Abstract

In his research on the language of music Deryck Cooke(1958) argues with some theoreticians who claim that it conveys no meaning from composer to listener. His main concern is that music is a kind of art that is comparable with painting, architecture and,mainly:literature. The latter, when regarded as language interaction(communication) shows, in his opinion, striking similarities with music, in terms of its structural elements that are creatively used to transfer feelings and emotions from author to recipient. In his arguments Cooke assumes that language communication in its origin is based on exchange of emotional feelings that later in the evolution of human intellect developed in articulate codes. Comparison with music, as he claims, reveals that in each case there is a creative use of codes,based on sounds, which,when specifically structured, produces pieces of art that are loaded with meaning. Deeper analysis of the shift of this ‘meaning’ from composer to listener makes Cooke speculate on the possibilities of ‘misintepretation’ of the initial intention of the author of the musical piece. This paper contributes to the issue with reference to discourse/pragmatic analysis of the type of relationship between intended message and intepreted message in language interaction on the one hand, and, on the other hand – the semiotic value of literary texts as ‘open work of art’(Umberto Eco) and the syntagmatic/paradigmatic axial basis of ‘intertextuality’(Kristeva).