From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 08 Jul 2003 - 22:54:02 GMT
From: Vincent Campbell <VCampbell@dmu.ac.uk>
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'"
<memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Encoding
Date sent: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 10:48:26 +0100
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Hi Joe,
>
> I think you highlight a central flaw in_both_models with these
> comments.
>
> <Wade is now reduced to maintaining that reading a written message >
> and hearing the same message spoken cannot possibly communicate > that
> selfsame message.> >
> Whatever Wade's point here, your knowledge of semiotics and such like
> should at least make you acknowledge two things. First, that even
> exactly the same message can convey different meanings to different
> people (there are no absolutes of meaning inherent in a message, in
> any form). Second, it follows further that the same idea conveyed in
> different ways_may_succeed in conveying the same information, but
> again there's no guarantee of this.
>
People who can both parse verbal statements and read written
messages in a particular language will understand the words of a
message communicated to both of them by differing means, whether
spoken or written, as the same words (say, the early worm gets eaten
by the bird), although their relation to the message encoded by them,
that is, the relationship between the meme and its cognitive gestalt, will
vary just as individuals do.
>
> <He is also reduced to arguing that "God is
> > love" and "God is loathed" are necessarily closer together in
> > meaning than "God is love" and "God is infinite caring" because they
> > unquestionably are more similar performances.>
> >
> Indeed, in one sense of the performance model you are right here I
> think.
>
> However, I think you're harping on about denotation, when in some
> senses the meme lies in the connotation. The denotation of 'God is
> love' might be, even unarguably is, easily transmissable and
> accessible. Indeed, if language wasn't easily transmissable at some
> level it would be of no use. But the connotation of 'God is love' is
> extraordinarily context-sensitive, and indeed content sensitive. 'God
> is love' and 'god is infinitely caring', in the connotative sense do
> not necessarily have consonant meaning.
>
But love and infinite caring are unquestionable closer in meaning than
love and loathe for a surpassingly predominate majority of the
understanding human population, even though the perfornative
production and consumption of the spoken or written words denoting
love and of infinite caring in the same coding modality are much more
widely disparate than the performative production and consumption of
love vs. loathe.
>
> For those who may not know much about semiotics, which I know Joe
> does, the difference between denotation and connotation can be
> illustrated by examples. Saying a 'My car is a Rolls Royce', denotes
> that the speaker owns a Rolls Royce, but connotes all sorts of other
> possible meanings (that the speaker is rich, a show-off, in the UK
> they maybe aristocracy, in Hong Kong an average driver etc. etc.).
> Saying 'My car is a Porsche 911' again denotes that the speaker owns a
> Porsche 911, but connotes a whole other range of meanings associated
> with Porsche. Connotation in any message is highly sensitive to
> context and who is receiving the message.
>
> Vincent
>
>
> >
> >
> >
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue 08 Jul 2003 - 22:59:41 GMT