Connotation and Denotation

I found the ideas in chapter 1 about language the most relevant to me. I especially like the idea that "there are no longer any innocent words" (40). This quote seems especially true now in our age of political correctness. I was thinking of all the mascot drama when I read this. I also had an AHA moment when the book put into words what I struggle with as a teacher of language as far as vocabulary is concerned. "The all-purpose word in the dictionary, a product of the neutralization of the practical relations within which it functions, has no social existence: in practice, it is always immersed in situations" (39). I took this as saying that a dictionary definition is useless in that it has no meaning outside a public or societal discourse. The word then only has a meaning when it is assigned one inside a social context. This gave me the insight that I really needed to help defend my method of teaching vocabulary. I don't care if the dictionary definition is memorized in its entirety. I insist on students being able to actually use the word in their writing and everyday discourse. Oddly enough, students have more difficulty placing the words into a situation (sentences) than they do with memorization. I have also had a run in with veteran teachers who insist that it isn't until they know the definition that they can use the words correctly which of course I have already proven incorrect based on previous test scores.

Hegemony

I am not sure of the purpose of hegemony other to provide for a gray area as opposed to the black and white way that Marx has set up the base and superstructure. I must admit I am struggling with these ideas as well. I have always (until this point) felt that what Williams includes in the hegemony has always existed in the superstructure, so I guess this is a new lesson in Marxism for me. Culture and ideology have existed in the superstructure for me as I have always thought of them in terms of them being attached to or a part of the legal and political (superstructure). What bothers me is the necessity of trying to break apart the pieces into so many parts that the message and ideas thus the whole point of using Marxism as a lens to approach "art" get lost in the complexities of societal analysis. We have extremely complex societies, and, I think, we recognize this. This does not make the base-superstructure approach wrong; it only makes our job as close readers much more complex in how we handle the relationships within complex societies and the works which are products of them.

Power Struggles

Foucault is searching for a way to examine theories and show the effects that they have on the societies which have given them power. He examines history and seems to search for center in the struggle for power. Which obviously goes back to deconstruction and Derrida. If we challenge the center, which is what seems to me the power stronghold, then we take back some of the power. In Barry last week I believe he stated that theories like Marxism and Feminism give us the lenses through which we are to read a piece of work, while structuralism gives the work itself power and deconstruction challenges the work thus challenging the power centers that have influenced the work. It's all a struggle for power.

Certainty vs. Confusion on a grand scale

Well, deconstructionists have decided to take the pendulum of thought and swing it in the completely opposite direction (and push it really hard). There are a few ideas that I do embrace. The idea of uncertainty is one of them. The philosophical aspect of deconstruction where "[t]here are no facts, only interpretations" (61) really hit home. I have trouble as a teacher in presenting only one interpretation of a text (which later is undermined by the state mandated standardized tests). I am, just as many philosophizers, "skeptical by nature" and question pretty much everything.

I also believe that "meanings are fluid" and that the "meaning words have can never be guaranteed one hundred percent pure" (to a point). I agree with this just simply based on the fact that languages evolve. When a language ceases to change it dies (for example Latin).

I also feel that reality is somewhat relativistic in that it is subject to an individuals interpretations as well as the extent in which the individual is "governed by the system" linguistically (according of couse to the structuralists).

Questions I would like to discuss as a class include:

What is the point of doing either a structuralist or deconstructive analysis of a text when both can be done on the same piece of writing thus "proving" a unified and disunified text?

What happens to power? (not just in the text but in reality which is created either by language or by the readers or interpreters of language)?

Rhetoric: The New Weapon of Mass Destruction

I had to post again after commenting on Marilyn's blog because I have a few more thoughts now on what happens when we mix the rhetoric of politics with the rhetoric of religion. Plain and simple rhetoric can and is a weapon of mass destruction when used to ascertain "truth" or "certainty."