A Revolution in Language: The Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth-Century FranceWhat is the relationship between the ideas of the Enlightenment and the culture and ideology of the French Revolution? This book takes up that classic question by concentrating on changing conceptions of language and, especially, signs during the second half of the eighteenth century. The author traces, first, the emergence of a new interest in the possibility of gestural communication within the philosophy, theater, and pedagogy of the last decades of the Old Regime. She then explores the varied uses and significance of a variety of semiotic experiments, including the development of a sign language for the deaf, within the language politics of the Revolution. A Revolution in Language shows not only that many key revolutionary thinkers were unusually preoccupied by questions of language, but also that prevailing assumptions about words and other signs profoundly shaped revolutionaries' efforts to imagine and to institute an ideal polity between 1789 and the start of the new century. This book reveals the links between Enlightenment epistemology and the development of modern French political culture. |
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A Revolution in Language: The Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth-century France Sophia A. Rosenfeld No preview available - 2001 |
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Abbé abstract abus des mots Académie Académie Française argued ballet ballet d'action Bordeaux century communication conception Condillac Condorcet constituted contemporary Convention nationale Court de Gébelin culture d'instruction dance Daunou deaf Degérando Desloges Destutt de Tracy Dictionnaire Diderot Discours Domergue eighteenth eighteenth-century Encyclopédie encyclopédique Enlightenment Epée Epée's epistemological Essai France François François de Neufchâteau French language French Revolution Garat gestural grammar guage Histoire human Ibid ideas Idéologues idiom Imprimerie institutions intellectual Jacobin Jauffret Journal l'art l'Epée l'Institut l'origine langage d'action langue française late Lettre linguistic littéraire Lycée Massieu means Mémoires method modern moral Musée de Paris natural Neuf Soeurs Noverre Noverre's Oeuvres Old Regime origin of language pantomime Paris Pasigraphie philosophical political politique Rapport revolutionary Roederer Rousseau sciences séance semiotic Sicard siècle sign language sign system social society sourds et muets sourds-muets speech theater Théâtre theory tion University Press words writing