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Article published In: Dialogue and Ethics
Edited by Ronald C. Arnett and François Cooren
[Language and Dialogue 7:1] 2017
► pp. 100–119

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A prelude to a semioethics of dialogue

The aesthetics of enchantment in a new key

 | Pennsylvania State University-York (USA)
Published online: 29 June 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.7.1.07eic
Abstract
This paper interrogates the phenomenological experience of enchantment as a sign process. I argue that our ethical intentionality in the world is significantly enhanced when we understand how the aesthetics of enchantment conditions the very possibility of such an ethic as a semiotic phenomenological event of dialogue. First, I discuss a key problematic of contemporary life – our culture of distraction and its impact on our dialogic relations. Next, I outline my thematic – enchantment as consequence of sign actions, both in what I call its “inauthentic” and “authentic” forms. Third, I interpret each form and their impact on the ethics of dialogic relations. Finally, I contend that authentic enchantment, as a semiotic interpretant, signifies an “answering comprehension” or unique expression that resonates with the greater whole, the greater good – demonstrating what Susan Petrilli describes as a productive or pragmatic semioethic.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Enchantment as a sign process
  • 3.Authentic and inauthentic enchantment as habits of discourse
    • 3.1Distinctions based upon phenomenological sign conditions
    • 3.2Distinctions based upon mythical elements
    • 3.3Distinctions based upon Heideggerian thought
    • 3.4Distinctions based upon Communicological relations
  • 4.Conclusion and implications
  • Notes
  • References
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