Shifting Semiosis

Just in case you were wondering my title means and why I chose to use it - here's some info.

I've just spent a couple of years studying arts-based educational research, narrative inquiry, postmodern thought, and the pedagogical use of technology. Great fun, and fascinating. Part of what I discovered was that the visual aspect of text, and the visuals with text were increasingly a significant part of what readers desired, and what technology gives us the capacity to produce. With word-processing I can use all different styles and sizes of font, in all kinds of colours, plus I can easily find and/or adapt and/or create images to add. Great on paper, even more intense on the screen.

Over many years I had kept hearing/reading the word "semiotic" and wasn't sure what it meant. I did my usual research, and just tried to guess the meaning from the context. At one point I think I even looked it up. - http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=semiotic

It seemed to be important to all those academics who talk in code, but I got my first real grasp of the meaning when someone told me that reading a person's clothes and appearance was using semiotics to understand what they were saying about who they are.

In the late Sixties, early Seventies, long hair on young guys meant they were hippies and therefore girls could trust them. By the end of the Seventies, the semiotics had shifted, and long hair on guys usually meant they were greasers or bikers, and only foolish girls would risk trusting them. We don't wear uniforms, but we do wear costumes that identify us. Look at a teen's clothes and you can figure out their taste in music, usually.

Well it's the same with the appearance of text on the page and screen. Font style and size and colour say something to readers before they actually start reading the words. Readers have expectations and are starting to establish their interpretation of the meaning of the text before they decode even one word. Here's an example; just glance but don't read what follows. What is it?

she looks, listens, but doesn't see
and doesn't feel. She trusts whispers,
and ignores my eyes.

i can't change another's heart,
or open her eyes.

Did you say or think "poem?" You made that judgment simply from the layout of the words. You made a rhetorical recognition and oriented yourself to continue reading through that lens.

Back to "Shifting Semiosis." I believe that our world culture is undergoing a profound perceptual shift. Photography, film, and recorded sound have changed how we perceive. Sight and sound are no longer either "real" and "present" in a "natural" way. Now they can be shaped, altered deliberately, artistically, to have an impact on how we understand the world to be. Writing in a black font gave words a virtually invisible embodiment, and "objective" power, now shaped images and manipulated sound have that power. If we want to be able to "see" and "hear" as clearly as possible when standing in an embodied position, we have to learn how to see what we see and hear what we hear.

By using the capacities of the word processor (and printers), we can play with the appearance of text. This is good because it's a small way to help ourselves and our readers "read" with more awareness. Or so I believe.

In this era while our semiosis is shifting, playing with text and the appearance of text is a way to stay alive to the changes in how we use and read signs to play with meaning.