Paul de Man’s essay, “Semiology and Rhetoric”, is a critique of the structuralists and their paradigms. In order to avoid the ineluctable conclusion of literary criticism, de Man condemns structuralism as a house of cards. The inside-outside model that they had touted assumed that the language of the text was a concrete referential from which to draw, and structure, meaning. Following this logic, in order to comprehend the referential, a reader must understand the context which produced the referent. Context meant an understanding of the time: social, political, economic, etc. Such an approach is evident in Barthe’s writing: a photograph is analyzed as a set of composed symbols that are meant to identify the politician as a leader with whom the voter can identify. The effect of such an analysis is twofold. First, history is the victim of the same inside-outside paradigm as the literary text hence there can be no elucidation of the inside via the outside. Second, the reader thus reads himself into the reading, creating what de Man terms a “solipsistic category” of form (1366). However, the effect of this consideration is manifold. In this instance, the paradigm has shifted so that the author has replaced the outside, ergo: the text is a referential to understand the author. These considerations create an absolute reading that allowed de Man to illustrate a single counter-example thereby toppling the structure of meaning.

Although both structuralist and deconstructionist adhere to the principles set by Nietzsche and Saussure, they diverge on the reliability of the sign as a determinant of meaning. De Man tackles the structuralist tradition that began with Jakobson. Grammar is treated as the structure of meaning. It is conceived as “tending towards universality and as simply generative” so that there can be no “true proposition” that exists beyond a properly grammatical system (1369). In this mode of thought, meaning is derived from metonymy, which can emulate the form of any logic. De Man, however, fails to criticize this fallacious relationship, for logic logically accounts for the existence of a sound illogical system, while grammar existentially relies on the meaninglessness of its opposite. Regardless, de Man finds fault in the definition of rhetoric that the structuralists have established. In their sense, rhetoric is an act of persuasion, so it is a perlocutionary form of language that is distinct from the illocutionary. The effect of this definition is the discontinuity established with grammar, thereby allowing both systems to coexist within structural theory. For de Man, this is the key to the unraveling of structuralism’s reliance on metonymy. De Man, relying on the theoretical support of Kenneth Burke’s deflection, which accounts for the discrepancy between sign and meaning, and that of Charles Sanders Pierce’s interpretant, the third element that interprets the sign’s represented meaning thus creating a perpetual cycle of interpretation, is able to produce his Archie Bunker example. The example of Archie deconstructs meaning as it fundamentally challenges the foundation of the structure. The meaning inherent to Archie’s rhetorical question is explicit to its grammatical composition. Thus, two meanings are coexists, the literal and the rhetorical, that are at odds with one another. By way of another example, the above title, “whatever”, can have disastrous consequences depending on its rhetorical flourish. It can mean a disinterest expressed to a question that has no implications regardless of the decision made: “Would you prefer a donut or a croissant?” “Whatever.” Or, with a perfunctory shrug and a roll of the eyes, the term is indignation expressed not only at the statement (not necessarily a question), but also at the questioner: “Your working this Friday night.” “Whatever”. The latter will cost you a job.

De Man uses an example from the classic tv show, All in The Family to highlight the critical role rhetoric plays in conjunction with grammar. De Man’s argument until this point has been focused on shifting the current trend of extrinsic analysis back to intrinsic analysis. This shift also involves a new realm of analysis with what he calls a “new grammar”, rhetoric. Standard grammar involves syntax and sound but not the relationship between the people speaking. This leaves a huge gap of understanding the language missing, a gap De Man believes rhetoric can fill given that rhetoric is “conceived exclusively as persuasion, as an actual action upon others” (pg 1369). He uses the Archie Bunker example as way to show “the tension between grammar and rhetoric” (pg 1370). The example itself involves Archie’s wife Edith first asking him how he would like his shoes tied. Archie, who is presumably indifferent, responds with “What’s the difference?” to which Edith rambles off the different styles of shoe tying. This only makes Archie upset and follows with him telling her off. To the audience this was just a funny moment between husband and wife. For De Man, this captures the pitfalls of grammar when rhetoric is involved. There is no way for Edith to distinguish whether or not the question is literal or figurative within the question itself. Of course, if she followed the emotional signals her husband was giving her; she could have guessed his meaning.

