FR2404 - Lecture 1 - Saussure and the Linguistic Sign

At the turn of the last century, linguists were primarily concerned with historical linguistics (how language changed over time) and comparative philogogy (comparing different languages), however, Ferdinand de Saussure, a professor in the university of Geneva, changed the study of linguistics completely. He gave a series of lectures on his theory of language as a system of signs which his students assembled into the book, "Cours de linguistique générale" after his death.

Saussure was influenced by his contemporaries, e.g. Freud, people who were not interested in investigating the experience of the individual but rather wanted to develop a 'social fact', that is something that is true for all humans. Likewise, Saussure wanted to develop a linguistic fact. He didn't want to study just one language or dialect, he wanted to describe the universality of language - the etat de langue - the state of all languages.

He wished to answer the following questions:

• How do we understand each other when we communicate?
• Why do we understand our native language but not foreign languages?

When we hear a foreign language, it sounds like chaos. We don't even know where words begin and end. However, when we hear our own language, we can easily make sense of it. This is because language is a system and the system can be learned.

The system is based on le signe linguistique  - the linguistic sign.

The sign is made up of two components, the signifiant and the signifié. The signifiant is that which signifies. It is the sound you hear. For example, if someone says the word 'cat', you will think of this:



The cat itself is that which is signified. In simple terms, the signifier is the word and the signified is the meaning of the word, or the concept attached to that word. Saussure theorised that when someone says a word to us, e.g. cat, we associate an image with this word. A word is just a noise. By itself this noise has no meaning. However, when the word is said to someone who understands it, this person then thinks of an image. This image is the signifié, the concept related to a word. It is the relationship between the word and the image that gives language meaning. Without this system of signs, language would not work. If I said, "Cat," but you thought of the image of a dog instead, we would not be able to understand each other. If people did not associate the same images with the same words, language would break down. This system of linguistic signs is true of every language in the world.

Suggested reading - Cours de Linguistique générale - Nature of the Linguistic Sign p. 65

GE2102 - Lecture 1 - Word classes

Word classes - Wortarten:

• verbs
• adjectives
• nouns
• pronouns
• articles
• adverbs
• prepositions
• conjunctions

Criteria for word classification:

• Semantic - based on meaning - e.g. a verb is a 'doing' word
• Morphological - based word structure - e.g. suffixes, prefixes etc
• Syntax - based on how and where a word is used in a sentence and how they can be combined with other words
• Is it comparable?
• Can it take an article?
• Can it form a sentence element/unit (Satzglied) on its own - i.e. subject/object

Flektierbarkeit - Inflection:

•  when words change their form in any way they are 'inflected'. e.g. lachen - gelacht, alt - altes
• there are different types of inflection - verbs are conjugated but other words are declined.

Verbs:

• Inflectable - can be conjugated
• Semantically - describes what happens or what is
• Syntactically - the centre of the sentence

Nouns:

• Capitalised (in German)
• Can take articles
• have gender
• Semantically - refers to people, places, animals, plants, things, abstract concepts
• Syntactically - can be subject or object of a sentence

Adjectives:

• inflectable - declinable
• comparable
• semantics - describe qualities and characteristics
• syntax - used attributively, predicatively, adverbial

Articles:

• declinable
• can't form Satzglied alone
• only used in conjunction with nouns

Pronouns:

• declinable
• semantics - replace nouns
• syntax - used attributively in place of nouns

Adverbs:

• not inflectable
• semantics - give more information about the details of a sentence
• syntax - obligatory complement of verb, optional extra detail, also predicatively, can form full sentence unit by itself

Prepositions:

• not inflectable
• semantic - denotes place/time/mode
• syntax - can't be sentence unit alone
• demands a case

Conjunctions:

• not inflectable
• semantic - connect clauses/groups of words
• syntax - can't be within the Satzglied, however it joins the Satzglieder together

FR2204 - Lecture 1 - Kingship and Absolutism

All governments appeal to certain values to legitimise their authority. In the time of absolute monarchy in the 17th century, the values they appealed to were very different to the values contemporary politicians would refer to.

In France, Louis XIV was the embodiment of absolute monarchism. He became king in the 1640s but his mother ruled as his regent until the 1650s when he took over the running of the state. The iconography of the period was designed to magnify the importance of the king, so he was often shown as being taller or greater than his subjects.

