Individual and Collective Meanings through Language, Art, and Performance - Research Paper Example

8 December What I Mean is What I Mean and Oftentimes, What Others Mean Too: Individual and Collective Meanings through Language, Art, and Performance What people mean is what they mean, and sometimes, what others mean too, although not all the time. Occasionally, an individual may say a word, but its meaning could differ across listeners, depending on the meanings that the latter put to that word. Based on these examples, meaning is a complex word because it is personally and/or collectively produced through diverse methods. Language is the most prominent way of making meaning, although this does not mean that the illiterate, blind, deaf, mute, and others who cannot speak, read, or write cannot make meaning. Meaning is not limited to the written or verbal language systems. This paper analyzes what meaning is and where it comes from and why. Although people can generate meaning without language, the system of language and the openness of arts and performance allow people to think about meaning in both traditional and nontraditional means that can affect their meaning-making practices and that of their audiences too. Meaning is defined through several approaches. The first group of theories focuses on the “referential” or “denotational” meaning of meaning (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 53). They stress that meaning is the “aboutness” of the words, where meaning refers to the connection between words and objects, based on what a group or society asserted that they mean (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 53). Studying meaning requires examining the relationships between words and their signified objects, which are the concerns of philosophical and mathematical logic (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 53). The second group of theories on meaning can be called “psychologistic” or “mentalistic” because they are “inward looking” (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 53). They stress that language has a cognitive structure in making meaning, where the meaning of symbols depend on what people understand when they are being used (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 53). The study of meaning represents to the examination of mental representations, and this is the basis of majority of works on psychology and artificial intelligence (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 53). The third group of theories is characterized as “social” or “pragmatic” because communication is perceived as a social activity and so meaning is socially made and used (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 54). These theories provide a full meaning of meaning because meaning has dimensions of representation, denotation, and pragmatism (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 54). For the purposes of this paper, meaning intersects its representational, denotative, and pragmatic dimensions and functions. Meaning is about what the word means based on what society in general agrees it is, what other symbols it can be connected to, and its actual uses in lived individual and collective lives. Language is the dominant way of making meaning. People make meaning by using language to think about meaning. Kafka’s novel, The Trial, involves making meaning of his experience through language. He strives to understand the origins of the charges against him through the language system that he knows. Nevertheless, because of lack of information, he cannot derive meaning from his predicament. He is being punished for something that is meaningless to him, but meaningful to his judges. Another example is making meaning through reflection and analysis. When reading and analyzing something to find its meaning, students use language to brainstorm ideas and to come up with a thesis. Their language gives them the words and mechanics that help them express their thoughts about the text being examined. Aside from the general process of making meaning, language is used in its denotative form to understand meaning. The word “sad” is about feeling the opposite of happy, at least in the denotative sense. Happiness is about a state of joy or pleasure, depending on the dictionary being used or the person defining it. Language helps people express what they want to say according to how other people can also understand it. Aside from making meaning out of the denotation of words, meaning also comes from connotation. Connotation, by denotation, pertains to associated or connected feelings or ideas about a word. A home, for instance, connotates a family, often a happy one. A bad family cannot evoke feelings of home for some people. Language helps people find meaning in words because of their personal or social associations to it. This brings language to providing a social dimension of making meaning. Language can produce meaning through social interactions. Friends, for instance, can make their own language game that has specific meanings that are beyond connotation and denotation. When they say “bricky,” for example, they are talking about a specific teacher, who they think has no emotions and who physically punishes her students. Through these examples, language helps people make meaning based on what denotation, connotation, and pragmatic meanings that it provides. To delve further into the social process of making meaning, people make meaning by communicating their ideas and opinions to others. Public expression helps people think about meaning more because they explain themselves to their audiences. If a student will just think about the meaning of meaning for his own needs, he might just provide a simple definition. However, if he is asked to explain it to others, he might be forced to think more about it. He will study the meaning of meaning using diverse resources, and then formulate his own idea of meaning. He will explain it using words that his audience will understand. Furthermore, public expression improves meaning when people have to defend themselves. For