Representation, meaning, and language
In his interview with Eve Bearne, Gunther Kress argues that literacy is that which
is about representation (Kress, in Bearne, 2005, p. 288). Because literacy
implies something that is mediated through text, in my previous post I questioned
the idea of what constitutes a text. After further consideration, I feel
that representation is the key; therefore, for the purposes of this post I have decided
to pursue representation a bit further.The following two graphics provide a visual
model for the way I have come to understand representation through various
readings (most notably, those by cultural theorist Stuart Hall). Although these
models represent the culmination of my understanding, I thought it would be
helpful to begin with these models and then proceed to deconstruct and explain
them throughout the post.
Model 1: Theories of Representation
Cultural theorist Stuart Hall describes representation as the process by which
meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture through the use
of language, signs and images which stand for or represent things (Hall,
1997). However, there are several different theories that describe how language is
used to represent the world; three of which are outlined above: reflective,
intentional and constructionist.
With reflective approach to representation, language is said to function like a
mirror; it reflects the true meaning of an object, person, idea or event as it already
exists in the world. The Greek word mimesis is used for this purpose to describe
how language imitates (or mimics) nature. Essentially, the reflective theory
proposes that language works by simply reflecting or imitating a fixed truth that
is already present in the real world (Hall, 1997).
The intentional approach argues the opposite, suggesting that the speaker or author
of a particular work imposes meaning onto the world through the use of
language. Words mean only what their author intends them to mean. This is not to
say that authors can go making up their own private languages; communication
the essence of language depends on shared linguistic conventions and shared
codes within a culture. The authors intended meanings/messages have to follow
these rules and conventions in order to be shared and understood (Hall, 1997).
The constructionist approach (sometimes referred to as the constructivist approach)
recognizes the social character of language and acknowledges that neither things in
themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning (Hall,
1997). Meaning is not inherent within an object itself, rather we construct meaning
using systems of representation (concepts and signs); I will elaborate upon these
systems further in my second model. According to Hall:
Constructivists do not deny the existence of the material world. However, it is not
the material world which conveys meaning: it is the language system or whatever
system we are using to represent our concepts. It is social actors who use the
conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other representational
systems to construct meaning, to make the world meaningful and to communicate
about that world meaningfully to others. (Hall, 1997, p. 25)
There are two major variants of the constructionist approach:
the semiotic approach, which was largely influenced by the Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure, and the discursive approach, which is associated with
French philosopher Michel Foucault.
Semiotics is the study of signs in a culture (culture as language), though
the semiotic approach doesnt consider how, when or why language is
used. Saussure believed that language was a rule-governed system that could be
studied with the law-like precision of a science (deemed structuralism). He
called this rule-governed structure la langue, and referred to individual
language acts as la parole (Culler, 1976). Many found Saussures model
appealing because they felt it offered a closed, structured, scientific approach to
the least scientific object of inquiry culture (Culler, 1976, p. 29).
Saussures great achievement was to force us to focus on language itself, as a
social fact; on the process of representation itself; on how language actually works
and the role it plays in the production of meaning. In doing so, he saved language
from the status of a mere transparent medium between things and meaning. He
showed, instead, that representation was a practice. (Hall, 1997, p. 34)
With the semiotic approach, in addition to words and images, objects themselves
can function as signifiers in the production of meaning (Hall, 1997). Therefore
from this perspective, going back to my previous post, my little book of plant
pressings may in fact be considered a text since each little plant was chosen as
a representative of an entire species. Because they were being used
to represent certain species, it is not the actual plant clipping itself that carries the
meaning, rather it is the symbolic function it serves in generalizing the morphology,
physiology, taxonomy etc.
What Saussure failed to address, however, were questions related to power in
language (Hall, 1997). Cultural theorists eventually rejected the idea that language
could be studied with law-like precision, mainly because language doesnt operate
within a closed system as Saussure suggests. In a culture, language tends to
operate across larger units of analysis narratives, statements, groups of images,
and whole discourses which operate across a variety of texts and areas of
knowledge (Hall, 1997).
