Dear Erin,
I noted your interest in my reason for stating that meaning is
the relationship between stories and readers from your earlier
posts, but have no time for a long answer.
The reason is not related to the Sufi saying you quote
29/116:07 -0500.
You could try to read my 8/10 22:35 +0100 post in the 'of doctors
and germs...' thread for an answer.
The relevant part (that may be difficult to understand out of its
context...) is:
'Semiology started as as extension of general linguistics to all
cultural phenomena (not just language). According to writers
like Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes all such phenomena
have "meaning". "Meanings" (both denotations and connotations)
depend on context and structure and can be objectively
"deciphered".
Semiology was criticized by ... critical semiologists like Julia
Kristeva and Eliseo Veron for its neglect of the socio-historic
dimension of "meaning", for artificially separating "culture" and
(historically grown) "society". For them "meaning" is given (and
determined) by the "reader", or rather by the context in which
the "reader" experiences the cultural or social phenomenon that
is "given meaning" and by the structure (pattern!) he sees in it.
Although critical semiology denies the responsibility of the
"sender" for the "meaning" of a phenomenon for the "reader" (and
therefore the possibility of manipulating the thinking of
exploited classes by ruling classes!), a "reader" is not free to
give phenomena any "meaning". Society functions because of a
"grammar", a system of relations between the meaning of phenomena
and the social context in which they are "received", "ideology"
in another meaning. It was this type of "ideology" (as used by
critical semiologists) which I had in mind when I wrote 25/9
23:00 +0200: "An intellectual pattern of values does not consist
of one system of ideas (developed by either a privileged or an
underprivileged group of people) but it consists of all the
systems of ideas developed in that (part of) society, the pattern
being their correlation with social roles and positions."'
With friendly greetings,
Wim
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:48 BST