the same example, the student will use logos, pathos, or ethos, or combinations thereof, depending on what he thinks will be most persuasive for his audience. Because he is speaking to his target audience, he goes through a rigorous process of making meaning, especially avoiding logical fallacies and ambiguities. He wants to be a credible speaker, and he cannot attain this status, if his arguments are weak and vague. Social expression provides feedback that helps people analyze how they make meaning. When the student delivers his research to the audience, they will ask questions or criticize his claims. As a result of feedback, the student further goes through the process of making meaning. The social feedback can help him improve what he means about meaning, thereby helping him find meaning. Socialization leads to exchange of ideas that help people establish what they mean when they talk about meaning. The audience has a large impact on how meaning is made, expressed, and changed or improved. Language can be specified to specific audiences or to wider ones, which can help generate meaning-making as a social process with social outcomes. When President Barack Obama delivers a speech, he aspires for a specific or general American audience to understand what he means and to be persuaded of his objectives. His target meaning can have positive social consequences that may also be meaningful to the people, especially when it affects their welfare in one or more dimensions, such as economic and health conditions. While language can have positive social outcomes, language can also be used to inform and/or persuade specific audiences, so that its meaning can be better appreciated. Meaning has meaning in itself when people appreciate them. Astor talks about the job of psychologists of trying to understand the meaning of their patients from their own perspectives (214). If they grasp what it means, in the mentalistic sense of language, a better connection between speakers and listeners can be attained. A different purpose can lead to language being used to help the general audience find meaning in the topic itself. New or overlooked issues might need to reach a larger audience. This includes helping the general public understand that an issue is meaningful, such as the issue of light pollution. The overwhelming lights during the night seem to be beautiful to some people, but it can have negative effects on nocturnal land and sea animals. The lights can distort migration or reproductive patterns of animals, for example. This issue must be expressed in ways that the words have meaning for the target audience, so that they can understand why the issue is meaningful to their own lives. Thus, the kinds of audiences and what they know or do not know affect the meaning of words and how the writers or speakers will use them for specific purposes. This paper proceeds to some of the issues of meaning, including meaning and freedoms, where without freedom of speech, movement, and mobilization, people lose their capacity to make meaning collectively, which affects them as individuals too. In The Trial, K. loses his freedom of speech because he realizes that his speech means nothing to the judges. This shows the difference between having the ability to speak freely and having the influence for that speech to mean something to specific people and needs. When K. stopped speaking and asking help from his lawyer and others, he falls into despair and loses interest in his work, since life has no meaning when the state does not respect his opinions and ideas. Brown talks about social class and how justice applies differently, depending on social status for K. (28). He asserts that the novel is an “allegory of class struggle,” where justice is meaningless to the poor (28). Moreover, K. detaches himself emotionally from people and his case, not because he wants to die, but because life has no meaning anyway when freedom does not exist. K. is allowed to live as he used to, but this is a false illusion of his freedom. In reality, he is not free to do as he pleases for he is imprisoned in his society. The meaning of freedom is false and misleading. Furthermore, K. cannot make meaning of his predicament with others. No one seems to be truly helping, at least in his opinion. People must be wary of helping a condemned man, which affects the ability of the people to collectively understand what K. is going through. Perhaps, they are afraid to understand the meaning of K.’s trial. They fear the knowledge that they, like K., is never free in the fullest sense of the word, if the government can easily charge them of an invisible case, wherein they will be shot like a dog in the end. Thus, the social process of making meaning can have profound effects, depending on the rights and context of the people. People tend to make meaning through language but it is not always successful enough because of the limitations of people’s use and understanding of language, and so the art and craft of making meaning should also depend on the arts and performances because they can include meaning that language cannot fully capture and express. The arts can include symbols that can go beyond meaning in its traditional sense, and this can be performed individually. Ali asks about the value of meaning, where art may have meaning in itself because of the meaning it contains, or because of the meaning that people put on it. For the artist, his work helps him make meaning of something that is important to him or troubles him for instance. Feminist artists who paint about women in strongly traditional male positions may stress the liberation of women at the workplace. Individual viewers can make meaning of the work in diverse ways, depending on their background and the paradigm that guides their interpretation. Who they are, who they want to be, and what group they belong can shape their perceptions. Sometimes, they cannot express themselves in words, but they use art to embody what they mean. Hence, art contains meaning in itself, or helps people express their meanings. Making meaning can