Jonathan Griffin

Background

About Jonathan Griffin

My dissertation adapts key analytical models from Kenneth Burke within the context of contemporary semiotics, mainly at the intersection between John Deely and the Tartu School's emphasis on biosemiosis, umwelt, incompatibility, indeterminacy, and modeling. It generalizes a unified concept across Burke's God-terms, terministic screens, pentadic logic, emphasis on action, and so forth. I emphasize that motive is the key aspect of semiosis that determines the act, shapes the agent through action, leads to a particular world of experience. I recommend a teleological semiotic approach to resolving indeterminacy of meaning – especially in cases where the stakes are high for meaning. I then apply this methodology to the modern semiosphere (of which postmodernism is but a part) and its God-term,'Human Reason', tracing out results that emerge as implications of the modernist God-term itself. I use the Christian God-term in the historical Christian semiosphere as a contrasting example to demonstrate effects in meaning and the strange results that occur in modern thought. The paper explores the implicit theology suffused throughout modernity. Other relevant interests: Persuasion in advertising/public messages and their underlying motives; theology; logic; teaching; ministry (youth and adult); children's/YA literature, especially fantasy; and music. I'm a strong, charismatic teacher, I'm good with language, verbal and written, and I'm good with finding alternate perspectives. Making supposedly complicated ideas simple for people is something I really like to do. If you need something along those lines, I could probably be a powerful asset - if it's something that's morally consistent with my convictions.