Semiotics!
In our discussion in class Wednesday, we used the reading to talk about the idea that language gives a concept its meaning, and that language is communicated in the form of symbols, such as words. I'm still wrapping my head around some of these things though, such as the claim that a concept doesn't exist without a way to describe it. As we touched on briefly in class, I wonder where this fits in for extremes, in terms of primal urges and sensations that even nowadays we have difficulty describing. Obviously, humans knew hunger before being able to call it that, but were they able to process it without understanding it? Can we contemplate ideas and sensations that we have no name for and can't pin down?
A continuation of this applies to aural signs as well. Noises such as police sirens and alarms are agreed upon messages, but is there a science element to them as well? A high pitched noise is uncomfortable and potential dangerous to our ears, so it makes sense that we would have negative associations with it. What about hearing a person scream? Did that not register as alarming before the idea of fear was named?
I'm on board with most of what our authors have been putting forward, in terms of how we make meaning and communicate it, and that many things are unsaid and conclusions happen on their own. But it seems to be implied that, at the time of these writings, semiotics was a concept that had never occurred to a single human being before. I believe that the idea of it was brand new, and that giving it a name and an area of study was revolutionary, but I do question the notion that no one in the history of time had pondered this before, but as we've been saying, didn't have a name for it, so it didn't exist according to semiotic standards.
In our discussion in class Wednesday, we used the reading to talk about the idea that language gives a concept its meaning, and that language is communicated in the form of symbols, such as words. I'm still wrapping my head around some of these things though, such as the claim that a concept doesn't exist without a way to describe it. As we touched on briefly in class, I wonder where this fits in for extremes, in terms of primal urges and sensations that even nowadays we have difficulty describing. Obviously, humans knew hunger before being able to call it that, but were they able to process it without understanding it? Can we contemplate ideas and sensations that we have no name for and can't pin down?
A continuation of this applies to aural signs as well. Noises such as police sirens and alarms are agreed upon messages, but is there a science element to them as well? A high pitched noise is uncomfortable and potential dangerous to our ears, so it makes sense that we would have negative associations with it. What about hearing a person scream? Did that not register as alarming before the idea of fear was named?
I'm on board with most of what our authors have been putting forward, in terms of how we make meaning and communicate it, and that many things are unsaid and conclusions happen on their own. But it seems to be implied that, at the time of these writings, semiotics was a concept that had never occurred to a single human being before. I believe that the idea of it was brand new, and that giving it a name and an area of study was revolutionary, but I do question the notion that no one in the history of time had pondered this before, but as we've been saying, didn't have a name for it, so it didn't exist according to semiotic standards.
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