The Politics of Meaning

Written Communication Jul 1985

W. ROSS WINTEROWD

Abstract

The social sciences and humanities bring different attitudes and methods to the problem of meaning. From the “scientismic” point of view, meaning is quantifiable and is largely what Tulving called “verbal” knowledge. The scientismic view, however, is flawed in three ways: its failure to account adequately for “episodic” knowledge, to view language as an event, and to understand modes. The literarist view of meaning is equally flawed. However, the scientismists have most of the political power; hence, the literarists are losing the battle for their set of values and their versions of literacy. A realignment of literary studies under the aegis of rhetoric is necessary.

Journal: Written Communication
Published: 1985-07-01
DOI: 10.1177/0741088385002003003
Topics: multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

Hartwell (1987)

Creating a literate environment in Freshman English: Why and how

Rhetoric Review

Cites in this index (2)

FLOWER et al. (1984)

Images, Plans, and Prose

Written Communication
Perl (1979)

The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers

Research in the Teaching of English

Also cites 4 works outside this index ↓

10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80003-4

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10.1016/S0022-5371(75)80065-X

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Lanham, R.

Literacy and the survival of humanism

↗
10.2307/377144

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