'Pragmatics And Poetics' By Teun A. Van Dijk)

Teun A. Van Dijk, in his essay "Pragmatics and Poetics," explains the reason for speech is "to change the internal state of the hearer" (Dijk 30). Ferdinand de Saussure describes in his essay, "Nature of the Linguistic Sign," how a word is more connected to the minds of the speaker and the hearer than to anything else. He describes that the "linguistic sign" as a unit formed equally by the association of a "concept" and a "sound-image." The "sound-image" is what one would call a spoken word, something that "signifies." Saussure describes it as "the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses" (Saussure 832). He goes on to describe its materiality: "the sound-image is sensory" (Saussure 832). The term "concept" is summed-up as being "generally more abstract" (Saussure 833) than the "sound-image." The "concept," it appears, is
Petruchio asserts the opposite of how Katharina is perceived by the other characters in the play. When speaking to her father, Petruchio states that Katharina is "not froward, but modest as the dove. / She is not hot, but temperate as the morn" (Shakespeare 2.1, 286-7). There is no apparent change in Katharina's attitude and nothing she has done validates his assertion that she is now sweet and "temperate" (Shakespeare 2.1, 287). Petruchio is creating a reality using nothing but words and imposing it on to the other characters in the play. His asserted reality is taken so far, that it traps Katharina into a marriage against her will. Katharina makes it clear to her father, and to Petruchio, that she does not want to marry Petruchio. Yet when Petruchio tells Baptista that they "have Îgreed so well together / That upon Sunday is the wedding day" (Shakespeare 2.1, 290-1), Baptista readily accepts Petruchio's invented reality over his daughters expressed wishes, and the wedding is