Friday, March 13, 2009

Language vs. Meaning



20 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not too sure what this post is about, but if it is about what we were talking about like the word pipe and the picture of the pipe, then i think that concept is some what ridiculous because we all know what it is referring to and i just think it is over analyzing things just for the sake of analyzing things!

Mr. Plainview said...

But there is no pipe. Anyway, this is analyzing things for the sake of blogging.

Mr. Plainview said...

Think about it. There is no nothing. "Nothing" is a word. That's all. This isn't even a blog. You could argue its just letters on an electronic screen. But these are all words! Nothing more. There isn't even nothing.

Mr. Plainview said...

Actually, this is very annoying now that I think about it. Obviously, we use words to represent things. I guess it's just that some things seems too complicated to channel into words.

Mr. Plainview said...

Take the penguin, for example. That is so much more than a penguin.

Anonymous said...

no no i agree with you that yes that is more than a penguin, and this is not a blog, but just the word blog. But these words are what we identify with that specific object and label it is and we should just leave it like that and not try to make more of it then there needs to be.

jp said...

This just seems like a silly topic to me. Of course words only mean whatever we say they mean - language reflects reality, it does not create it.

Of course, you can "create" stories out of words, but what you're really creating is a story. The words are still only reflecting the story that you're telling.



What is "deconstruction," anyway? I am not deconstructing the word deconstruction right now.

El Paco said...

So could this be considered, like, postmodernism in art? Eh? Eh?

Ehren said...

Yes, I think it is kind of post-modernism in art. The author of "ceci n'est pas une pipe" is referencing his work in his work, doesen't that qualify?

joel derby said...

Ya, I was going to define po-mo, but I really don't know how, but it certainly feels like post-modernism. The fact that he talks about the painting in the painting is something that is unheard until this point. He's also challenging the entire concept of art, by going against what art was always meant to be, which is the representation of the real thing and making it real with the paint.

Anonymous said...

i agree with john. i think that meaning is given by language in that language is a great tool to describe.

michelle scandurro said...

Hold the phone!! We haven't gotten to POMO yet!! But we're close...very, very close. Hee hee.

Manal said...

I think its kind of self explanatory that words are just words and if someone called a shirt a pair of pants while everyone could see the shirt he was talking about, the shirt would not actually become a pair of pants but that everyone would understand the shirt was a shirt because it was right in front of their eyes.

Aaron Nussdorf said...

I think that the key to language is to represent ideas and thoughts. Words mearly represent something that we experience: emotions, physical objects or other non-physical experiences. Since humans have not evolved to have "mind-reading" abilities, we have to use language to communicate our thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

Random ditty: I "created" and/or use a nonsense word for a bird whose "common name" I do not know.

Mr. Plainview said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mr. Plainview said...

Peter the PoMo Penguin thinks this is an interesting topic.

Anonymous said...

In the words of Rusell Brand "This is just language jimmy, it holds no meaning, just words" I believe him. Words can have meaning when used in that way, but in the end they are just letters arranged in a particular order.

puddlewonderful said...

This may only be tangential to the topic, but I'll say it anyway.

I love when writers push language. Sure, we can all use language to represent our thoughts-- the door is blue. The floor is hard. Your mom is fat, and so on. But then there's James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, e. e. cummings (No, I'm not biased in my selection! Whyever would you ask?) They've all strained the bounds of language through its structure, its meaning, its form. They redefine words and grammar. They use language in unconventional ways to represent thoughts as they have never be represented before, to create ideas never properly expressed on paper. It's really quite wonderful.

tmichals said...

So I'm not entirely sure what this blog is really about or what's going on but oh well. Words are the ultimate expression of our thoughts and hold tremendous value. Whether words are just "words" or if they are more than that, think about the huge impact one's words can have on somebody else.

Anonymous said...

I was saying that the "words" themselves have no impact on the reader, its the ideas behind them. If you read a gloriously patriotic work that fills you with joy and pride in your country, it would be because of the literal words. It would be the composition of the many words and the meaning behind them. If each word in that work was given to the person in a random order or one at a time then they would not have felt the same emotion. its the composition of them that makes all the difference.