Introduction to Parallel Dimensions Studies
37
populär reception of Murder in Byzantium pales in comparison to that of
Brown’s The Da Vinci Code—it would appear that postmodem critics who
decide to become fiction writers are not all that convincing outside of the
academic circles.
9- Semiotic violence appears when language is used “unnaturally”—for lack of
a better word—and hence defamiliarizes us ffom reality, which, according to the
formalist approach, is the main function of a work of art: to free us ffom the
anesthetizing familiarity of every day’s life. This is perhaps the only moment
when literary criticism has been able to tackle, on its own terms and without
losing sight of either its intent nor its corpus of study, an ontological issue
usually reserved to philosophy, namely the existential angst generated by the
repetition of everyday life’s routine.
10- Advertisements use different semiotic Codes more or less related to the
product they are promoting, however their messages cannot leave any room to
ambiguity, for they are there to serve a very specific, essentially monosemic
message, dictated by the laws of marketing: Publicity cannot be overly
defamiliarizing for it would distract it from its main function.
11- The formalists’ elegant, if not entirely satisfactory solution to this dilemma
was to locate semiotic violence, hen 6RFVf֖Ɩ&