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Apr 25, 2023Liked by Rebecca Ericson-Hua

For some reason advertising and signage comes to mind. It's a broadcast that doesn't much care about the recipient for different reasons. Signs care about identifying information. SPEED LIMIT 45 doesn't care whether you are actually going 45, but that is the legal limit in that zone and the consequences are yours if you fail to obey.

Advertising also doesn't exactly care about how we respond. Obviously the ideal advertising is one where we immediately get up and go buy avocados, but we can't respond to advertising directly. Most of the time it's just about putting thoughts in our head, or names, brands, behaviors. PSA's are advertisements that try to passively educate people about some public good.

Interesting exercise! Thank you for this.

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Advertising is a great example of this!! There are so many famous tag lines and slogans that really make you dig quite a long way to get to the heart of what they're trying to communicate. For example, for the makeup brand: "maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline." It's surprisingly hard to really tease apart what they're trying to say here: "you should buy Maybelline makeup products so that you are perceived by others to be naturally stunning, when in reality it's enhanced in an undetectable way by Maybelline products"? It's so interesting how these vague statements actually are designed to get us to that end implication!

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Multimodality & Social-Semiotic Theories looks at how signs and multiple modes communicate meaning. I suppose signs and advertisements are more representations than forms of communication.

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That umbrella game sounds so interesting. I don't think I ever played a game like that but I can imagine how frustrating it'd feel to be in the out group.

I like to view my journal entries as documentation, I suppose that's different to communication. Have you read about Multimodality and forms of communication? I think language is meaning so while there may not be communication, there's meaning. For example there's meaning in that umbrella game and that meaning is a form of communication. Being in the in group communicates that you are part of the group and everyone feels a sense of belonging.

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Interesting article, Rebecca. One of the things it highlights for me is that there's how language is used (mostly, but not exclusively, to communicate), and then there's what language does, which may go beyond what the user intends or sees. I think poets (and John Lennon on occasion!) operate in the second arena. You and I open our mouths or strike the keyboard intending to convey something to another. But the language that leaves us will then have a life of its own that we don't control, and that's wondrous. It's also one reason, I think, that works of literature can have such power for centuries. Each new generation discovers something new in a piece that previous generations - including the author - never saw.

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