Final Post

John,

One day in class when we were talking about the differences between the signifier and the signified you made a comment about the way comments made to different audiences have profoundly different effects. You made you point by saying that in Germany it is a pretty common and OK thing to say nigger and here in the U.S. that is clearly not OK. Furthermore here it is relatively accepted to make jokes about Nazis but that in Germany that not OK at all. I think that this statement is pretty profound and very applicable to how we interpret things. When you first said that, it completely took me off guard. Even writing this assignment I am sitting here feeling kind of bad typing out the word nigger. If our ideas of what is acceptable to say are so different, it makes me wonder what other things that I say, do, see or experience would also be signified differently by other people.

In several of the books that we read in this class it was important to note that interpretations could vary depending on the reader for this exact reason. It was consistently interesting to see how many people had such varied interpretations of the exact same text. The reading by Perkins (I can’t remember if we read this before or after your comment) made me think of what you said. Some of the comments that come out of that article would have been taken very differently by different sets of people. I think that most western economists would be able to hear those comments and think that makes perfect sense, we need to make money by acquiring resources and Africa has these resources. If someone from Africa heard these comments however, they would probably be interpreted in a very different way. I am sure that they would be a little more interested in the fact that someone saw their home as an asset to be “taken.” Even though either group would have heard the exact same thing word for word, the meaning would be vastly different.

Thinking about this comment also makes me think about just how much time must go into writing a book. It seems to me that an author must take a lot of time and effort to determine not just what to say, but how to say something that will communicate the desired meaning to their audience. For a piece of literature that attempts to investigate a controversial issue, this must be very challenging especially if that piece of literature is going to be read by a different audience. I am thinking to myself how I would talk or explain something to a good friend vs a teacher vs a coworker and all of these different situations would involve a different style of communication. I have never really thought about this before this class but I think that unconsciously (that’s for you Ben) I have always realized that what I say (signifier) can often be interpreted very differently (signified) depending on who I am talking to, and because of that it is important that I am aware of who I am communicating with and how their interpretations of something might vary.

In closing thanks for making the comment… It really made me think differently about how communication is not just dependant on the speaker/writer, but also on who is listening/reading