Quentin Skinner Essay

This chapter is centered on researcher B.F Skinner, who was known for highlighting rewards and reinforcements through animal experiments. He also demonstrated operant conditioning through positive reinforcements. Today, many individuals possess both a negative and a positive view of Skinner and his experiments (ranging from evil to highest esteem respectively). This may be due to the difficulty of “separating content from controversy”(8). Skinner was born in 1904 and can be identified for many quirks such as working only on a cluttered desk. He went onto go and study psychology at Harvard in 1928, rather than taking up his desire of becoming a novelist. Despite initially avoiding the softer psychology fields, Skinner came across a psychology workshop

The art of quoting and summarizing an argument is one of the main skills to acquire when it comes to writing a successful piece of work. In the book, They Say I Say the art of inserting quotations is mentioned to be one of the highest mistakes made by writers. Many insert a quote that has no frame of introduction or background information which is considered a “hit and run quote.” Readers need to be able to comprehend not only the writings, but the background information and quotes from another author writing in order to have the whole work cohesive. Dire necessity for the writer is to go back to the initial text and truly understand the background from which they are quoting to make sure their audience understands the quote and why

Skinner experienced a renewed interest in Literature when he realized that the written word could also be analyzed for human behavior. He stopped trying to write

mind, the internal mental events, was never productive since the mind acted like a black box. For

Based on this thesis statement, I would expect the essay to argue for the theory that each reader will assign their own meanings to a literary work. This expectation was proven correct as I read through the rest of the essay. In addition, Leach stayed true to this thesis statement throughout the essay and no other thesis statements popped up.

Psychologist, born in Susquhanna, Pa. He studied at Harvard, teaching there (1931-6, 1947-74). A leading behaviorist, he is a proponent of operant conditioning, and the inventor of the Skinner box for facilitating experimental observations.

Through examples like these, our author make his point about Matthew was using Mark as a written source for the Transfiguration information. He also used similar examples to show us that the first part of Luke’s Gospel was used for a written source for the Gospel of Mark. As for the second part of Luke, we find an internal contradiction that, according to our author, suggests that an editor changed the existing text.

Prior to deconstruction, new critics, reader-response theorists, structuralists —regardless of the title they chose—subscribed to the theory that all texts are defined within themselves with minimal extratextual consideration. In the 1960s, a paradigmatic shift occurred in the literary world when deconstruction—which questioned the previously set rules—increased in popularity (Bressler 95). With the advent of this post structuralist theory, all the previously subscribed-to theories were challenged, thereby instituting a new set of beliefs for guiding and understanding humanity. This new set of beliefs incorporated the idea that there is more than one correct meaning to a work of literature, poetry, or art. It also applied the notion that outside help, reference material and personal data, could be used to find a meaning to any work. The terms poststructuralism and postmodernism are used synonymously with deconstruction, denoting that both take place after structuralism and modernism (Bressler 95).

     B.F. Skinner was one of the most influential theorists in modern psychology. His work was very important and has been studied by many for years. Skinner was a very straightforward man and a very educated man. His theories have helped mankind in many ways. He has studied the behavior patterns of many living organisms. Skinner was a well-published writer. His work has been published in many journals. He also has written many books on behaviorism. His most important work was the study of behaviorism.

Throughout history, ideas of how a country should be ran has changed. As we look back on history, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon time period (410 – 1066), we can see that see that with a change in ”ideas”, comes a change in the idea’s on politics, religion and language has changed as well. A shift in politics, language and religion are the focal points around the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval societies; therefore, literature was altered based on their traditions.

Blood, gore, and a lot of language; you will find this is most Quentin Tarantino movies. Although, this is what makes him such a writer and director. Quentin Tarantino is not only a fantastic screenplay writer, but he also pushes the limit of intense plots of drama, and mostly violence. As a great director, who changes the world of filmmaking, Quentin Tarantino is one of the most unique directors/writers, today.

He argues that in analysing literary works, the reader’s response to a literary work is as important as the text itself. All readers interpret and react to any given text differently, and these different reactions to the same piece of writing combine to shape the overall meaning of the literary work. In addition, when a single reader interprets a text and later revisits that same piece of writing, the reader often emerges with two different interpretations of the text and its overall purpose and meaning. Iser also stresses on the importance of the imagination of the reader. In reading, one is forced to imagine within the mind the information being read, and so one’s perception is “simultaneously richer and more private”. Also, one separates information into groups and form illusions in order to make sense of a literary text. The different ways in which a reader interprets and makes sense of a literary work all combine together to create the overall meaning and purpose of the

Defamiliariation is the process by which ordinary language is modified in order to achieve an effect of "artificiality” and strangeness, drawing attention not to the meaning, but to "the way it says that it has to say” (Bertens 27). Thus, the formalist approach leaves aside the refferential function of a literary text ("the way it reflects the world we live in” – Bertens 26) and focuses

Barthes followed Proust’s ideology and pointed out that author “made of his very life a work for which his own book was the model” (144). It seems absurd when Barthes put forward that historical person was just a fragment deprived from a frictional figure. Pennycook, by discussing “doing language” in his essay, pointed out a similar relationship between the language and reality that “it is language that shapes reality and not reality that shapes language” (222). As Pennycook mentioned, “the issue is not one of understanding of the world and then mapping language onto it but rather of acquiring language as texts as a precursor to mapping out textual realities” (222). He continued to argue that these speculations depended on how language and text may be understood (Pennycook 222). Bathes proposed a perspective that centered on readers (148). Readers, who are considered as someone “without history, biography, psychology” by Barthes, can take in all the quotations that compose a writing. From a reader’s perspective to analyze language shaping reality, all the information that readers can get are all from the language, either the depict of frictional figure or the historical person’s autobiography. When readers have no background knowledge of what they are reading, they cannot distinguish whether this character is frictional or non-frictional. The detailed narrative of frictional figure may seem like a prototype of the fragmented description of historical person. Then Barthes’s narration become sensible, “Montesquiou - in his anecdotal, historical reality is no more than a secondary fragment, derived from Charlus”. Consequently, language shaping reality becomes

Similarly, Barthes claims in his essay, “The Death of the Author”, that the author loses his identity when the process of writing begins (1466). Hence, Barthes asserts that “writing is the destruction of every voice” (1466). In other words, Barthes denies that the author is the voice of the text, as it was usually believed. In fact, Barthes affirms that the author abandons his identity when creating a work, so that the text is free from personal meaning. Similarly, in the article “Authors, Audiences, and Texts” written by the Emeritus Professor Bernard Dauenhauer, it is established that “a text is not a sign which refers to some already settled signified” (137). In fact, Dauenhauer agrees with Barthes that the text is free from determined