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Author & Title:
Todd Oakley, Elements of Attention: A new Approach to Meaning Construction
in the Human Sciences (Todd Oakley Copyright
2004).
Abstract:
The following chapters are taken from the first draft
of a book length study originally titled A Grammar of Attention: A
Treatise on the Problem of Meaning. The introduction outlines the
purpose, method, and organization of the manuscript, while the other two
chapters discuss at length the implications for cognitive science and
linguistics for treating attention as the most fundamental organizing
principle. Other chapters not presented here explore the implications of
treating attention in semiotics and rhetoric, two other disciplines
concerned with the problem of meaning.
This manuscript is currently now undergoing extensive
revision under the new title Elements of Attention: A New Approach to
Meaning Construction in the Human Sciences. The new title better
reflects my present thinking about the alerting, orienting, selecting,
sustaining, controlling, and sharing of attention. Rather
than being a “grammar,” they are the six elements, which together
constitute a finite set of general points from which the details of the
subject follow. The six elements of attention do not comprise so much an
accepted theory of meaning but rather they comprise a systematically
organized set of working principles about human attention designed to
guide thinking in productive ways about the problem of meaning as grappled
with by cognitive scientists, linguists, semioticians, and rhetoricians. I
believe I have hit upon a discovery procedure (i.e. heuristic) for
thinking about the problem of meaning.
The chapters offered to you on this website along with
Giorgio Marchetti’s thoughtful and thought provoking commentary are
intended to provide a means by which we come to understand what kind of
theories of meaning we need, as I am one who believes that the problem of
meaning is still dimly understood, despite the two millennia of
investigation. I also believe that those who see attention at the center
of this problem are heading in the right direction, even if we have
only gone a few steps down the path.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Giorgio Marchetti for
giving me this opportunity to my project with you, and want to thank
Nicholas White for his painstaking editorial assistance in preparing the
final text. I eagerly welcome your comments, criticisms, and queries.
Todd Oakley
Associate Professor of English
Case Western Reserve University
todd.oakley@case.edu
Keywords:
attention, memory, categorization, meaning, cognitive
linguistics, mental spaces, conceptual blending
Reading: PDF file
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Abstract
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Introduction
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Attention and Cognition
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Attention and Linguistics
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Appendix
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References
The manuscript was
published in 2009 with the title: From Attention to Meaning,
Peter Lang Publishing Group:
https://www.peterlang.com/document/1043748
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