Poles of Meaning: Pushing Language Up and Down

I discuss the problem of using the emotional/cognitive duality as a satisfactory way of formulating the problem of linguistic origins and of the distinctiveness of literary language. I address in particular Shanahan’s use of the work of Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer. I point out that Cassirer offers us a multileveled model of language’s sense-functions which avoids false oppositions and that Langer shows that literature does not belong to the discursive but to the presentational order of symbolism. Such insights strengthen rather than weaken Shanahan’s main points about the ‘localization’ and nature of meaning.