Stuart Hall reading and presentation notes (representation meaning and language)

Stuart Hall - REPRESENTATION, MEANING AND LANGUAGE

first of all I googled representation to get a brief understanding of that the word really meant.

representation connects the meaning and language to culture and that representation means using language to say something meaningful to other people 

there are three types of theories regarding representation:

the first being reflective, reflective is asking does the language reflect a meaning that already exists , then there’s intentional - intentional is asking if language if language expresses only what the speaker or writer or painter wants to say, his or her personally intended meaning and then finally constructionist, this is where meaning is constructed through language.

The reading then follows on to talk about two major variants of the constructionist approach. the semiotic approach influenced by a swiss linguist named ferdinand de saussure and then the discursive approach associated with the french philosopher Michael Foucault.

it is said that representation is the production of meaning through language a better way of saying this is representation is the production of meaning of the the concepts in our minds through language. for example here we have a lamp, you immediately recognise what it is, but why is this.

Its because your thought process decodes your visual perception of the object in terms of a concept which you have in your head, if you look away from the photo of the lamp you can still think about it by conjuring it up as its said ‘in your minds eye’

if you were to then say the word lamp its because the concept has passed through your mental representation of it, and this is how you give meaning through language.

*Christian cross*

mental representations - we carry these in our heads, without them we could not interpret the world meaningfully. its the system of concepts and images formed in our thoughts allowing us to refer to things inside and outside our heads and also things that we’ve never seen like gods.

its also said that birds are like planes in terms that they can both fly however one is part of nature whilst the other is man made, but this is saying how our concepts are arranged into different classifying systems.

meaning depends on the relationship between things, whether its real or fictional the conceptual system works as an mental representation 

there also mention of a conceptual map an example of this is having the word tree the word can be written as anything however it is us as individuals who fix the meaning so firmly that after a while it comes natural, the meaning is constructed by the systems of representations. it also speaks about different languages and on one hand unless you speak that language you wont be able to understand as that is not naturally what your brain associates that word with but if you do speak that language your brain will follow the systems of representation.

language is the second system of representation involved in the overall process of constructing meaning as everyone interprets the world in their own way but because of communication we share broadly the same conceptual map. 

so in relation to landscape photography the artist/photographer can express meaning and communicate thoughts to people through the photos/art. ‘anything capable of carrying meaning is thought of as a language, 

to me that is saying the photo is a language to be interpreted from an individual perspective by him or her viewing it, I feel this is relevant to my project as I want to have a series of photos that represent personality so when the people few my photos they interpret in their on way.