- One idea that strikes me as important regarding the relationship between language and meaning is how Culler defines meaning. He states that language and meaning have to evoke an effect on the reader. The effect being solving the “puzzle” that text is presenting for the reader. Stories and poems can both have parts that can engage the reader “in a process of puzzling..” I believe that this is important because it is very true. Language does produce meaning and such language can be what the parts of the story or poem can provoke. This, too, is also a part of the “meaning” of the text.
- There is one poem that shows one of the four rhetorical language techniques, being irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche, which is the brain is wider than the sky by Emily Dickinson. Emily uses the rhetoric device metaphor to emphasize how special our human brain is and its capabilities, hence being “wider” than the sky. This is importance because Cullers poetic technique has the reader dig deeper into texts, such as this one, and has us find the true meaning behind that text. Culler specifically wants us to find the meaning of the text, think of it as having a structure of its own, and the provocations of the text. This helps shape the poem as a whole.
