I'm so in love with my Literary Theory class... I was reading through the assigned text, tonight, and saw this passage and had to share the wealth. Seriously, this is such a cool concept, especially when applying it to everyday life! It reads:
"The importance of the formal elements of a literary text is a product of the nature of literary language, which, for New Criticism, is very different from scientific language and from everyday language. Scientific language, and a good deal of everday language, depends on denotation, the one-to-one correspondence between words and objects or ideas they represent. Scientific language doesn't draw attention to itself, doesn't try to be beautiful or emotionally evocative. Its job is to point not to itself but to the physical world beyond it, which it attempts to describe and explain. Literary language, in contrast, depends on connotation: on the implication, association, suggestion, and evocation for meanings and of shades of meaning. (For example, while the word father denotes male parent, it connotes authority, protection, and responsibility.) In addition, literary language is expressive: it communicates tone, attitude, and feeling. While everyday language is often connotative and expressive, too, in general it is not deliberately or systematically so, for its cheif purpose is practical. Everyday language wants to get things done. Literary language, however, organizes linguistic resources into a special arrangement, a complex unity, to create an aesthetic experience, a world of its own. (Tyson, 120)"
Sigh. How I love my major... Even the technical, work-book stuff is beautiful! From language alone, you can completely change your life infintesimally. Try and tell me that's not stunning, I dare you. Wow. Best. Major. Ever.
Work Cited:
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today.
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