问答题
Deconstruction
Innovations in language are never completely new. When the words used for familiar things change, or words for new things enter the language, they are usually borrowed or adapted from stock. Assuming new roles, they drag their old meanings along behind them like flickering shadow. This seems especially true of the language of the contemporary school of literary criticism that now prefers to describe its work simply and rather presumptuously as theory but is still popularly referred to as poststructuralism of
deconstruction
.
The first neologisms adopted by this movement were
signifier and signified
, employed to distinguish arbitrariness of the term we choose. The use of these particular terms (rather than, respectively,
words and thing
) underlined the seriousness of the naming process and its claim on our attention. Since in English "to signify" can also mean "to portend," these terms also suggest that words predict coming events.
With the use of the term deconstruction we move into another and more complex realm of meaning. The most common use of the terms construction and deconstruction is in the building trades, and their borrowing by literary theorists for a new type of criticism cannot help but have certain overtones The fact that deconstructionists prefer to describe their activities as
deconstruction
rather than
criticism
is also revealing.
Criticism
and
critic
derive from the Greek
Kritikos
, "skillful in judging, decisive." Deconstruction, on the other hand, has no overtones of skill or wisdom; it merely suggests demolition of an existing building. In popular usage criticism suggests censure but not change. If we find fault with a building, we may condemn it, but we do not carry out the demolition ourselves. The deconstructionist, by implication, is both judge and executioner who leaves a text totally dismantled, if not reduced to a pile of rubble.
Questions:
【正确答案】
【答案解析】Deconstruction is a new realm of meaning. It refers to create and criticize literary works in a mechanical way. The user of dceonstruction is to cobble existing materials into conventional structures. It suggests that the passage is put together like a building or a piece of machinery for being taken apart but not for repairing or illustrating its defects.