Rubber Soul, Saussure/Barthes

Saussure provided an example of how language has differing values--"Distinctions of time, which are so familiar to us, are unknown in certain languages. Hebrew does not recognize even the fundamental distinctions between the past, present, and future" (8). It's hard to imagine how communication would be possible without distinguishing tenses, but it's inevitable for varying cultures to weigh concepts differently. American society strongly stresses the concept of time. Barthes states, "...so strong is the belief that one need merely go fast in order not to be bored" (109) It is implied that if too much time passes without immediate entertainment, people will go elsewhere when their sense of time is so valuable to them, that they believe it should not be wasted on anything that is not apparently stimulating.

 When thinking of ways to connect the two readings of Saussure and Barthes, I thought maybe since we put different values on words, the words that are chosen to be used in some texts determine the degree in which we are drawn to or relate to the text. Much like how we put different values on objects, we would be more apt to visit a store that has those types of objects in it. But then Barthes goes on to explain the differences between a "text of pleasure" and a "text of bliss."  The former is described as content that grants euphoria by conforming with culture and does not break from it, "a comfortable practice of reading." The latter means that the content is discomforting in the sense that it disrupts the norms of the reader's "historical, cultural, and psychological assumptions" and ultimately brings to the forefront values that had never been considered. So now we enter a store with objects that we don't consider valuable, but then again we've never taken the time to really try them out for ourselves. The store metaphor seems a bit consumeristic, still I think it gets the point across that we might not immediately identify with certain concepts in certain texts, but if we don't give the texts a chance we will only ever identify with what we already know.  

"It is understood that concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relation with the other terms of the system" (9)