also include group processes that entail discussion and individual and collective methods of interpretation. Hubard explores the three ways of group dialogue about artworks: “predetermined, interpretive-thematic, and interpretive-open” (41). Predetermined dialogues facilitate students into attaining tangible understandings through predetermined questions (Hubard 41). The paradigm remains within the realm of objectivism, where teachers determine what is meaningful to learn and transfers that thinking to their students (Hubard 41). Unlike objectivist lectures, predetermined dialogue, nevertheless, enables students to learn target knowledge and skills through their own reasoning (Hubard 41). Interpretive dialogue does not aim to express given ideas, but rather facilitate students to build their own meaning in reaction to an artwork (Hubard 42). These dialogues support critical and constructive pedagogical approaches where the reason is “not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the ... construction of knowledge,” as Freire discussed in 1998 (Hubard 42). In thematic dialogue, the teacher gives the limits of investigation by choosing an element an artwork for students to investigate, or a specific paradigm for interpretation (Hubard 42). Working with themes is beneficial because through having a specific focus; it can help students make sense of the art in a deep way that will juxtapose art, life issues, and school curriculum (Hubard 43). Themes can also connect different artworks that provide diverse perspectives on a similar idea (Hubard 43). The second type of interpretive dialogue is open dialogue, which asserts that artworks are not a representation of a solitary theme: “They are multidimensional objects with layers of interrelated meaning that inform, complement, or even contradict each other” (Hubard 43). Artwork can be perceived as intricate and multilayered works that allow people to agree to disagree (Hubard 43). These processes are only some ways of how people can make meaning of art and meaning together and as individuals. Music and performance can help people make meaning because it offers social symbols, both reinforcing and producing them, which help people understand their realities and identities. Widdess studies musical meaning in culture through analyzing music as social symbol and as a continuing process of meaning production. He offers three examples of nonwestern musical practices that can depict how musical meaning is entrenched in cultural context. First, Widdess shows that performing an Australian Aboriginal song shows the interdependence between song style and social structure, where cultural meanings are made and reinforced (94). Music makes cultural meanings available to all through this performance. Second, a North Indian dance shows that meaning has multiple layers that can be interpreted from the musical performance (Widdess 94). Music becomes a way of expressing different kinds of meanings. Third, a festival in Nepal shows that many ways that musical performance describes local cultural forms (Widdess 94). Hence, music has nonlinguistic aspects that are specific to cultural groups, and in many ways, it can help establish, reinforce, or change meanings. The art and craft of making meaning will depend on how people want to make meaning, although based on the social patterns of social connections through social networking sites and the rise of individualist thinking through blogs and other new media channels, meaning will become more collectively made, but certain influential individuals can shape it. Pop icons and other social figures can affect how people understand meaning. They offer impetus or changes in how people find or change meaning. Social circles or groups help people find meaning too. When people are bound through their Facebook profiles and similar interests, for instance, they can make new meanings or reinforce existing meanings. The social may subjugate the individual, but the individual can find ways to find meaning that makes the most meaning for him or her. The interplay between the group and the individual presents challenges and opportunities for making complex meanings. People should make meaning through language, the arts, and performances, because language gives them a traditional symbol-signified system that helps them think of and express meaning to themselves and others, while the arts and performance make meaning beyond what words cannot express to a wider or more specific audiences. As for the feelings regarding the tug between individual and social ways of making meaning, I believe that this process is important, so that meaning retains its meaning for people. If they can make meaning together or as individuals or in mixed ways, their methods will shape their meaning making paradigms and experiences. Meaning, like human existence, has many layers and meanings, which makes sense, since humanity decides ultimately what meaning is. Works Cited Ali, Kazim. “Ersatz Everything.” American Poetry Review 37.4 (2008): 53-58. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Astor, James. “Saying What You Mean, Meaning What You Say: Language, Interaction and Interpretation.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 56.2 (2011): 203-216. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. Social Sciences Citation Index. Brown, Russell E. “Kafka's The Trial.” Explicator 46.4 (1988): 26-29. . 5 Dec. 2012. Academic Search Complete. Chierchia, Gennaro, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics. 2nd ed. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology P. Hubard, Olga M. “Three Modes of Dialogue about Works of Art.” Art Education 63.3 (2010): 40-45. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. Education Research Complete. Kafka, Franz. The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text. Trans. Breon Mitchell. New York: Schocken, 1998. Print. Widdess, Richard. “Music, Meaning and Culture.” Empirical Musicology Review 7.1/2 (2012): 88-94. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. Academic Search Complete. Read More