Starfish 1/22

While reading this week’s assigned material, I found myself drowning in concepts and words I couldn’t grasp. I then remembered that Dr. Rog told us in class not to freak out if the reading was hard to understand, which made me feel a little bit better. In class on Tuesday everything came to light due to our discussion in class. Now I feel I truly understand the idea of semiotics and I feel my view of language in general has changes tremendously. A quote from class that really stuck with me was “Choice of a given slice of sound to name a given idea is completely arbitrary” (6). I completely agree with this statement and have often thought about this in my own way. For example, sometimes when saying a certain word I begin to find that the word sounds funny. Spoon, chair, table. These seem so random. Why were these words chosen to name these items? This reiterates the quote above.
Another thing I found interesting was the whole idea of signs. In CMC 100 we had discussed the signifier and signified in advertisements and things such as that. We also discussed how these two things work together to create a sign but I never really realized how much a sign could change its meaning until the Exxon exercise we did in class. From my perspective, I see a sign and automatically link it with a past experience or a feeling, but a sign can mean something very different to someone else viewing it. This is why media is an open text because different people have different views and perspectives about certain aspects of media. I believe that the study of language and signs is a critical aspect to be studying for this major and a very interesting one as well. We see signs and use words to communicate everyday and think nothing of it. I really do believe that Dr. Rog was right when he said this class would change our thinking and our views forever because after discussing language and signs like we have, it is hard not to look at it all in a different light.