This is very much a general overview – if the rest of you would like any clarifications or more detail in a certain area, I'm more than happy to add on. Comment away!
After general small talk, Jeremy mentioned the interesting connections he saw between this section of the text, and Kenneth Burke's concept of terministic screens - as a refresher, here's what Wikipedia has to say about those:
Another key concept for Burke is the terministic screen -- a set of symbols that becomes a kind of screen or grid of intelligibility through which the world makes sense to us. Here Burke offers rhetorical theorists and critics a way of understanding the relationship between language and ideology. Language, Burke thought, doesn't simply "reflect" reality; it also helps select reality as well as deflect reality.
Conversation then moved on to Sarah venting a bit about the general uncomfortableness she felt with the way other “primitive” culture's views of the relationship between the signified and signifier were handled (around pg. 74), as well as the evolutionary trajectory of history presented on the next few pages. Although she also pointed out that she knew this was an overview, and probably not the most important aspect of the text, she felt it was worth at least bringing up (and may have needed to vent...).
In the end, it may have been good that Chandler did write this section in this manner. It really brought some important issues to the forefront that Sarah (and I think others there) might not have thought about as much, or at all, otherwise. The main takeaway – we were reminded that the distinction between signified and signifier really is a tool for analysis and not so much an actual reality. In other words, given the fact that we only perceive of the chairness of a chair in terms of the signifiers we have at our disposal, this IS our reality. In practical terms, there is no other than what we've created. Jeremy related this back to Heidiger's writings on the false subject/object split, and his statement that “The world is an end onto our needs,” and Sarah related this to the theory of relativity, or the fact that we are the makers of reality. Given this fact, it could be said that the only element missing from “primitive” culture's understanding was a semiotics department...
At this point, my notes say “The examples of Barthes go round and round...” I have no idea why any more, but am adding this, because my brain connected this fragment with “The wheels on the bus go round and round,” which brightened my day!
Another insight gained through discussion: We also need to remember that, although the two are closely intertwined, Semiotics is more a mode of analysis, and Linguistics is more of a science. Things get sticky if you start thinking of the former in terms of the latter.
At this point, conversation moved on to how helpful it was to have Barthes' concrete examples of Semiotics in practice, and the fact that it would probably be a good idea to continue to include examples like this throughout the course. A good way to keep us from floating away into infinite significations...
Speaking of infinite significations, we also discussed the fascinating connections between various interrelated groupings of signs. Sam felt that this went a long way to explaining the dissonance in various disciplines, i.e. different views on feminism, etc. All of our lives are made up of various myths, and the areas where they meet, sometimes jarringly, often lead to this conflict.
Sam also tied this to an activity that she recently did in English 102, in which she had students sit in a circle and toss a ball of yarn around the room to connect word associations. So, for example, a student would start out with the ball and say "pens", and then toss the yarn to someone else who associated this term with "paper," and onwards to create a giant web.
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