This is something we, as socialized humans, do everyday. As I think about it, there is a song on the radio now about topic. Even when I was a kid and mother would ask me “Do you really want to do that?”, she wasn’t asking me anything at all. She was telling me not to what I was doing. In the movie Devil Wears Prada, there is a funny scene where the main character is being interviewed by her tough boss and being asked several questions. The boss finally follows up the questions up mentioning something along the lines of “and you have no sense of fashion”. The main character takes it as a question but is hilariously corrected. I also think of the tv character Rose Nyland from The Golden Girls. Rose’s roommates would always use very dry sarcastic humor that Rose never understood because she took their conversations literally. She didn’t follow the social queues, to tell her whether or not the questions were rhetorical. Her roommates, like Archie would only respond with hilarious frustration. De Man brings up this frustration mentioning “the very anger he displays..reveals his despair when confronted with a structure of linguistic meaning that he cannot control”(pg 1371).  De Man calls these moments rhetorical because it’s impossible to see which meaning is actually correct. As viewers we know what Archie is saying with his vitriol-filled response to Edith. But if he hadn’t given that reaction and we hadn’t known the characters it would be impossible to decipher the “right” meaning.

Given all of my encounters with this confusing topic I would have to agree with De Man’s argument. It’s re occurrence in pop culture also tells me that it’s something that everyone has encountered and can relate to. Saussure isn’t entirely right when he refers to language as contract, with which people can be perfectly understood among an infinite amount of sentence combinations. If anyone, I think De Man’s argument best agrees with Jakobson’s. As Jakobson pointed out the addresser and the addressee play an impactful role in verbal communication. Rhetorical statements could even be part of the emotive function because it calls most attention to the emotional state of the addresser. Both men try to show how language itself can’t  account for all aspects of communication, it’s impossible. Sometimes language itself isn’t enough in a regular conversation or maybe a Yeat’s poem and a better literary analysis involves looking at rhetorical meaning.

In her essay, “Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd,” Barbara Johnson notes how many readers interpret Melville’s text as an allegory of good vs. evil. More specifically, Billy Budd is “good”, while John Claggart represents “evil” – with Captain Vere representing judgement of the two characters. Johnson asserts that such binary thinking of the thematic/semiotic relationship between Billy and Claggart is problematic, arguing that the actions (“doing”) of the two men contradicts their respective character (“being”).

Before exploring the symbolic repercussions of Claggart’s demise to Billy’s hands (no pun intended), Johnson goes into more detail the differences between the two men. She states that Billy is, “remarkable for his ‘significant personal beauty,’ his ‘reposeful good nature,’ his ‘straightforward simplicity,’ and his ‘unconventional rectitude.’ But Billy’s intelligence…is as primitive as his virtues are pristine. He is illiterate, he cannot understand ambiguity, and he stutters,” (2259). Evidently, Billy’s wordview is simple and innocent, without an ounce of nuance. To him, the truth of what people say and do is clear on a pure contextual level – no difference between what someone says and what they mean. In relation to semiotics, “his [Billy’s] inner self (the signified) is considered transparently readable from the beauty of his outer self (the signifier),” (2261). Billy’s character as innocent, simplistic, and otherwise “good” is translated through his physical appearance. However, Billy’s character as a sign loses its foundation when he accidentally strikes Claggart to death. Conversely, Claggart is, “presented as the very image of urbane, intellectualized, articulate evil,” (2259). To contrast Billy’s forthrightness, Claggart is duplicitous in relating to signifier vs. signified. As Johnson argues, Claggart’s dialogue in Melville’s text is littered with nuance and deceit – little sincerity comes from Claggart’s mouth. It is almost by nature that Billy and Claggart are set against each other, until their roles are seemingly flipped.

The climactic (and ultimately ironic) scene in Billy Budd directly undoes the allegorical narrative that Melville developed. As Johnson states, “Billy is sweet, innocent, and harmless, yet he kills. Claggart is evil, perverted, and mendacious, yet he dies a victim. Vere is sagacious and responsible, yet he allows a man whom he feels blameless to hang,” (2260). Billy is supposed to symbolically represent innocence by character, yet his action starkly contrasts this. At the same time, Claggart – an evil man – falls victim to an act of evil (murder). This is described by Johnson as a “chiasmus”, or otherwise in this case a reversal of character and sign: “reversing the relation between personifier and personified, positioning an opposition between good and evil only to make each term take on the properties of its opposite,” (2260). This discontinuity between “being” and “doing” is a result of this chiasmus. Furthermore, Vere is unable to see the inherent innocence in Billy to vindicate him following Claggart’s death. As Johnson notes, “in Vere’s courtroom reading, both these alternatives are irrelevant: ‘Budd’s intent or non-intent is nothing to the purpose’ (p. 389). What matters is not the cause but the consequences of the blow,” (2270). Considering he is the critical lens for the reader in Melville’s text, Vere’s refusal to judge based upon the “doing” creates the “good vs. evil” allegory problematic in logic. Ultimately, it’s hard to have much of a binary allegory when the good commit evil and the evil suffer from the cruelty of the good.

“For what is the use of asking, I ask, when we cannot even authoritatively decide whether a question asks or doesn’t ask?” (1371, deMan). This line in Paul deMan made me laugh out loud on the six train.

