Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
Monographic journal issue | 54 | Supplemento | 2018
Research Article | The Roots of Textual Agency
The Roots of Textual Agency
The Semiotics of Motivation and Demotivation
Abstract
This introductory essay deals with the origins of textual agency and inertia. Texts predominantly work as indexes, icons, or symbols, according to Peirce’s typology of signs. These three types usually exert agency to an increasing extent. The essay seeks to determine the origin of this gradient in the dialectics between motivation and arbitrariness. The more a text is received as motivated, the likelier it is that it might exert a strong agency. This hypothesis leads also to an articulation of the rhetorics of motivation or de-motivation through which communities of interpreters can promote or demote the agentive force of a certain text.
Published Dec. 6, 2018 | Language: en
Keywords Semiotics • Agency • Motivation • Inertia • Arbitrariness • Text
Copyright © 2018 Massimo Leone. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2018/01/021
