I have always been fascinated by the inverse of things, by opposites, and the ying and yangs of life. The discussions we had in class on Thursday, September the 12th really connected this fascination in a new way for me, applying it to language which is the very breath of my studies. We discussed de Saussure's theories of how language is interdependent to the simultaneous presence of others” and that the segments of language get their significance from their non-coincidences to the rest. When something stands out or catches attention, it’s because it is out of the norm. I think in patterns and I believe most humans do, there’s a natural desire to have things maintained and orderly in our understanding. I find it interesting that language, the very thing most of us use to make order and sense of our environments, is founded upon the very necessity to stand out or be a non-coincidence to break said “patterns.” I liked how we took this thought further in our class discussion and brought up the very nature of a definition, that we define things by what they are not. The comparison and contrasting of things in proximity are what give it their significance, and are what ultimately developed the signified utterances or words we use to identify signifiers in our everyday language practices.
Applying this to my world, I see a lot of polarization in our country today, politically yes but it doesn’t end there. I wonder if instead of drawing harsh black and white lines and borders in our understandings of things we view as “completely opposing” to our held beliefs if we would see that they are just different, not opposite. How I apply this to my world is by understanding that different doesn’t mean the opposite. Just because a religion isn’t the same as another doesn’t mean there are opposite religions, they are simply different, which isn’t wrong it’s actually what makes each signify-able. I see this as linguistic understanding ultimately bringing forth more peaceful conversations surrounding controversial topics.
WORD COUNT: 341
No comments:
Post a Comment