After I read this chapter, In the process of analyzing literature, the author breaks down “literature” and analyzes the meanings given by sentences or words.Words have no real meaning, but are given meaning artificially.In my opinion, words tend to be a kind of symbol, and people’s cognition of such a symbol is often related to their experience or education, because people’s cognition of words is endowed with meaning, and the meaning is not significant with the words themselves.When Reading this article gave me an idea.Let’s say a person sees something blue, and it looks blue to him.Then the person tells the other person that this is blue, the color of melancholy.The other person sees the same thing, but it’s not blue in his eyes, it’s green.Because of his education or experience, he thinks that something he sees is “blue” even if it is not blue, and the green in his eyes is given a melancholy meaning.People experience things differently, even when facing the same thing.But the same thing can be given meaning and become a recognition.Another interesting point of this passage is that identifying literature is subject to subjective conditions.Even in the rational analysis of literature, from structure, sentences or words, this process is truly rational.However, the final conclusion from the word is that the word itself is subjective and perceptual, and its meaning is endowed by people.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
I like where you went with this; and it made me think about how languagues often have slang, where the practitioners knowingly use words other than in their usual and assigned contexts and meanings. It is often born out of a nessesity to be different, to separate from normal and establish the speaker’s own identity. I find that most of the time, while a word in slang differs from it’s “real” meaning, it often can be loosely connected to it. Also metaphors: “fishing for compliments” doesn’t mean the person is out on a lake catching some fish, but they are “baiting” people for attention and praise.
I found this part of the chapter most interesting as well. It’s really cool to think about how our identities, culture and experiences inform how we use and interpret language. I also liked how Hector brought up how slang is a good example of this. In fact I think it is a perfect example.