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Perspectives on Culture, Technology And Communication: The Media Ecology Tradition
An introduction to media ecology as a theory group that encompasses a coherent body of canonical literature and perspectives on understanding culture, technology and communication.
421 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 28, 2009
Best chapter is Nystrom's on Susanne Langer: "Symbols, Thought and 'Reality.'"
Langer's point in distinguishing between the symbolic and signalic functions of signs is to rebut the view that human language is merely a complex elaboration on the signalling systems used by other creatures, and like those systems, serves primarily communicative and utilitarian ends. That line of argument, she contends, leads inevitably to the privileging of discursive, propositional language over other forms of symbolic representation, because it is this form of representation that has made possible logic and science and all their utilitarian benefits. This view also relegates the arts to a minor and somewhat accidental position in the spectrum of human symbolic progress, because they do not seem to serve the destined utilitarian ends on which language is based and to which is must inevitably lead. By arguing that language is not, in its origins, and outgrowth of utilitarian signaling, but is, like the arts, a manifestation of the human mind's tendency to transform experience into symbols, Langer places the arts and discursive language on a par, as two different forms of that symbolic activity that characterizes all human thought.
Langer argues that the distinctively human need to transform experience into symbols has generated two quite different modes of representation. Both are equally symbolic, and both reflect the higher activities of mind. But the two modes are quite different in their forms and structures, the spectrum of human sensibility they represent and in the responses they engender. In short, Langer argues that the presentational forms offer, in their structures, complex analogues of sensory experience and feelings, of all that cannot fit within the sparse and parsimonious structures of propositional utterance. They also call forth a different mode of response. Where true language fosters analytic reasoning and linear thinking - the taking of things apart and the reconstructing of ideas in logical and grammatical sequence - the presentational forms foster the instantaneity of recognition, of gestalt apprehension, for the meanings of pictures, music, dance must be grasped as wholes or they cannot be grasped at all. Propositional utterance - true language or discourse - fosters the delayed response, not only because its elements are strung out one at a time in such a way that successive elements modify the meanings of preceding ones, but because the criterion of its merit is its truth or falsity. That requires time for tests of certification and refutation, the search for evidence in the non-word world to which propositions purport to correspond. Thus discourse directs our attention outward to the world beyond our skins. The criterion of merit for the presentational forms, on the other hand, is not their truth or falsity, but their consonance with the structure of our sensory experience and feeling. They direct attention inward.
The discourse and presentational modes of symbolic representation complement one another. Taken together, they permit us to do what neither mode can do alone: transform the entire range of knowledge and experience, thought and feeling, into symbols and so give articulated expression to the fundamental activity of human mind.
Langer's point in distinguishing between the symbolic and signalic functions of signs is to rebut the view that human language is merely a complex elaboration on the signalling systems used by other creatures, and like those systems, serves primarily communicative and utilitarian ends. That line of argument, she contends, leads inevitably to the privileging of discursive, propositional language over other forms of symbolic representation, because it is this form of representation that has made possible logic and science and all their utilitarian benefits. This view also relegates the arts to a minor and somewhat accidental position in the spectrum of human symbolic progress, because they do not seem to serve the destined utilitarian ends on which language is based and to which is must inevitably lead. By arguing that language is not, in its origins, and outgrowth of utilitarian signaling, but is, like the arts, a manifestation of the human mind's tendency to transform experience into symbols, Langer places the arts and discursive language on a par, as two different forms of that symbolic activity that characterizes all human thought.
Langer argues that the distinctively human need to transform experience into symbols has generated two quite different modes of representation. Both are equally symbolic, and both reflect the higher activities of mind. But the two modes are quite different in their forms and structures, the spectrum of human sensibility they represent and in the responses they engender. In short, Langer argues that the presentational forms offer, in their structures, complex analogues of sensory experience and feelings, of all that cannot fit within the sparse and parsimonious structures of propositional utterance. They also call forth a different mode of response. Where true language fosters analytic reasoning and linear thinking - the taking of things apart and the reconstructing of ideas in logical and grammatical sequence - the presentational forms foster the instantaneity of recognition, of gestalt apprehension, for the meanings of pictures, music, dance must be grasped as wholes or they cannot be grasped at all. Propositional utterance - true language or discourse - fosters the delayed response, not only because its elements are strung out one at a time in such a way that successive elements modify the meanings of preceding ones, but because the criterion of its merit is its truth or falsity. That requires time for tests of certification and refutation, the search for evidence in the non-word world to which propositions purport to correspond. Thus discourse directs our attention outward to the world beyond our skins. The criterion of merit for the presentational forms, on the other hand, is not their truth or falsity, but their consonance with the structure of our sensory experience and feeling. They direct attention inward.
The discourse and presentational modes of symbolic representation complement one another. Taken together, they permit us to do what neither mode can do alone: transform the entire range of knowledge and experience, thought and feeling, into symbols and so give articulated expression to the fundamental activity of human mind.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews