LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:4 April 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Journey through a Traveller’s Eyes

Debashish Panigrahi, M.Phil., Ph.D.

Abstract

The paper explores the perception of a travel writer that often constructs the piece of writing, and the truth value it carries. Perception itself is subjective and preconditioned by the cultural and social background of an observer. Yet the affordances (a clue to the function of an object) available in every interpretative activity bring new perspectives to the existing perception. The reader of travel writings visits a foreign land through the eyes of the travel writer and constructs the picture of the land from his perception of the textual world. Under such circumstances it is fascinating to analyse how the traveller gathers his experience of the world and how authentic his perception is.

Key Words: Travel Writing, Perception, Representation, Modality.

Introduction

Everyone is born in a certain semiosphere that lends him eyes to see the world. In the postmodern era, the emphasis is more on discourse and its mediated reality. The knowledge of the world is handed over to its members through sign systems which carry subjective truth and are not efficient enough to represent the whole of the truth at one time. Hence modality questions the truth value of such representation in terms of facts vs. fiction, reality vs. fantasy, real vs. artificial, actual vs. fake and so on. Since absolute truth cannot be determined and truth is determined from the context, semioticians never judge how true is a representation but seek to know how truly it is represented. Under such circumstances it is worthwhile to see how perception of a travel writer gets formed in an extra-textual world, represented in a textual world, and seems true to the readers.

The paper takes into account George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant for analysis at three levels – Perception, Representation and Modality.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Debashish Panigrahi, M.Phil., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Zisaji Presidency College
Kiphire- 798611
Nagaland
India
debashish_bls@yahoo.com
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