I've been writing a thesis for a year and a half, and incubating it for at least 20 years. Now I have been given the final edits to deal with, and they will make it stronger and clearer. Part of what I am doing is creating an exploration of the semiotic possibilities of writing text using a word processor. We are years beyond the typewriter, but still trapped in that semiotic space. I want to move beyond barren black text on white pages with font choices treated as irrelevant.
I want to bring the semiotic choices of writing with a word processor more clearly into view; I think this is another dimension of reading text. There are words strung together, then there is the appearance of the text and what that adds to the meaning. There is a dimension beyond this, and that is when text and meaning move onto the computer screen and hyperlinking, audio, and moving images are added in. This is not the third dimension, but something that offers infinitely more choices and possibilities to the authors and readers. This blog is a tiny step in that direction, learning enough of how to manipulate HTML to choose the colours I want and adding the occasional hyperlink.
But before I move into that larger and more complex semiotic space, I must complete my artfully shaped study of how I got to where I am now, my thesis.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Hearts and Chocolate
Red everywhere and hearts. St. Valentine's Day must be approaching and the information is semiotically omnipresent. Why? Because it's a commercial holiday, a glorification of romantic love. Red for passion and hearts to signify love. And women's underwear to suggest sexuality, which is now read as central to Valentine's Day.
I have read that originally St. Valentine had nothing to do with sexuality and passion, that the love being referred to was compassion, that he gave his coat to a poor homeless person and froze to death himself. How come the semiotic meaning of St. Valentine has shifted so radically?
My first impulse is to blame big business and commercial interests, but I think the semiotic shift pre-dates that. Maybe I'm confusing it with another holiday, but didn't Shakespeare have a Valentine's Day song in one of his plays? I remember my shock when I realized what the lyrics, "Let in a maid that out a maid never departed more," meant, a sad or cynical lament for lost virginity. Not really romantic. No hearts, flowers, or chocolate, and just the scarlet of a "scarlet woman", or maybe the brownish red of virgin blood. The red roses of passion replacing the bloodless white roses of purity - symbolism is such a rich aspect of how we think and understand.
When I was younger I thought to be pure and objective in my thinking I had to excise corrupted and corrupting symbols from my heart-mind. Now I know that I can't do that. I can only look at them and see what they say to me and the others who surround me. Then, perhaps, I can define them slightly differently and shift their meaning somewhat.
It's just a day. It's just a commercial shill. It's just a story from church history. It's just a marker Shakespeare used to delineate the paradox of passion which often, sadly, lacks the "com" prefix. It's just an appeal covering a multitude of hungers, for the love that sees us, for the comfort and pleasure of the body that moves with and through the heart, for the sign that shows others that we are loved and lovable, for the sign that tells us that we are indeed lovable. How silly to make it important. How intensely inevitable its importance is.
Offer compassion to others.
I have read that originally St. Valentine had nothing to do with sexuality and passion, that the love being referred to was compassion, that he gave his coat to a poor homeless person and froze to death himself. How come the semiotic meaning of St. Valentine has shifted so radically?
My first impulse is to blame big business and commercial interests, but I think the semiotic shift pre-dates that. Maybe I'm confusing it with another holiday, but didn't Shakespeare have a Valentine's Day song in one of his plays? I remember my shock when I realized what the lyrics, "Let in a maid that out a maid never departed more," meant, a sad or cynical lament for lost virginity. Not really romantic. No hearts, flowers, or chocolate, and just the scarlet of a "scarlet woman", or maybe the brownish red of virgin blood. The red roses of passion replacing the bloodless white roses of purity - symbolism is such a rich aspect of how we think and understand.
When I was younger I thought to be pure and objective in my thinking I had to excise corrupted and corrupting symbols from my heart-mind. Now I know that I can't do that. I can only look at them and see what they say to me and the others who surround me. Then, perhaps, I can define them slightly differently and shift their meaning somewhat.
It's just a day. It's just a commercial shill. It's just a story from church history. It's just a marker Shakespeare used to delineate the paradox of passion which often, sadly, lacks the "com" prefix. It's just an appeal covering a multitude of hungers, for the love that sees us, for the comfort and pleasure of the body that moves with and through the heart, for the sign that shows others that we are loved and lovable, for the sign that tells us that we are indeed lovable. How silly to make it important. How intensely inevitable its importance is.
