Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies ›› 2013, Vol. 13 ›› Issue (09): 1-9.

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Age Effects and Skill Acquisition Theory in Second Language Acquisition: An Interview with Rober Dekeyser

MA Zheng   

  • Online:2013-09-15 Published:2020-07-25

Abstract: Through reflection on the history of semiotic studies, particularly on those semiotic findings in the wake of Saussure, this paper intends to unfold a significant turn in semiotic thought, which has been realized in Goffman's Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life and his other works. This significant turn in semiotic thinking might be formulated as shifting the social nature of a sign from Durkheim's invisible but coercive convention (almost same to Saussure), to a visible interactional situation in everyday life in terms of Goffman's treatise, and furthermore, as transforming a sign's separation from individual personhood in Saussurian semiotics, to person's self presentation in a social setting of interaction as espoused with Goffman. Arguably, only with such a shift of approach and throughout a process of social interaction, could a sign afford to function as an essential component of one's existence; or in other words, the sign itself will be taken as equal to one's state of being. This shift of approach will also help sign get liberated from its instrumental position as the vehicle of communication.