Beyond Linguistic Sign

Blending phonosemantics, cognitive theory, and phenomenology, the monograph daringly and inventively pushes the linguistic boundaries to open new vistas into how sound and conceptual metaphor generate emotions and meanings in the intricate works of Mark Z. Danielewski and David Abram.

Prof. Michal Peprník

Department of English and American Studies

Faculty of Arts

Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic

Agata Walek seems to have written her book “Beyond Linguistic Sign: Embodiment and the Recovery of Resonance” out of an inner persuasion that goes far beyond any “academic professionalism”. Rather, it seems to be a product of an inner experience and persuasion that art “matters” (e.g. is primarily “material”) and touches us as readers (hence the embodiment). It can also be noted that she engages with theoretical works in a similar fashion, i.e. uses them as generators of thoughts and reactions rather than rigid methodological tools. [...]

Stressing the melic, musical qualities of language, as Walek does, brings us back to the way humans are grounded in the world / language. It is the experience that can probably be most intensively relived in a live music concert. But as Walek comprehensively shows, there are literary works that can make use of these qualities as well or to offer models of exactly this lived world experience.

And that is probably the second-strongest aspect of the book by Walek. She is capable of listening to how the artistic texts can think about themselves, their role and place in the world. And that they do it exclusively non-conceptually, using sounds or metaphors, stressing their own materiality or worldliness. By touching a book, for Walek, we are touching the world. And the world is touching us.

Dr. Miroslav Kotásek

Department of Czech Literature

Masaryk University, Czech Republic