From the beginning of his professional career onwards, Caldwell wrote short fiction and poetry, and he taught English literature. The relevance to these of philosophy of language, semiotics and certain areas of linguistics increasingly caught his interest. This book presents the fruits of this later work.

Of the papers included here, two are abstract and theoretical, focusing on linguistic methodology and Caldwell's overarching views on the nature of meaning-in-context. His position here, which he called Molecular Sememics, echoes early Structuralism and Functionalism, but addresses shortfalls in each. Two other papers apply the method and theory to topics within semantics and pragmatics, including especially the structuring of discourse. The remaining four papers connect Caldwell's theoretical insights to his life-long interests in fiction and pedagogy. The monograph - which Caldwell was left unfinished due to illness - aims to present as a single intellectual package the theory and the applications.

Contenu
Acknowledgements.- Foreword by Peter Shillingsburg.- Introduction by Robert J. Stainton.- I. THE THEORY.- The Epistemologies of Linguistic Science: Reassessing Structuralism, Redefining the Sememe (2006).- Molecular Sememics: Toward a Model of Ordinary Language (1989).- Whorf, Orwell, and Mentalese (The Molecular Sememe: Some Implications for Semantics) (2004).- The Coerciveness of Discourse (2007).-Molecular Sememics (Unfinished Book Manuscript).- Section One: The Molecular Sememe.- Section Two: History and Method.- Section Three: Tactics and Assumptions.- Section Four: Qualities of the Sememe.- Section Five: Teleological Structures.- II. THE APPLICATIONS.- Molecular Sememe: A Model for Literary Interpretation (2000).- The Rhetoric of Plain Fact Stevens' No Possom, No Sop, No Taters (1995).- American Shoot-Out: Hemingway vs. Richard Ford (2001).- What I have Learned about English from Being in Japan.- (Or: Why can't Japanese Students of English manage a, an and the?) (2010)