Critical Realism and Semiosis I --introduction
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper explores the mutual implication of critical realism and semiosis. Three key questions can be posed in this regard. 1 The first (discussed in Section II) concerns how far critical realism needs to include semiosis, provisionally defined as the intersubjective production of meaning, 2 in its more general approach to social relations, their reproduction and transformation. In exploring this issue we interpret social relations broadly to include not only actions and interactions but also institutional orders and the lifeworld. Apart from addressing the closely related, controversial, but nonetheless analytically distinct, issue of whether reasons can also be causes, critical realists have paid little attention to semiosis. Their neglect is quite unjustified because reasons are merely one (albeit important) aspect of the causal efficacy of semiosis and can, in any case, only be understood in and through the operation of semiosis. Second, and equally important for our purposes, we will show how semiosis in turn depends on a broader social context – which implies that, insofar as semiosis has been studied in isolation from its context, it offers an incomplete account of social causation and risks falling into one or more kinds of reductionism. This is where critical discourse analysis (or CDA) has much to offer but, depending on the explicandum, it may still need supplementation through more concrete-complex analysis of extra-discursive domains. We discuss this question in Section III. Thirdly, and finally, in Section IV, we give an account of semiotic structures and of the distinctive features of emergence in texts (discussing some examples), which draws upon work in critical semiotic analysis (particularly CDA, Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999) that is compatible with CR. This supports our conclusion that non-semiotic approaches are best combined with semiotic approaches (and vice versa). Overall we seek to show that semiosis involves mechanisms that are intelligible from a critical realist
منابع مشابه
The Tenets of Early Critical Writings on Fiction in Iran
From the first commentaries of Akhundzadeh to Jamalzadeh’s introduction to Yeki Bud YekiNabud, i.e., over a period of almost fifty years, we can see a collection of a few scattered commentaries on story and novel which are rarely noticed by researchers. These scattered commentaries can be regarded as the first literary manifests of story and novel. These critiques and commentaries include subje...
متن کاملرئالیسم انتقادی: یک دیدگاه فلسفی مهم برای تحقیقات پرستاری
Background and Aim: Qualitative and quantitative researches are conducted through different approaches. Each of them has their own specific philosophical basis. Due to the advent of the critical realism philosophy, this study aimed to discuss the critical realism as a philosophical perspective in nursing and health system researches. Materials and Methods: In this study, the data were collec...
متن کاملCritical Realism and
ion and explanation A CR approach to the explanation of concrete phenomena such as semiosis analyses them as conjunctions of structures and causal powers co-producing specific effects. To do this it abstracts these structures, identifying them and considering their respective causal powers and liabilities. Having done this, it then moves back towards the concrete, combining the abstracted const...
متن کاملThe Study of Critical Realism Implications in Evaluation of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Making
Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify and extract the implications of critical realism for science, technology and innovation policy-making as one of the later research traditions in social sciences. Nevertheless, its main focus, according to the different stages of the policy-making cycle and extent of its contributing factors, is on the stage of "policy evaluation". Methods: Thi...
متن کاملDeveloping the Conceptual and Methodological Framework for Discursive-institutional Analysis of Coastal Exclusive Space Production: with Special Reference to Critical Realism Perspective
Because of the limited capacity of coastal lands and conflicting interests among stakeholders for coastal resources, there are intensifying pressures to retain and provide more public access to the coast. Coastal gated communities have been developed increasingly in the middle shoreline of Caspian Sea in North of Iran. They are kind of exclusive space production as they restrict public access t...
متن کامل