History Bump

See "lexicon" link in the margin menu for several of these.

See also the resources page I've set up. As you're reading White, check out the rhetoric glossaries listed under "dictionaries and encylopedia."

from denise (just for the sake of consolidation): "diataxis-combining the description with the argument or narrative

diegesis-the story constructed by the narrator"

okay - I've got the lexicon page up and I have the links to various online source material, but I still need to work through these things, and then try to explain them in real language, and then figure out how in the world they apply to the idea of discourse...I'm theor-impaired, you know. This feels an awful lot like theory....

It is theory, hon. Sorry!

A little late for an answer, perhaps, Chris, but hypotactic and paratactic both come out of taxis, which was the Greek term for the canon of arrangement:

paratactic: think and...and...and...and...and, like a picaresque novel
hypotactic: think outline, with several levels I, II, A, B, i, ii, a, b, etc.

Any of you who have read Ong's Orality and Literacy might remember that paratactic and hypotactic are one of the ways that he distinguishes between a predominantly oral culture and a written one. Writing/literacy enables more hypotactic discourse...

cgb

re: taxis, v. helpful.

Here's the loose collection of references from H. White:

hypotactical (conceptual overdetermination), paratactical (conceptual underdetermintation) and syntactical (properly ordered) (4). He says that discourse is diatactical, and that this approach to discourse throws these notions into disarray, mixing up the notion of a syntactic middle ground (proper arrangement?).

Is this right? Isn't "hypo" under?
clo

Hmm. Good catch, Carolyn. White calls it conceptually overdetermined, so the prefix seems counterintuitive. When I looked it up, I found the hypo was "under, beneath" and also "lowest state." The term in White's context, then, would suggest that conceptual overdetermination is the lowest tactical state (a base arrangement/taxis). Maybe?