Starfish 3/18

Today’s class made me thing back to De Saussure. “Choice of a given slice of sound to name a given idea is completely arbitrary.” In life as well as language, I might look at something and it will mean something completely different to me then somebody else who observes it. Dick Hebdige discusses this notion by talking about ideologies in our culture. These ideologies tell individuals how to see something or what to think of right away. For example, when Dr. Roger wrote the word ARod on the board I immediately jumped to thoughts of the Yankees. I automatically made the assumption that ARod was a baseball player without thinking of any other possible meanings. ARod, however, could have signified a pop singer or the name of a town in another culture. I see how these different ideologies can cause dilemmas. Volosinov said, “Sign becomes the arena of the class struggle.” These different assumptions that people have can lead to arguments. For example, the conflict is the Middle East is due to ideological assumptions. Israelis believe that Israel is their holy land and Palestinians believe that it is their holy land. Each culture was taught to believe that Israel is their holy land and these two different assumptions or ideologies activated struggle and war.

Another aspect of today’s lesson that I found interesting was the whole idea of culture being the “ordinary behavior of the people” Williams. We are a transforming and moving culture. What is in and what is “cool” is always changing. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the times. I always find myself buying a cell phone or an IPod thinking it is amazing and then the next day something even better will come out and what I have bought wont be considered popular anymore. We can link this to Haberman’s theories of modernity, which says what is modern is always changing and always moving. We, as a culture, are never at a stand still. We are in constant motion, never stopping.