autonomy ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Heterogeneous Landscape ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Prague School ◽  
Art And Society ◽  
Recurrent Motif

This article analyses the development of the sociology of culture in Czechia. Its focus is on the sociology of the arts and cultural sociology, which, it is argued, are connected through the notion of the relative autonomy of cultural structures. While the Czech sociology of culture may have been rendered less dynamic by the lack of a critical mass of sociologists specialising in this area and by the country’s frequent political upheavals and its isolation from the international circulation of ideas, it has experienced moments of considerable vitality. Three periods in the development of the field are identified here, each of them marked by a movement toward a stronger and more sociologically adequate conceptualisation of cultural autonomy: (1) from the diffuse culturalism of the field’s founding figures to the functionalist theory of the interwar sociologist Inocenc Arnošt Bláha, whose view of the relationship between art and society was influenced by the work of the Prague School of Structuralism; (2) from the cultural reductionism of Marxist-Leninist theory after 1948 to the eclectic sociology of culture and the arts of the late socialist period; (3) from the demise of this transitional form of a sociology of culture in the 1990s to the increasingly internationalised but also heterogeneous landscape of the 2010s, which is constituted by a semi-institutionalised centre of cultural sociology at Brno and small groups or individuals in Prague and other academic locales. The thread of continuity in an otherwise discontinuous historical development is found in the recurrent motif of the relative autonomy of culture which the Czech sociology of culture absorbed through its exposure to art and literary theory.

Rheme before theme in the noun phrase

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 894-915
Author(s):  
Carlotta Viti
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
New Information ◽  
Prague School

Information structure in the noun phrase remains unexplored or limited to the study of the s-form and the of-form in English, which are interpreted from the perspective of the Prague School. Accordingly, the prenominal s-form is chosen if the possessor expresses old information; conversely, if the possessor expresses new information, the postnominal of-form is preferred. Ancient Greek, however, indicates that this is not the sole pattern attested. In our data, drawn from Herodotus, a postposed genitive refers to the topic of the immediately preceding clauses, and has no semantically compatible referent around it. Preposed genitives denote new or discontinuous participants, and are used in contrastive and emphatic contexts. In this case, the principle “rheme before theme” can be identified.

‘Reading‘ and Directing the Play

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 218-223
Author(s):  
Michael L. Quinn
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Original Function ◽  
Preceding Article ◽  
Production History ◽  
Roman Jakobson ◽  
Prague School

A director's ‘reading’ of the play – the hierarchical implications of which were discussed by Peter Holland in the preceding article – normally begins with just that: a reading, of the printed or typewritten text. Here. Michael Quinn discusses the various factors through which this initial acquaintance becomes a stage production carrying the stamp of the resulting perceptions – some of which go unrecognized, as much by the director as by those who evaluate his work. These may vary from preconceptions (or a lack of them) about the writer himself to the prevailing modes of the director's own work, or from such imponderables as the ‘lingering’ effect of objects on stage whose original function has been fulfilled to the ‘intertextuality’ always present when a play has a previous production history. The author argues not for the impossible elimination of such influences, but for their proper recognition, so that the director may be better aware of the reasons behind the choices he makes in translating a ‘reading’ into a production. Michael L. Quinn has previously published essays on Brecht and Roman Jakobson, and is currently serving as a play-reader for the San Francisco Magic Theater while preparing his doctoral dissertation on the theatre semiotics of the Prague school.

A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style

Language ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 584
Author(s):  
Rene Wellek ◽  
Paul L. Garvin
Keyword(s):  
Literary Structure ◽  
Prague School

Literary System and Systemic Change: The Prague School Theory of Literary History, 1928–48

PMLA ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. W. Galan
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Structure ◽  
Language History ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Structural Linguistics ◽  
Prague School ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Literary System

AbstractStructural linguistics is commonly held to be preoccupied with static language systems at the expense of language history. Yet in the 1920s the Prague Linguistic Circle resolved the structuralist dilemma of a system that ceases to act systemically the moment it undergoes a change. Language changes must be studied not in isolation but with regard to the whole system. No language system, however, is perfectly self-contained, nor can language changes be perfectly predictable, for language must adapt to concrete situations. Similarly, literary history appears largely systemic, but only a semiotic conception can explain its immanent development while simultaneously taking into account extraliterary influences. Prague structuralism thus studies both the internal, systemic changes of literary forms and the sociological aspects involved in their reception by the reading public. Finally, structural literary theory explains the role of individual artists, whose originality is seen as the dialectical antithesis to the systematic literary structure.

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