Short Paragraph Assignment on "Waking Life"

Just one substantive paragraph drawing conclusions about the in-class exercise and the Waking Life clip. In both cases, think about what you learned about the origins of language. How does understanding semiotics, which for the purposes of this class we are defining as "the study of language as a sign system," apply to writing for mass media? What is the point Waking Life makes about using language to describe objects vs. concepts?


The word semiotics has a lot of to with mass media. When the ten o'clock news plays its stories, usually the camera is focused on the news-anchor with a small picture or drawing depicting the story in the top right hand corner. Also, in newspapers, on the front page it usually has the big headline of words across the top, with a large picture to understand the story which is either written beside or below the picture. Both of these communications use drawings, or symbols to represent what the story is about.

In the video, Waking Life, the woman talking explains how "words are symbols that are dead". How our society has come up with sounds or something tangible to replace to signify words that are objects, but how feelings such as frustration or love don't have anything tangible or a specific sound to understand what they truly mean. There is no real true way to understand what the person means when they talk about how frustrated they are because when the listener hears it, they tie the word "frustration" to their own memories.