Fun with Contextual Semantics
January 23rd, 2009 by Rick 6 Comments
So, the tricky people that defined the word semantics thought they could keep things simple by limiting its definition to the study of the literal meaning of words, leaving the interpretation of figurative meaning up to the folks in pragmatics.
But who studies the contextual meaning of words? The hermenauts look at the whole text and more recently even concern themselves with multimedia, but they aren’t looking through the text. Linguists look at language in social context, but what about aesthetic context? We’ve all been told that the form is central to content and meaning, but what exactly is its effect?
There is a way to break down the aesthetic context of messages and to determine the stylistic etymology of various forms. Currently this is done in art criticism, but doesn’t share across the hallway to the language department.
As modern art purged formal content and started eating its own plasticity, new discourse emerged to contextualize the new functions of art. Painting about painting, the Hip-hop remix, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, all that stuff.
My point is this: since the terms “graphic design,” “graphic arts,” “visual communication” came into existence people rarely read/view/absorb undesigned texts. They are increasingly aware that they are viewing designed texts, they’ve seen the Helvetica documentary, they like this logo and hate this one.
How do we begin, then, to parse the meaning of the aesthetic context of all of this designed information? If I make a word red or bold or blurry it changes its interpretation and thus its meaning. Why red? Why bold? Why blurry?
Ironically, pictorial imagery and symbolism developed before language, maybe we just forgot to pay attention to red and bold and blurry while we absorbed everything via romantic longhand set in Caslon.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:49 am
I think it’s wrong to push the analogy of art as a language too much. Language has some pretty clear formal properties (grammar) that do not seem related to function. I don’t think the same can be said of art.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:21 am
Well, I guess I’m not pushing the analogy that art is language, but more positing that language is art. The formal qualities of language (like grammar) serve a role equal to semantics. Conjugation of verbs attributes this action to that subject, just as perspective and composition relate objects/subjects/actions in representational painting.
Then there is cultural relativity in language, German reverses subject and predicate from English. English landscape painters always thought the grass should look brown and ruddy instead of green.
I can use passive voice (if I want to write a bad sentence) or I can use pastels. I think the materials that construct meaning are mostly interchangeable. Meaning has nearly infinite dimensions.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Are you saying writers don’t engage in literary criticism? A Mountain Dew bottle has both eXtreme graphics and eXtreme wording; I’m not so sure that there aren’t those who study the contextual meaning of words or are at least cognizant of them.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:57 am
Also, maybe the Stroop Effect is an extreme example of visual context altering the meaning of words.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:58 am
I’m saying there seems to be underlap in the area of criticism and analysis of the graphic/aesthetic form of language.
There are typographers, and type historians, and art historians, and art critics, but who is talking about why green with rounded oblique white drop-shadowed outer-glowing letters signifies extreme to western audiences?
I want there to be a field of aesthetic semioticians.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I guess if you keep it sufficiently vague the analogy works. But many linguists argue that the formal rules of grammar form a universal template that all languages adhere to and that is hardwired into us. For example, it’s true that in English the verb generally comes before the object and in German the object generally comes before the verb. Some linguists claim that an objective fact about all languages is that if you have a language like English the prepositions also come before their objects and if you have a language like German the prepositions also come after their objects. If they are right then language is not simply a cultural thing, but is some sort of biological thing.
I’m maybe too skeptical about the possibility that art works the same way as language in that regard.