Offer compassion to others.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Symbols and Meaning
We are a species who live through meaning. We use symbols to tie things, ideas, concepts, feelings etc. together. This means that; that means something else.There is a sound that matches a bunch of squiggles (called "letters") that "points to" something else. A sound symbol = a visual symbol = a "real" thing or feeling or concept, which may "stand for" something else which some of us may associate with something different again. This is how we communicate?!?
On CBC News tonight, a story about teaching infants who aren't deaf to sign because they can communicate through signing at 8 or 9 months, much before they can use their tongue and lips to enunciate words. Human children can use language before they can talk; they can sign at a very young age. Think of those months of frustration before we could get our parents and others to understand what we wanted, even though we had language tools.
There is some speculation that this early "languaging" can affect the brain and make kids smarter. The researcher warns that parents who take the trouble to learn and teach signing to their kids are also providing a rich environment otherwise. So the kids who were signed with at an early age having higher I.Q.s than the non-signing kids may simply be the result of having a richer environment and more parental attention.
What I find truly fascinating is how early and intense our need to use symbols for communicating is. Humans are the species who connect. We link. We construct meaning. We try to share meanings and symbols. We connect sounds with things to connect what we "think" with other humans. We connect in order to connect. Meaning is what we live for and through.
And it is never a simple one-to-one connection. There are tones, nuances, hidden links, and surprising new readings - because we can't read each other's minds. If we are both "coming from the same place" we may be able to communicate very thoroughly with very few words and/or signs. Vygotsky, I think, points out that couples who have long been together can sometimes know what their partners are thinking with almost no overt communication, but that is knowledge of the person and the situation more than "mind-reading."
Post-modernism, as I understand it, is fascinated by how we create meaning, how we communicate. The first book that really helped me understand how people use language was Word Play by Peter Farb, and what I remember most clearly is his example of how an authority figure could use language to demean to hold power. When someone implicitly "defines the situation" they rule. The "other" is ruled by the assumptions established.
Two people, angry at each other - Who is the aggressor? The one who tells about how the other hurt her feelings, or the other who is surprised by the accusations which don't match her memory of what happened? Is it simply a misunderstanding or is the one presenting herself as the victim of the other making a rather nasty power play? Who is the aggressor, the one who labels the other as an aggressor or the accuser? One signals innocence, and the other is the screen on which she projects her malevolence.
"She doth protest too much."
Symbols and interpretation = meaning, which causes actions which create more use of symbols and continuing interpretations, which all adds up to stories and plots.
On CBC News tonight, a story about teaching infants who aren't deaf to sign because they can communicate through signing at 8 or 9 months, much before they can use their tongue and lips to enunciate words. Human children can use language before they can talk; they can sign at a very young age. Think of those months of frustration before we could get our parents and others to understand what we wanted, even though we had language tools.
There is some speculation that this early "languaging" can affect the brain and make kids smarter. The researcher warns that parents who take the trouble to learn and teach signing to their kids are also providing a rich environment otherwise. So the kids who were signed with at an early age having higher I.Q.s than the non-signing kids may simply be the result of having a richer environment and more parental attention.
What I find truly fascinating is how early and intense our need to use symbols for communicating is. Humans are the species who connect. We link. We construct meaning. We try to share meanings and symbols. We connect sounds with things to connect what we "think" with other humans. We connect in order to connect. Meaning is what we live for and through.
And it is never a simple one-to-one connection. There are tones, nuances, hidden links, and surprising new readings - because we can't read each other's minds. If we are both "coming from the same place" we may be able to communicate very thoroughly with very few words and/or signs. Vygotsky, I think, points out that couples who have long been together can sometimes know what their partners are thinking with almost no overt communication, but that is knowledge of the person and the situation more than "mind-reading."
Post-modernism, as I understand it, is fascinated by how we create meaning, how we communicate. The first book that really helped me understand how people use language was Word Play by Peter Farb, and what I remember most clearly is his example of how an authority figure could use language to demean to hold power. When someone implicitly "defines the situation" they rule. The "other" is ruled by the assumptions established.
Two people, angry at each other - Who is the aggressor? The one who tells about how the other hurt her feelings, or the other who is surprised by the accusations which don't match her memory of what happened? Is it simply a misunderstanding or is the one presenting herself as the victim of the other making a rather nasty power play? Who is the aggressor, the one who labels the other as an aggressor or the accuser? One signals innocence, and the other is the screen on which she projects her malevolence.
"She doth protest too much."
Symbols and interpretation = meaning, which causes actions which create more use of symbols and continuing interpretations, which all adds up to stories and plots.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
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.
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.
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