Poetics and panic

Abstract

AbstractAuthors in the pragmatic and phenomenological traditions offer several distinct but overlapping theories of meaning. Drawing on a number of these theories, I analyze the speech of a panic sufferer, as he recounts an attack of panic and as he has one, in order to contrast the enactment of meaning with its paralysis. This material offers an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the construction of self as it arises out of the interaction between a human being and their cultural environment.