Dot, Tmesis, 1/23

In class yesterday we discussed "tmesis" and the idea behind it. I think it is a very interesting concept and I was intrigued to learn more. Like many things in our lives, tmesis is something that we do not always realizing we are doing.  We employ in our everyday lives, but have become so used to the process that we hardly recognize the connections and assumptions we make when viewing any kind of text.

As we found in class, it is extremely difficult to look at something and not have assume something. This is mostly due to the preconceived notions we have due to the fact that once a person has a basic meaning or connection to something it is nearly impossible to get rid of it and not to think about it when viewing something new. Especially in our language when one word can mean so many different things, it is hard not to infer and make ties with what we have just seen to what we already know.

As I am sure we can all infer and as Barthes claimed, "the author cannot predict tmesis", meaning that there is no way to definitely know what a person will think about when viewing a certain text. Also, it is very rare that two people will view the same text in exactly the same way. We have all been exposed to different things and therefore take different meanings from different words and images, making it nearly impossible to fully predict what a person will infer from a text. 

For instance, the following image, a sign that many of us have probably seen before, can be interpreted in many different ways. We can assume that the creator of this sign meant it to be used in parks, playgrounds and neighborhoods where children play to signify that people should drive slowly. When I first saw this sign though, I thought of slow as describing the children as mentally slow and that they were playing. Someone else may get a different meaning from this sign. This just proves Barthes theory of tmesis and it's importance in our lives.