48 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
48 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
МГУ имени М.В. Ломоносова
|
||
Вступительные испытания по иностранному языку
|
||
Английский язык
|
||
2021 год
|
||
стр. 1 из 5
|
||
Прочитайте текст и изложите его содержание в научном стиле своими словами, соблюдая классическую структуру: введение, основная часть, заключение.
|
||
Реферат должен содержать два смысловых блока:
|
||
1. объективная/авторская информация
|
||
₋ проблематика, обсуждаемая автором (предмет и объект исследования);
|
||
₋ выбранный способ ее обсуждения (анализ, синтез, дискуссия, критический обзор, реферативный обзор и пр.) и определение методов исследования (обобщение, аналогия; дедукция, индукция; классификация, типология; количественный анализ, качественный анализ, сравнительно-сопоставительный анализ и пр.).
|
||
2. интерпретация прочитанного (аргументация предложенных выводов обязательна)
|
||
₋ текст/автор подтверждает/опровергает и обновляет/расширяет/дополняет прочитанное ранее;
|
||
₋ текст/автор вызывает в каких-то аспектах недоверие (поскольку, например, изложено противоречиво /бездоказательно /нет примеров и пр.) и/или одобрение (приведите аргументы) в Вашем понимании поднимаемых вопросов и темы в целом.
|
||
Структура работы:
|
||
Введение (определение жанра текста, смысла названия и общей темы).
|
||
Основная часть (два указанных выше смысловых блока).
|
||
Заключение (место и значение исследования данной темы в современной лингвистике).
|
||
Важные аспекты:
|
||
Напишите реферат прочитанного текста в количестве 500 слов.
|
||
Копирование 4 слов подряд из исходного текста или других источников расценивается некорректным цитированием, в случае обнаружения чего работа оценивается только на предмет языковой грамотности.
|
||
Характеристики научного стиля реферата: логическая последовательность изложения, текстовая связность; стремление автора к точности, сжатости, однозначности при сохранении насыщенности содержания, в том числе за счет выбора лексики и грамматических структур формального/академического стиля.
|
||
стр. 2 из 5
|
||
A Brief Introduction To Semiotics
|
||
(extract)
|
||
By Barbara Brownie
|
||
From Semiotics of Typography, 2009.
|
||
In its origins, semiotics is deeply entwined with Structuralism, an “analytical method”which seeks to find “deep structures” underlying systems of signs. However,contemporary semiotics is concerned more with the social dimensions of the use ofsigns. Contemporary semioticians focus on processes of communication, and how westructure our understanding of our environments.
|
||
The study of signs dates back as far as Hippocrates (460-377BC), who noted thatsymptoms are signs for underlying illness, thereby establishing that a sign “stands forsomething other than itself”. Outside of medicine, philosophers includingAristotle (384-32BC) established that and a sign can be divided into:
|
||
a) its physical self;
|
||
b) the thing to which it directly refers; and
|
||
c) its meaning, which may vary due to social and personal experience.
|
||
Much later, these ideas formed the basis for studies of signs and sign systems inlanguage and media, conducted by, among others, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913, alinguist who established many fundamental ideas of structuralist semiotics) and CharlesSaunders Pierce (1839-1914), then later Roland Barthes (1915-1980, concerned largely with poststructuralism) and Umberto Eco (1932-). Although Pierce’s ideas will be brieflyintroduced below, this thesis will focus on the Saussurean tradition. Although Saussurehimself did not publish writing on the topic of semiotics, his Course de LinguistiqueGénérale survives in a text compiled by his students after his death. Focusing onlinguistic communication, this text establishes “the course that semiotic inquiry was totake during the first half of the twentieth century”, forming “the groundbase on whichmost contemporary structuralist theory now rests”. From the late 1960s, Barthesapplied semiotic theory in the field of cultural studies, and paved the way for theunderstanding of the linguistic sign as a material object, comparable to any other formor object that we may encounter in any media.
|
||
A sign is anything that communicates meaning beyond itself. The idea of the sign, how itcan be broken down, and the systems into which signs are organised, form the basis forthe study of semiotics.
|
||
For Ferdinand de Saussure, a sign is a “union” of two “equivalent” parts: the“signifier” (or “signal”) and “signified” (or “signification”), where the “signifier” isthe signs physical presence, and the “signified” is the concept evoked in the mind ofthe receiver. He stresses, however, that the “material” part of the sign (the signifier) andthe concept (the signified) are both “psychological” experiences of the receiver, so thateven the physical parts of a sign are only “sensory impressions”. In practice, these two parts of the sign are “always integrated into each other”, only divisible during the process of analysis.
|
||
стр. 3 из 5
|
||
An audience perceives the whole sign, and does not consciouslyseparate signifier from signified.
|
||
Saussure suggests that the connection between the two parts of the sign are establishedarbitrarily (as with linguistics), although he does concede that “certain signifiers [are]appropriate for their signifieds, as in onomatopoeia”. More recent theorists note thatmany signs are in fact “motivated”. Levi-Strauss, for example, observed that therelationship between a spoken sound and its written equivalent is “conventional”, or“rational”. Some conventions are established over time. Though initially arbitrary,they are ultimately adopted as “natural” after the relationship between signifier andsignified has been established in society for a long time.