Let’s talk the semiotics of the New York subway and, later, delve into the semiotics of subway signs.

Perhaps the green bulb and railing are for New Yorkers what the Eiffel tower is to the Parisians; the subway steps, the tower’s elevator; the subway’s underground muffling of the city, the tower’s panoramic vista. You cannot escape the subway in New York, not really, unless you are in upstate New York, but that is obviously not the New York to which I am referring. This, you find that you already know because the word subway has already subjected you to picturing a geographical, topological location which may or may not include Staten Island. You can escape the Empire State Building, however, which is our, perhaps, immediate go-to equivalent to the Eiffel Tower that can be seen from everywhere in Paris. The metal grids, the vibration below your feet, the loud rumbling, and the homelessness stench all remind you of the subway through more senses than simply sight, which is the only sense Barthes mentions in discussing the Eiffel Tower’s dominion of the Parisian or tourist (12). Even when you are in the NYC subway system, you cannot visit it or “escape” it like you can the Eiffel tower; the subway does not have a defining interior or exterior. One can conceive of an inside or an outside, but the exits are not doors (for the most part); instead, there are just steps into the sunny or lamplit unknown. One need not push or pull anything. Therefore, like the Eiffel Tower, the subway system cannot have an interior or exterior since it does not have concrete borders between its innards and outers, but the New York subway becomes more difficult since it does not occupy a single location. The subway does not end. Where is the subway? Everywhere, and how can you be inside and away from  e  v  e  r  y  w  h  e  r  e? 

In comparison with Barthes’ ideas on the Eiffel Tower, the two, Eiffel Tower and NYC subway, do diverge a little: whereas the Eiffel Tower lacks any pragmatic usage at all, the subway map and system do not (5). Nonetheless, the intricate map of the subway system has become just as symbolic as the Eiffel Tower. One can buy posters, bags, mugs, and iPhone cases depicting the intricate labyrinth that is the subway system with all its glorious colors, numbers and letters. This souvenir would say just as much as if not more than the magnet of the Eiffel Tower on one’s fridge. “I was here” becomes “I made it;” The subway map is the clew to New York, which one must wield well to have visited and, moreover, to make it through the crowd and disorientation alive. One cannot visit New York without taking the subway just as one cannot visit Paris without climbing the Eiffel tower; however, in New York, the subway system supplies more than a visit, it allows an initiation.

Moreover, the subway offers a panoramic view of New York City just as the Eiffel Tower does for Paris without the need of a climb to the top of the Empire State Building, a worthy cultural endeavor nonetheless. While going over the bridge on the N, D, B, etc. train, the rider receives a sweeping view of the New York City skyline in motion. This panorama, however, does not offer a sense of dominion as the Empire State Building might and as Barthes explains the Eiffel tower succeeds in doing, but, rather, it is another, I think, initiatory experience that goes beyond being a part of something, which a simple promenade around the city offers (10). As a subway traveler overground, one is both experiencing being part of something as well as the view of what that something is. As a subway traveler underground, one can add that the occasional traffic noises or the racket of construction offers an auditory overview of what it means to hear a whole city without necessarily being within it or without.

The signs on the subway are even more intricate. While the words contained within the signs such as uptown, downtown, manhattan, queens, etc can be confined to the semiotics of purely language; there are other subtle indicators contained within these subway signs, which New Yorkers are probably too attuned to notice and because of which other foreigners may become confused. I was at the West Fourth street train station on my way to Uptown, Queens and wanted to catch the F, so I followed the sign that said “B D F M Uptown,” walked through a hallway, down the stairs, and arrived at another staircase above which was another sign that read:

“BDFM   AC Downtown
                      Brooklyn.“

It looked like this, only a little more confusing. Due to experience, I understood that Downtown, Brooklyn was a direction limited to the A and C trains by how far away the “BDFM” was from it. Others were not so fortunate. A man with an unfit leg walked down the hallway and stairs only to misread the sign and walk back up after telling his aggravated daughter that they were in the wrong place. I am not sure if every New Yorker is as sensitive to these subtleties, but I am sure a New Yorker would be quicker at grasping them.

Barbara Johnson has a very interesting analysis of the story Billy Budd. Johnson connects the characters to the type of readers they are. Billy who is innocent and harmless is describes as an illiterate because of the fact that he’s dumbfounded and that “language can be taken at face value”. Claggart on the other hand is complex, he’s intellectual but also seen as this evil guy. Lastly is Captain Vere who’s identity is connected to his books. Johnson describes him saying that, “Vere, then, is an honest, serious reader, seemingly well suited for the role of judge and witness that in the course of the story he will come to play.” Vere then is different form the other two characters because while the other two are represented by their actions, Vere is shaped by his reading. However Johnson does connect Billy and Claggart to reading as well and in a very interesting way.

