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September 27, 2005
On Semiotics, iconography, metaphor, and chapter 1
When I first looked at all the reading we had to do, I frustrated myself and mentally prepared myself to severly dislike each word. I started with the Metaphor reading, which was a good idea.
I liked learning about Metaphor and Metonymy. When I think about it, we definetly use metaphor all the time in writing and speaking. When I critiqued my blog, I noticed that I used a lot of metaphor to describe metaphor. It seems talking in metaphors is so common and instilled in our brains. And, it is everyone because I am sure you all understand my blogs for the most part. My favorite part of the article was the breakdown of the metaphor "Love is a game." I laughed when I read each conclusion the author made to that metaphor and then I realized it is true. Though some metaphors may be used out of emotion (making it greatly hyperbolized etc.), they usually are right. Subconciously, we choose the right metaphor to use and it applies in many ways (even if we don't mean to imply other things (such as: in love and games, we cheat)).
Next, I found the semiotics and iconography reading slighty, overdone. The author used so many examples, I found myself skimming through them so I could get to the point. I read that others got caught up in the length and blurry meaning, so I tried my best to undo misunderstanding for myself. My favorite part of the article was reading about interpretations between past and present. It is true, we can interpret anything, from advertisements to paintings, to mean different things. Not only do we take our personal experience, but we either try to figure out how it fit in context to the time period it was made (or how the author thought) or we try to relate it to our modern society. As I read the article, I found myself getting caught up in the similar vocabulary (such as iconography and iconological) but for the most part, I enjoyed learning new things.
Both of the readings seemed very informational yet not terrible to read. I learned a lot in each page and I am excited to share more with you all. It's odd to think that I learned so much about the english language in highschool, yet there is so much more to learn (and this is only the fifth week of school).
Lastly, In the first chapter of POL I found several things to stand out more than others (a lot was repitition from my prior knowledge and the articles). First, I was fascinated by the picture "Their first murder." I looked at the expressions on the children and thought "Oh my gosh, they are devil children!" They all seemed to be either smirking or flat-out smiling. I read a little more of the page and realized that the book was inferring that the adults were just as fascinated. I denied this at first but then i realized, it is true. Our ears perk up to a news story on a plane crash, when there are car crashes we look out the windows and wonder what happened. Then, I looked back at the picture and realized that the adults were craning their necks to see too. This just says some things about human nature (whether its good or bad, we each have to decide for ourselves.). Next, I liked that the chapter pointed out that "no matter what social role and image plays, the creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective chioce..." The best example was the one of surveillance videos. I never thought about the fact that the camera was intented to view a certain area and even the camera maker made aethetic choices of it. It seems we cannot excape the fact that photos can be biased too. I enjoyed thinking about the fact that we put value to things because of where it is and what it is associated with. The book uses the example of Van Gogh's paintings. We generally depict them as "good art" because, foremost, we see them in museams. If something is put on display, we usually think it is a "masterpeice status." One of the articles included the fact that we associate things by what they are put with. For example, if someone is drinking a alcohol in a fine car (such as a rolls royce), we associate the two and assumet hat the alcohol must be fine too.
I found a lot of similarities between the articles and the book (so it got a tish redundant) but I prefer the way/style of writing in the book. Overall, I enjoyed the fact that I constantly learned while I read. Plus, we are learning about how we think, and thats a good thing because I think all of us generally want to know what's going on in our crazy minds.
Posted by lcisyeich at September 27, 2005 11:57 PM
Comments
Jessica,
I agree with you about being frustrated. It was so much reading, and as being a person who hates to read, it was tough. They were all very informative but at times I felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again as well.
I also agree with the pictures that stood out to you and I thought alot of the similar things. Especially with the human nature comment and how its just human nature to want to know what is going on when it comes to tradgedy or something big in the news.
Posted by: Rachel at September 28, 2005 10:46 AM
I also agree with you Jessica. I found the semotics reading very long and started to skim through a lot of the examples because there were so many of them. The "Their First Murder" picture in the book stood out to me too, and like you, I wanted to read about that picture because I wanted to know exactly what the caption meant.
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