Problematics of Language between Critics and Creative Writers

Abstract

Language as a means of communication has been the target of many investigations in the last century or so. Philosophers, psychologists and critics have tackled this issue such as Saussure, I.A.Richards, Jakobson, Chomsky, Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva, and Derrida…etc. All these names and many others have tackled serious aspects of the language like the hazy relation between the sign and object or, if we borrow linguistic terminology, the signifier and signified as well as the semantic levels and what factors determine these. The present paper is concerned with the different insights and judgments of both critics and creative writers regarding the language and its nature. Although creative writers do not pay exclusive attention to the language as in the case of critics and other linguistic scholars, their contribution is worth mentioning and foregrounding. The study is divided into two main sections. The first is about the views of critics and linguists concerning the language and its particularity. The second exemplifies the contributions of creative writers to this thorny problem which show, in the final analysis, their full awareness of this problem. The method used throughout the whole study is descriptive and analytical in that the linguistic phenomenon is investigated thorough actual examples from different creative writers. Key words: Discourse; Signification; Symbol; Signifier; Signified; Problematic; Intriguing; Interpretation; Uncontrollability