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Summary Barker & Jane Chapter 3
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Barker & Jane Chapter 3
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Barker & JaneChapter 3: Culture, Meaning and Knowledge: The Linguistic Turn In Cultural Studies
Language is where cultural meanings are formed and communicated. Language is how we form
knowledge about ourselves and the social world.
Language isn’t a neutral medium, it is constitutive; it gives meaning, structures meaning and limits
meaning, regardless of a speaker’s intention.
Ferdinand De Saussure (1857-1913)
distinguished between language and parole
developed semiotics
structuralism: cultural meaning is produced in a system that is like a language.
Signifying systems use signs.
The relationship between the signifier and the signified are arbitrary.
the syntagmatic axis: the linear combination of signs that form sentences.
the paradigmatic: the field of signs and synonyms.
Meaning is fluid, culturally and historically specific and not universal.
Cultural codes or conventions become naturalized: red means stop, green means go.
Cultural objects convey meaning, so cultural practices are open to semiotic analysis.
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
systems of signification
denotation is the descriptive, literal level of meaning
connotation is the meaning that is generated by connecting signifiers to wider cultural concerns.
Meanings then multiply from a given sign, so one sign has many meanings.
Barthes (1972) Myth Today
myth: a is a cultural construction that makes a particular world view seem unchallengeable and
natural. It is a second-order semiological system, or a meta-language.
Barthes distinguishes between linguistic code and visual code
polysemic signs: signs carry many potential meanings, so different interpretations are possible.
Reader temporarily fix meaning depending on their knowledge of social and cultural codes.
Volosinov: ideology corresponds with signs.
(1973) the ‘multi-accentuality’ of the sign. Signs have an ‘inner dialectical quality’ and an
‘evaluative accent.’ Meanings are negotiable. So, Volosinov says, ‘the sign becomes an arena of
class struggle,’ or ideological struggle over the significance of signs.
Bakhtin: (1984) all understanding is dialogical in character.
Both Bakhtin and Volosinov say meaning is unstable, the result of politics and power dynamics
“Meaning is unstable” >>> poststructuralism
Barthes: meaning is the outcome of intertextuality
Jaques Derrida: (1976) meaning is always deferred.
Language creates meaning through difference. Meaning is nothing but signs. Signs have no fixed
meaning. Even meaning we consider stable is only conveyed through language, which is an
unstable medium.
logocentrism: reliance on universal meaning
phonocentrism: the priority given to sound and speech in explaining how meaning is generated.
Derrida critiques both these -centrisms. He says truth doesn’t exist outside verbal or written
representation.
differance: difference + deferral of meaning
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