READING ASSIGNMENT 2
REPRESENTATIONS
-Representations may be expressions of intangible ideas, concepts, or feelings in some physical form. They may also communicate information about tangible objects, people, or places in the real world in a different physical form. The most basic unit of the representation is the sign; which is something that stands for something else to someone in some respect.
CONTEXT OF CULTURE
-The Reflective Approach: The meaning resides in the object, person, or event in the real world and that the language system simply reflects or mimics what is already there.
-The Intentional Approach: The meaning is imposed on the object, person, or event by the author or maker of the representation. If true, we would be able to communicate through entirely private languages.
-The Constructionist Approach: The acknowledgement of the public, social character of language. This theory posits that we construct meaning through the use of representational systems that link concepts to sings.
CHOOSING AN APPROPRIATE SIGN
-Categorization: How we identify stimuli in our environment an group them in memory as members of a category, similar to others in that category and different form members of other categories. Categorization allows us to think and communicate metaphorically. We need not see the actual thing being represented, in a literal sense, as long as, to the people who are viewing the sign, it shares some important quality with the thing it stands for.
-Representational: The denotative and connotative content of the subject matter, meaning can be communicated by the representational style through which it is rendered.
-Representations sometimes communicate not only their subject matter but also meanings implied by the technology through which they are made. Such meanings are subject-matter-independent and arise from the semantic network of connotations associated with the technology itself.
ORDERING THE ELEMENTS WITHIN THE REPRESENTATION
-The visual arrangement or ordering of elements within the representation, called the syntax, also influences how we interpret meaning. We assign significance to the placement, orientation, and perceived hierarchy among elements within the visual field.