|
||
Where Saussure discusses signifieds, he focuses on denotation, the initial, literal“referent a sign intends to capture”. Barthes, however, focuses on connotation. Theconnotative meaning of a sign involves associations that are established through socialconvention. The range of connotations that a sign evokes may vary, being specific toculture, and the knowledge and experience of the audience. Connotations areextensions of the denotative meaning. Barthes suggested, therefore, that connotation isa “second-order of signification”, in a chain of possible meanings. The form of thesignifier can contribute to the connotative meaning, so that the same signified can havedifferent meaning when presented in a different manner or style.
|
||
Pierce proposed a slightly different model of the sign, identifying its parts as“representamen”, “object” and “interpretant”. In this model, the “representamen” is therepresentational object or form, equating to Saussure’s signifier, the “object” is the thing to which is directly represented, and the “interpretant” is the meaning that is achievedonce the sign has been “evaluated” by the audience. Though Piercian and Saussureanmodels are both in use today, this text will use the Saussurean model of the sign.Pierce also suggested that signs represent their subjects in different ways, thereby fallinginto categories. In the first category of signs, “icons”, representamen resemble theirobject so that not much additional knowledge is required for a correct interpretation ofa sign, as in photographs. Indexical signs (“indices”) are directly connected to theobject, but do not resemble it. Most “natural signs”, such as footprints, fall into thiscategory. In the third category, “symbols”, the relationship between the representamenand object is established arbitrarily, as in “images, diagrams, and metaphors”.Saussure, however, feels that the term “symbol” is misleading when discussing language,since many symbols do display “a vestige of natural connection” between the signifierand signified, and are therefore never entirely arbitrary.
|
||
Saussure noted that, although in semiotic analysis we assess each sign individually, wegenerally do not encounter signs alone. This illustrates the structuralist view that “thenature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact isdetermined by its relationship to all other elements involved in that situation”.Therefore the context, the relationship between signs, must also be analysed. This vein ofsemiotic analysis investigates the meaning of a sign as developed according to
|
||
стр. 4 из 5
|
||
relationships between other signs in a group, alternative signs in the same set, and withinculturally established contexts.
|
||
Saussure introduced the “systems” within which signs are categorised. The sign is the“basic unit” of any “language”, ranging from words to military signals, and it is within the context of this language that the sign in understood. This context must bedivided into the language itself (a “formal system”, with “rules and conventions”)and individual instances of use, which Saussure termed “langue” and “parole”respectively. Because language is capable of “generating new aspects of itself”,parole, or “the execution of language”, results in unique contexts that are defined by“individual speakers”.
|
||
In any instance of parole, the meaning of a sign can be affected by syntagmatic andparadigmatic relations. The “syntagm” is the part of the text (in linguistics, thesentence) in which the sign is used alongside other signs from the same langue. Eachsign in such a sequence of signs is understood in terms of its syntagmatic relations withthe other signs that appear alongside it. So, for example, the meaning of a word isaffected by its particular use in a sentence. Saussure presents this relationship as“horizontal”, since language is received in a linear fashion. As well as by thepresence of other signs, meaning is determined by alternative signs, notable in theirabsence. Saussure identified “associative” relations (more commonly, “paradigmatic”relations) with other signs which could have been used in the same context. Thesealternative signs are vertically located within the same “paradigm” (set of signsbelonging to the same category). For example, the use of the word ‘tree’ as opposed to‘bush’ must signify a plant larger than a bush, otherwise ‘bush’ would have been used.The same syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses can be applied outside of linguistics,as Barthes demonstrates when discussing clothes. Barthes identifies “items which cannotbe worn at the same time on the same part of the body (such as hats, trousers, shoes)” as having paradigmatic relations, while “the syntagmatic dimension is the juxtaposition ofdifferent elements at the same time in a complete ensemble”.When there are many possible readings of a sign (that is, many possible denotations, andhence connotations), context can also reduce the number of likely interpretations througha process of “anchorage”. Barthes identified anchorage in image captions, where “thetext directs the reader through the signifieds of the image, causing him to avoid someand receive others”. By anchoring a sign, it is possible to establish a “preferredmeaning”.
|
||
A “code” is a way of communicating meaning that has been “conventionalized” by anysociety or group. All signs depend on the receiver being familiar (consciously orunconsciously) with the language, or “code”, to which the sign belongs. SpokenEnglish, for example, requires understanding of the sounds that represent words in the English language; “even an indexical and iconic sign such as a photograph involves atranslation from three dimensions into two”. Codes, therefore, “provide a frameworkwithin which signs make sense”.
|
||
стр. 5 из 5
|
||
Societies have “primary” codes (usually the “dominant ‘natural’ language”), and withinany code, “sub-codes” exist. Language, for example, may be subdivided into “spokenand written forms”.
|
||
Barthes proposed “the notion that we ‘encode’ our experience of the world in order thatwe may experience it”. By a process of encoding, we “invent the world we inhabit”,representing and understanding it in ways that are specific to our social group. Sincecodes vary from culture to culture, the same sign or text may have different meaning todifferent audiences, and interpretations may vary from the message intended by the encoder. Such unintended interpretations are described by Umberto Eco as “aberrantdecoding”. In many instances aberrant decoding is unavoidable, as texts can be madeavailable to diverse, even international, audiences. |