Barthes, Language, and Communication

Well, I think my biggest tripping point is that I never took a linguistics class. There are terms in here that I'm familiar with, and I'm following it just fine, but then all of the sudden there's an example that I don't understand at all. Usually the examples are the best way for me to understand something, so I can see a concept in practice, but Barthes' examples (with the exception of the car window example) are more confusing than the concepts. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the concepts.

For the two chapters, I find the fact that they're referring to each other pretty useless, since I'm just as bewildered by both of them when they're talking about Luhmann. I think the "Language" article almost explained it to me, but then I took a break from reading it because it gave me a headache and I lost the train of thought that illuminated what Luhmann was saying. I never got it back fully. After the third reading of both chapters, though, I started to get it. I think that what makes this difficult for me is that I'm used to having a synchronous conversation about concepts that I don't understand and negotiating my understanding in the moment, rather than returning hours later. Mentally, I'm like a dwarf in "The Lord of The Rings", dangerous at short distances, but not cut out for long distances. I have no attention span for the long haul, and these chapters require the long haul. I'll keep reading them to see if I can understand any more than I do now.

I do find the historical/theoretical groundings provided on the course website very helpful for overcoming some of my confusion.

The concepts I do have a hold on in these readings are Saussure's (which spellcheck keeps trying to make "Sausage", so if I miss one, it's supposed to say "Saussure"). I understand the signifier and signified, and the signification, and I get the little chart that moves to the idea of myth and myth's appropriation of the sign. I understand that there is the actual meaning of an item/object/phrase/article/whatever, and then there is the meaning I associate with it, and then there is the ideological level. I'll try to explain this with an example that isn't useless to me.

Look! It's the Duke, so you know we're in for a fun time, right? Okay, so here is my take on this business with the Duke.

1. This is a picture of John Wayne, el dukerino, in front of an American flag.
2. John Wayne is an American movie star and mostly starred in war flicks and Westerns, so we associate him with guns and general badassedness. (Sign)
3. The myth in this picture, for me, is the ideology of American badassedness, of Manifest Destiny, and American Exceptionalism.

The way I understand these three is:

1 = what it is
2 = what it does
3 = to which use it is put, ideologically

If this were, say, Stephen Urkel from Family Matters in front of the American flag, it would counter the ideology of the Duke. If it were the Hoff in front of a German flag, it would do the same thing as replacing the Duke with Urkel - it would alter the meaning and the ideology that the image represents.

I think I get it.