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Stepping into Meaning with Iskandar J in His Studio

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Understanding Verbal Art

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Abstract

Yeats in a very early poem has a line ‘Words alone are certain good,’ and if you look at the history of the major religions, the word has always been central. You begin with a word and you end with a word. Literature uses words in perhaps the most comprehensive way. The best and worst in language are found in literature, and it is the best that instructs and teaches you.

Yeats in a very early poem has a line ‘Words alone are certain good,’ and if you look at the history of the major religions, the word has always been central. You begin with a word and you end with a word. Literature uses words in perhaps the most comprehensive way. The best and worst in language are found in literature, and it is the best that instructs and teaches you.

Edwin Thumboo, in an interview with Bill Bunbury, Encounter: 14 December 2003—“Beyond Good and Evil”. ABC Radio National

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term ‘foregrounding’ was used by Prague School linguists like BohuslavHavránek and Jan Mukařovský to refer to the usage of certain linguistic devices for attracting attention (see Garvin 1964).

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Correspondence to Jonathan J. Webster .

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Webster, J.J. (2015). Stepping into Meaning with Iskandar J in His Studio. In: Understanding Verbal Art. The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55019-5_2

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