Sadler's Lectures Aristotle, Poetics - Parts Of Diction (Lexis) - Sadler's Lectures
Jan 24, 2025
A lively tour of Aristotle's concept of lexis, explaining what he counts as diction and why it matters for tragedy and epic. The lecture breaks down language into elements like vowels, syllables, nouns, verbs, inflection, and statements. It also explores metaphors, analogy types, and how poets coin new words.
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Hierarchy From Sounds To Statements
- Aristotle lists the parts of lexis: elements, syllable, connective, noun, verb, inflection, and statement.
- Sadler stresses this hierarchy moves from non-significant sounds to meaningful statements.
Elements As Linguistic Atoms
- Elements are indivisible vocal sounds (akin to phonemes) and include vowels, continuants, and stops.
- Sadler explains Aristotle treats animal sounds as non-elements because they aren't parts of a larger linguistic system.
Syllables Build Words
- Syllables combine elements (Aristotle's paradigm: a stop plus a voiced element) and remain non-significant alone.
- Sadler shows syllables form building blocks for higher linguistic units like words and phrases.
