The Trivium and “The Semiotic Iceberg”: A Paradigm for Reading and Responding to Texts

Grammar Stage: Making Empirical Observations (Pre-critical)

First-Order Signs: “Above the waterline”; surface-level / obvious

Practical Questions: “Who?” “What?” “Where?” “When?”

Logic: Analyzing the Message (Inductive, Critical)

Second-Order Signs: “Below the waterline”; subterranean / not so obvious

(interrelatedness of signs; patterns of meaning as they contribute to the text’s overall expression—see “Tool Kit”: language of genre)

Theoretical, Interpretation-Generating Questions: “How?  ”

(How does this text communicate its message?)

Rhetoric: Formulating an Interpretive Position (Post-critical)

Generating Claims & Drawing Broader Conclusions: “Why?” or “So What?”

(Why is this significant? What is the broader ‘so what’?)

THE SEMIOTIC ICEBERG

     Based on model by Greg Fraser

Grammar-Level  observations:

“above the waterline”                                                                                    

                                            Visible                                   Waterline to dive below ¯                     

                                                                                            Sign                            

        ideologies 

              persistent beliefs    

underlying meanings

                                                                                 commonly held views           

  dominant mindsets    outlooks and values

 shared hopes, dreams, and desires         

          established power structures     received wisdoms                             

       historical factors        principles       figurative meanings

                                                  cultural anxieties     supposed eternal truths    unspoken tensions         

considerations of what is ‘natural’ or ‘normal’           assumptions 

                                            ideas and ideals      standard mentalities      historical underpinnings         

 longstanding biases          expectations        intellectual traditions       

                                       “master narratives”       morals and mores      widespread preoccupations

                                 philosophical underpinnings       psychological states         socio-economic factors      

connotations               criticisms/critiques                   literary echoes and influences         

                   common assumptions about gender, politics, religion, race        subconscious motivations, fears, desires

Some Interpretive Questions: Logic and Rhetoric-Stage Questions

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing... Never lose a holy curiosity.” –Albert Einstein

• What psychological states does the text appear to explore? To what effect?

• What philosophical questions does the text seem to grapple with? What broader conclusions can we draw about these?

• What socio-political issues does the text seem to address? For what apparent reasons?

• How (and why) does the text reflect or resist the thinking/biases of its historical moment (i.e., Franklin’s thinking is very much a product of Enlightenment humanism and Emerson and Thoreau’s philosophies a product of American Romanticism)?

• What appears to be the dominant mood or tone of the text? Does the mood/tone shift at any moment? Where? Why?

• What seem to be some of the dominant themes of the text? Can you identify any “nooks and crannies” of theme (more focused thematic elements that are more unlikely and higher on the ladder of specificity)?

• Does the text reach any definitive conclusions, or does it remain open-ended (or ambiguous) with respect to the questions it raises and attempts to respond to (Consider the narrator’s often divided and ambiguous treatment of Hester in The Scarlet Letter)? Why?

• What formal features (i.e., language: a good example in the writing of Franklin, the rhetorical strategy at the core of his creation and presentation of “American identity”) produce thematic effects in the text? What are those effects and how are they produced in the writing?

• In what ways might the text exhibit a dual perspective or double meaning? Does perspective shift as the text unfolds? How might the text move in two directions at the same time? Why?

• The literal can’t help but be figurative (i.e., consider the recurring motif of water in Franklin’s Autobiography and its accruing associations with freedom and independence). How is this borne out in the text under analysis?

• Does the text offer a hard critical look at some aspect of human experience? A critique perhaps?

• How does the text seem to resist (or perpetuate) common assumptions and belief systems (for example, about gender, politics, religion, etc.)? What beliefs seem to be expressed or valorized in the text?

• What does the text seem to “say”? What’s it ostensibly “about”? What’s the apparent subject matter of the text?

• How do language and other devices (i.e., symbolism, irony, etc.) generate specific meanings in the text? How is content a product of, or related to, form and style?

• What formal characteristics appear to call a great deal of attention to themselves? Why? How do they have thematic significance? What features seem suppressed? Why?

• What seem to be some of the literary precursors to the text? Is the text somehow in “dialogue” with its precursors (this may become ostensibly apparent in a text like The Great Gatsby where we see clear influence of Franklin’s ideas in Jay Gatsby)

• What is the genre of the text? How does the text seem to obey or resist generic conventions? How? Why?