Smiley Face - 4/15

Tuesday's class reflected on the fun you can have with language in a postmodern world - it's ironic how you can look up a simple word in the dictionary and find how the definitions of the words describing the original word looked up in fact has nothing to do with it! It is this process that refers to the difference of meaning from one word to another in an attempt to find clarity in the word, while this process inevitably leads to more confusion. DeSaussure was the first theorist to come to mind the moment language came up in class with his fundamental understanding of how differences make up language. As much as differences between words make up the language, what truly makes the language is the individual using it with their intertextuality influencing them. As much as a dictionary holds the 'official' definition of a word, bear in mind there are many dictionaries in the world, people take alternative understandings of words - for example everyone has a different definition of love. Dictionary.com provides 28 different explanations for the meaning of love, and not one definition refers to the physical feeling people have when they fall in love, or the spark young lovers have when they hold hands. A word like love merges to the defining of an individual of their being: their metaphysics. The individual's use of language represents the way they want to make themselves different from other people in order to find not only the origin of language but their own origin.
Overall, logocentrism means that we are interlocked into language and we therefore use it to find our original being. Curiosity holds as a key part of human nature and therefore therefore, being in logocentrism, we use the tools we have (language) to find out the truth (another word that one could have a field-day with when looking up its meaning!)