1. A semiotic analysis of
linguistic constructs in
classic poetry
Drd. Pericle Andrei Negescu
2. Premise
• Modern-day linguists consider multiple
poems as being masterpieces
• Writers manage to transpose readers
into different states of mind
3. Goals
• Identify constituent units in a semiotic system
• Identify relationships between said units
• Find out what the key to success in creating a
masterpiece is
4. Caveat
• The meaning of words may prove to be irrelevant
• Similar word patterns in masterpieces
• If so, translations would be irrelevant
• Masterpieces have a distinct pattern
9. Cognitive Definitions
• Signs - the smallest unit of meaning.
• Something that can be interpreted as having
a meaning
• Signifiers are one form of a sign
• The signified is the meaning of the sign
• Meanings arise from the differences between
signifiers
10. Signs and relationships
• Syntagmatic - signs get meanings from their
sequential order (grammar)
• Paradigmatic - signs get meanings from their
association with other signs
11. Figures of speech
• Metaphors - uses similarities to convey rhetorical meanings
• All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players, They
have their exits and their entrances
• Shakespeare - As you like it
• Antithesis - uses contradictory ideas to contrast a meaning
• Good we must love, and must hate ill, for ill is ill and good good still; but
there are things indifferent, which we may neither hate nor love, but one
and then another prove, as we shall find our fancy bent
• John Done - Community
• Etc
12. Systems
• Myth - multiple paradigms and syntagms that
create a story with cultural associations
• Code - a map of signs that make up our view of
the world - or of what the world should be
• Ideology - a code that reinforces a structure of
power - creating a form of common sense
15. Idioms
• A collection of signs that, combined, has a
specific cultural meaning
• a group of two or more words which are chosen
together in order to produce a specific meaning
or effect in speech or writing (Sinclair 1991)
• Specific to one culture and language
16. Meanings and idioms
• Denotation - literal meanings
• to close one’s
eyes (due to
being tired)
• Connotation - secondary
cultural meaning
• to close one’s
eyes ( ignore
an obvious
fact )
17. Analysis Summary
• Decide on targeted
content
• Decide on indicators
• Develop a method of
mass-analysis
(quantitative study)
• Draw a result
