Week 2 Representation

Question 1

Representation: Why we understand each other?

Answer 1

Language, meaning, culture

Question 2

What is representation?

Answer 2

The production of meaning through language

Question 3

How does representation work?

Answer 3

• Signs (words, sounds, notes, etc)
• Construct meaning and transmit it
• Signify
• “Signs stand for or represent our concepts, ideas, and feelings in such a way as to enable others to read, decode, or interpret their meaning in the same way we do”

Question 4

What is the Dual sense of Representation?

Answer 4

• To describe something, mental image of something “real” (objects, people, events)
• To symbolize/stand for something (objects, people, events)

Question 5

Complex mental representations include:

Answer 5

• Clustering of concepts
• Conceptual maps
• Arranged according to similarity and difference
• Causality

Question 6

How do people know they mean the same?

Answer 6

• Codes fix relationships between concepts and signs
• Code tells us which concepts are being referred to when we hear or read which signs
  -Codes make it possible to speak and hear intelligibly and establish translatability between our concepts and our language

Question 6

What are the two systems of representation?

Answer 6

• Mental representations (enables us to give meaning to world by constructing chain of equivalences between things)
• Signs/Languages (construct a set of correspondences between conceptual map and set of signs

Question 6

Culture & Meaning-Making

Answer 6

• Culture is concerned with production and exchange of meaning between members of society or group
• Depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them

Question 7

Feelings, attachments, and emotions regarding culture

Answer 7

Cultural meanings regulate social practices, influence conduct and consequently have real practical effects

Question 8

Why are meanings important?

Answer 8

• Mobilize powerful feelings and emotions
• Call identities into question
• Define what is normal and what is excluded
• Organized into sharply opposed binaries or opposites (male/female, black/white)
• Negotiated, contested, fluid

Question 9

What are the Semiotics (Areas of study)

Answer 9

• The sign (consists of study of different signs and the meaning they convey eg. traffic signs)
• Codes or systems (signs are organized, covers the ways that variety of codes have developed in order to meet needs of society or culture, eg color coding: red hot blue cold)
• The Culture (dependent upon use of codes and signs for its own existence and form: eg. the cross)

Question 10

Signs

Answer 10

• Iconic: signs bear resemblance to object they represent (eg. map represents actual landscape)
• Indexical: relationship between sign, concept and object is arbitray (eg. word dog is sign for animal)

Question 11

Structural Linguistics

Answer 11

• Relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary (eg. word tree has no link to actual object it represents)
• Opens up meaning and representation to history and change (meaning of words can shift over time)

Question 12

Bell Hooks on the role of theory:
“I think ______ and theory can be such a source of healing. It moves us forward”

Answer 12

Critical thinking

Question 13

Mental representation

Answer 13

• Thoughts
• Images
• Concepts
• Words

Question 14

Mental representation

Answer 14

• Thoughts
• Images
• Concepts
• Words

Question 15

Sharing mental maps

Answer 15

• Signs
• Organized into language
• To translate thought (concepts) into words

Question 16

Audre Lorde

Answer 16

• Thinking about difference
• Thinking about articulating difference

Question 17

Sign (De Saussure)

Answer 17

• Signifier (form) e.g. words
• Signified (concept) e.g. things, people

Question 18

What was the example in lecture of history and change in regards to signs?

Answer 18

• Black in western culture has negative connotation (dark, evil, forbidding, devilish, dangerous, sinful)
• Black in civil rights movement has positive connotation (beautiful, power)

Question 19

Criticism on De Saussure

Answer 19

• Lack of attention to “reference”: the world of things, people, events outside of language
• Lack of attention to interaction and dialogue

Question 20

Interpretation (Fiske)

Answer 20

• Interpretation is essential aspect of process where meaning is given or taken
• Reader is just as important as writer
• Signs that have not been intelligibly received or interpreted are not meaningful

Question 21

Hall: Every ______ given or encoded with meaning has to be meaningfully interpreted or decoded by the receiver

Answer 21

Signifier

Question 22

Semiotics and Media

Answer 22

• Cultural objects convey meaning
• Cultural practices depend on meaning
• Examining signs reveal underlying meanings (e.g. advertising, tv shows, fashion)

Question 23

Language as Cultural Space and Site of Power

Answer 23

• Representation is like dialogue: encode/decode
• “What sustains dialogue is the presence of shared cultural codes, which cannot guarantee that meanings will remain stable forever” - Hall
• Attempting to fix meaning is power intervening in discourse
• Codes only work if they are to some degree shared and at least to the extent that they make effective translation between speakers