Absolutism is the theory and practice of unlimited state power and authority, typically concentrated in the power of the monarch. During the 16th century, there was a great deal of political unrest in France and England, so this idea of an absolute monarch was created by thinkers such as Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes in the hopes that such power would bring stability.

Jacques Bossuet wrote a text designed to educate Louis' heir in politics and in this text he stated that the kings are established by God as His ministers, so that He can rule through them. Kings get their power from God, therefore their power was also absolute. This divine power makes the person of the king sacred.

During Louis' reign, he continued his father's project to centralise power in France. The immense palace of Versailles was built as a symbol of his accomplishment of this goal. There was much iconography depicting Louis as the centre of the court and state. Many rituals, particularly religious rituals were used to emphasise the king's divine right to rule.

During the regency of Louis' mother, the traditional aristocracy rose in revolt against this centralisation. This period was known as the Fronde. A kind of ideological war was fought within France, often via pamphlets, lambasting Mazarin, the chief minister of the king who was believed to be perverting the king's power. After the Fronde was crushed when he officially took over the rule of the state, Louis triumphantly entered Paris, reasserting his authority over the territory and the state as a whole.

The values of kingship had a lot to do with the monarch's perceived 'virtue'. Louis appealled to the philosophical tradition of viewing the 'prince' as an ideal person, with high moral values. He was represented as being on a par with classical heroes and was cast in the role of Alexander the Great in a play by the court writer Racine. This identification of Louis as one of the greatest conquerors of all time displayed his authority.

Louis' project of centralisation required a great deal of organisation. Louis had to create new positions, such as the intendants, who acted as representatives of the king in the different districts of France. His many wars required large tax revenues so his system of taxation was very important and new offices were created to help run it. As only the aristocracy could work for the government's administration, Louis allowed many people to buy into the aristocracy, creating a subset of nobles. There were the old families - noblesse d'épée - and the new - noblesse de robe.

FR2602 - L1 - Modernism and Modernity

In art, the term 'modern' refers to a period in art history defined by specific characteristics. It is hard to tie this term down to specific dates, however, it is not used to refer to art made now or today or last year. That is known as contemporary art.

The term 'modernity' refers to the period of time. The term 'modernism' refers to the artistic response to this time, however, the response can affect the culture of period.

Modernism is said to have begun in 1863 but modernity is harder to date. The period can be defined by certain characteristics:

• progress
• secularism
• science
• democracy
• industry
• capitalism

All these characteristics are connected by the idea of individual freedom. These characteristics have no common starting point but Modernity is said to begin when they are all present in society.

Society became more open to change as the onset of capitalism created a richer middle class. In the 1840s, artists began to show ordinary life for the first time which was extremely radical at the time.

Éduoard Manet:



Music in the Tuileries

This painting by Manet shows the day to day life of relatively ordinary people, something highly unusual for the time. However,the techniques used in the painting were also out of the ordinary. The trees are painted in an odd way that makes them all blend together but strangest of all is the 'explosion' in the centre of the painting. This shows that Manet was already beginning to experiment with new forms of painting. This 'explosion' is not a depiction of subject matter but something odd which Manet chose to add in himself.


                                                    Olympia

This painting is viewed as the beginning of modernism because of it's flatness. Art used to be a window into another world however instead of looking 'through' this window, the flatness forces you to look 'at' it. There are some highly detailed, skillfully painted areas in the painting such as the serving girl's face or the patterned blanket. However, the nude's hair blends with the background and the cat in the corner is very badly painted. This was deliberately done, not because of a lack of skill but because the artist wished to draw attention to the canvas itself.

The painting is also making a social commentary. The model in question was a prostitute and her direct gaze casts the viewer as one of her clients. This scandalised conservatives in Paris, despite the fact that prostitutes were an accepted but hidden part of life in the city. The model's challenging stare is a protest against this hyprocrisy.

This was the beginning of Impressionism, a modern movement that believed that art should reflect the progress in the world around, therefore it was constantly changing. According to Greenberg, the "logical conclusion" of the line of painting begun by Manet was Jackson Pollock's Full Fathom 5, as it was totally flat, with no actual subject.

In the '60s, artists became tired of the dogmatic insistence that modernism should constantly change and began experiment in a more playful fashion, beginning the post-modernist movement.