Semiotic @ Work

Our tutorial group did a concept map today & I must say that had really helped me understand what I have been exposed to for the past 4 weeks, for we were all forced to make sense of the words given to us & link them to one another.

The informal presentations by every mini-group of the concept map certainly made me learn even more, as I began to realise things which I did not notice beforehand. Now, at least I am sure of the followings, which I was unsure of previously:

Semiotic work refers to the process of meaning-making.

Synchronic Description refers to making meaning of a particular item there & now – pretty much based on the interpreter’s current context.

Diachronic Description refers to making meaning based on historical contexts – how meanings of a particular item have evolved.

Semiotic Innovation – new creations of meaning(s) of a particular item.

Semiotic Import – meanings that are adapted from other cultures, individuals, etc.

At the same time, I also found out from another group’s presentation that many of the concepts actually work two ways. Take interpreting an image for example – we apply semiotic importation when interpreting some small aspects of an image, & as we combine these interpretations together & apply them on the image as a whole, we actually engage in knowledge-transforming, and thus, a new form of knowledge is formed. This is a theory associated with Flower & Hayes, who are into the study of human’s cognitivism.

I somehow think that we may actually be transforming knowledge in our everyday lives, if not, most days, but we just aren’t aware of it. One such instance is of the act of using a book to fan oneself in a warm weather already shows how a book, meant for reading, is being used for fanning to generate wind for the person using it. This is viewed as knowledge-transforming because we see the interaction between the human’s hand and the book that produces something else, fanning in this case, which is the product of the interaction.

Hence, all we have to do is to open up our senses and be more observant of the things around us, & try to “make strange” some of the things we do that are deemed normal, & we will actually see that many things are in fact more than what we see them as on the surface.