Michel Foucault used the word representation to refer to the production
of knowledge (rather than just meaning) through the use of discourses (rather than
just language) (Foucault, 1980). His conception of discourse was less concerned
about whether things exist, as it was with where meaning comes from. Discourse is
always context-dependent.
J.P. Gee uses the concept of Discourse to describe the distinctive ways of
speaking, listening, reading and writing, coupled with distinctive ways of acting,
interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with other people and
with various object, tools, and technologies so as to enact specific socially
recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities (Gee,
2008, p. 155). As Foucault suggests in The Archaeology of Knowledge, nothing
has meaning outside of discourse (Foucault, 1972).
Additionally, for Foucault the formation of discourses had the potential to sustain a
regime of truth in a particular context. No form of thought could claim absolute
truth, because truth was all relative; knowledge, linked to power, can make itself
true.
Here I believe ones point of reference should not be the great model of language
(langue) and signs, but that of war and battle. The history which bears and
determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of
power not relations of meaning (Foucault, 1980, p. 114-115)
Model 2: Systems of Representation
Meaning is always produced within language; it is the practice of representation,
constructed through signifying. As described in the previous section, the real
world itself does not convey meaning. Instead, meaning-making relies two
different but related systems of representation: concepts and language.
Concepts are our mental representations of real-world phenomena. They may be
constructed from physical, material objects that we can perceive through our senses
(e.g. a chair, a flower, a tangerine), or they may be abstract things that we cannot
directly see, feel, or touch (e.g. love, war, culture). In our minds, we organize,
cluster, arrange and classify different concepts and build complex schema to
describe the relations between them (Hall, 1997).
If we have a concept for something, we can say we know its meaning, but we
cannot communicate this meaning without the second system of
representation: language. Language can include written or spoken words, but it
can also include visual images, gestures, body language, music, or other stimuli
such as traffic lights (Hall, 1997). It is important to note that language is
completely arbitrary, often bearing little resemblance to the things to which they
refer. As Stuart Hall describes:
Trees would not mind if we used the word SEERT trees written backwards to
represent the concept of them it is not at all clear that real trees know that they
are trees, and even less clear that they know that the word in English which
represents the concept of themselves is written TREE whereas in French it is
written ARBRE! As far as they are concerned, it could just as well be written COW
or VACHE or indeed XYZ (Hall, 1997, p. 21)
Codes govern the translation between concepts and language. These codes are
culturally constructed and stabilize meanings within different languages and
cultures. (Note: although meanings can be stabilized within a culture, they are
never finally fixed. Social and linguistic conventions change over time as cultures
evolve).
Saussure referred to the form, or the language used to refer to a concept, as the
signifier, and the corresponding idea it triggered in your head (the concept) as
the signified. Together, these constituted the sign, which he argued are
members of a system and are defined in relation to the other members of that
system (Culler, 1976, p. 19).
In order to produce meaning, signifiers have to be organized into a system
of differences (Hall, 1997). For example, it is not the particular colours used in a
traffic light that carries meaning red, yellow, green, blue, pink, violet or
vermillion are all arbitrary. What matters instead is that they are different and can
be distinguished from one another. It is the difference between Red and Green
which signifies not the colours themselves, or even the words used to describe
them (Hall, 1997).
Therefore, going back to my plant pressings dilemma, I am now inclined to argue
that my book of plant clippings is in fact a text. My wild rose clipping, for
example, serves as a material signifier to represent the concept of wild roseness (the idea) through its physiological differences to the other plants contained
in the book. Meaning is made through the fact that it represents wild roses even
though I could have chosen any other wild rose plant from which to take my
representative sample. The book itself is transportable and no longer tied to its
immediate context of production, which was an important criterion for Lankshear
and Knobels definition.
However, after compiling this research on representation, I have also come to
understand that the definition of text is less important than its interpretation:
There is a necessary and inevitable imprecision about language There is a
constant sliding of meaning in all interpretation, a margin something in excess of
what we intend to say in which other meanings overshadow the statement or the
text; where other associations are awakened to life, giving what we say a different
twist. So interpretation becomes an essential aspect of the process by which
meaning is given and taken (Hall, 1997, p. 32-33).
