The Aesthetics of Communication: Poetic Iconicity, the Voice of Enunciation, and the Art of Conversation

摘要

The analysis argues for a revised classification of discourse within mainstream communication scholarship that recognizes only content and relational elements.Using Posner’s(1982)semiotic work on poetic communication and drawing from Peirce’s trichotomy of signs,we see that an aesthetic dimension of a First subsists within all events of discourse.The significant effects/affects of Firstness transpire along a continuum depending upon the operative interpretants in a given context.Taking the voice of enunciation as a phonetic exemplar of an extra-linguistic aesthetic,I then examine the functions of poetic iconicity provided by Brandt’s(2013)typology,discussing it in relation to Peirce’s triadic structure and the art of conversation.Clarifying the semiotic and phenomenological affordances for each component of discourse provides a communicological perspective.Overall,such a treatment lends theoretical support for the commonsense assumption that conversation is an art form.Conversation potentializes aesthetic experience in Dewey’s sense of the term.