The story is focused around good and evil and irony, however when one connects it with the type of reader the character is, there’s more to talk about. Billy is considered illiterate due to the fact that he doesn’t question appearance. He doesn’t seem to look more deeply into stuff, just accept it as it is. Whereas Claggart is complex, described as, “…the separation between being and doing…” However Claggart is perceived as evil. Where irony plays in is when Billy is the one to do harm.

Something that’s interesting that Johnson brought up is the whole idea of signified and signifier. She takes Billy as an example saying that, “…his inner self (the signified) is considered transparently readable from the beauty of his outer self (the signifier).” I think this is why she also considers Billy an illiterate because he’s exactly how he is. In language there’s a lot of complexity and thinking, not everything is as it seems and Billy is how he looks like. However irony comes into play and that’s when we could see the turning point of Billy as a character and as a reader. There’s now a difference between the signifier and the signified.

Johnson also questions a man’s nature vs his actions. Melville’s twist in his story where the good does something bad and the bad lives the fate, doesn’t really focus on good vs evil but more so on being vs doing. It questions society and what if a person is good by nature however his one action is evil. Johnson says that, “…Melville is preoccupied here is less the static opposition between evil and good than the dynamic opposition between a man’s “nature” and his “acts”…” Johnson shows that Melville’s work isn’t just about evil and good but the actions of a man. This then relates back to reading, where Vere is the only one who is how he seems, a judge while Claggart and Billy are changing and questioning for their actions.

In conclusion, a person’s action don’t just focus on good and evil on the outside but also within the person as well.

I thought y’all might enjoy reading the Yeats poem in full from de Man’s essay, so here it is.

In response to a few questions I’ve gotten via email, I wanted to clarify a couple of things:

1. Late is better than never: I can’t promise I will respond to late posts the way I would more punctual posts, but I will certainly give you something much better than a zero!  Don’t assume all is lost if you miss a deadline; turn something in!
2. Study questions: there are questions to guide your reading under STUDY QUESTIONS.  You are always free to answer one of these questions for your post.  Ezra’s most recent post does just that, and it turned out great.
3. You don’t have to answer all the study questions: you don’t have to address the questions at all, in fact.  And I don’t recommend taking on more than one at a time, unless you’ve found a way to mesh two questions into one argument in an innovative, clear way.

Semiology And Rhetoric:

“Reference, about the non verbal “outside” to which language refers, by which it is conditioned and upon which it acts” (1365). The first thought that comes to mind when reading this is the gesture and deliverance from the utterance of the statement in order for the interpreter to determine the intended meaning, whether it is metaphorical or factual. In distinguishing the difference when the phrase is being read is literary text, where gestures are, or are not, stated by a narrator leaves the critic to their own devices in making the decision. The gaps left in literature in where subliminal messages are communicated enter a territory where “rhetoric” haunts “grammar” and therefore turns the interpreter into a text detective.

PDM states, that grammar and logic are considered to have a strict set of universal rules and are widely known and accepted in their form as “facts”, with little room for interpretation. With grammar-there is little room for interpretation. With rhetoric there is a universe of interpretation and meaning. Rhetoric is the art of discourse and the tools used by a writer to persuade and impress their audience. A tool to convey a message to an audience and what the audience gets from the deliverance is subject to how layered and clever both parties are. Grammar is defined as the whole system and structure of language in general, usually having to do with syntax, morphology and sometimes phonology and semantics. The structural format of a sentence within language usually associated with a set of rules specific to the language.

To distinguish the epistemology of grammar from that of rhetoric is a daunting task and as PDM says, “on an entirely naïve level, we tend to conceive of grammatical systems as tending towards universally and as simply generative as capable of a single model without the intervention of another model that would upset the first” (1369). Rhetoric, on the other hand, “radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration” (1371). Therefore as stated by Prof. Allred as a “haunting relationship in which grammar is the clearly structured and reasonable pattern and “rhetoric” is the thing that passes through grammar and deranges is but cant be seen or touched itself”.

The “gut” feeling has when presented with symbolic metaphors within in a text to mean so much more than the actual deciphering of the sentence. In order to decipher the meaning within the layers of the text-it must be presented with the authority that engages the interpreter to want to dig deeper. The structure in which it engages this “authority” is done so through grammar. The differentiation and deciphering of the message intended to convey is done so through rhetoric.

When PDM speaks of “voice”, as a metaphor inferring by analogy the intent of the subject from the structure of the predicate. The confusion and wordy description of the reader being fooled by the narrator who is telling them one thing while meaning another, being deconstructed into another by the reader at the same time following a set of grammatically structured sentences to further the rhetoric intended to the writer for the reader. Which results in an emotional reaction to language- in both structure and rhetoric.