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Article: Rhyme, the icons of sound, and the Middle English 'Pearl.'(Rhetoric and Poetics)
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- June 22, 1996
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Northern Illinois University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Since Socrates's dialogue with Cratylus, thinkers about language have rejected mimetic theories of language meaning that dictate a consistent relationship between sounds and verbal sense. While such ideas have continued to appear in various guises,(1) Ferdinand de Saussure definitively demonstrated that discursive meaning in language is produced not by phonetic qualities but by an intricate network of phonologic contrasts.(2) In consequence, Jacques Derrida observed that meaning is found not in the signs themselves but in the gaps between the signs, and, on the basis of Saussure's proof, he defined "grammatology," a science of the arbitrariness of the sign, which "Saussure ...