Paul De Man makes a very important and compelling argument on semiology and rhetoric. Using Saussure’s discussion on semiology, De Man uses it as his vehicle to show how complex rhetoric is within language. In the beginning he speaks about the opposition between the form and content and that this ongoing debate is completely useless. “It matters little whether we call the inside of the box the content or the form, the outside the meaning or the appearance”, he tells us to forget about this debate between form and content and draws our attention to grammar and rhetoric. He says that there is a deep connection between the two. Grammar is the structure, or little pieces that make up the word and structurally allow it to work while rhetoric uses the structure of words to create a bigger picture. Rhetoric is the meaning behind the words which is completely dependent on the context it is being used in. There is a big relationship between the two, rhetoric is completely contingent on grammar. An idea to be questioned here is whether grammar is completely contingent on rhetoric. If something is grammatically correct, does it necessarily HAVE to have a bigger picture behind it? Can you not simply have a grammatically correct structure with a literal meaning?
A problem De Man brings to our attention is the fact a sentence can have two meanings: a literal meaning and a figurative meaning. The way we discover which meaning it can have is by looking at the “extra-textual intention”, by looking at the way the sentence is presented and the context around it, we are able to grasp what the author will truly mean. He uses Yeats’ poem as an example of how an author uses a literal example to mean something figurative but can still go either way.
I’d like to lastly bring up the point of opposition between metaphor and metonymy which I find, to be the hardest point to fathom. Metaphor is indirectly comparing something to another, or substitution versus metonymy that uses a part of something to represent the whole. De Man brings to our attention the power of the metaphor in the example over the power of metonymy “…the ‘necessary link’ that unites the buzzing of the flies to the summer makes it a much more effective symbol than the tune head ‘perchance’ during the summer” instead of using a tune that is usually played during the summer, substituting the the buzzing of the flies to represent and describe summer provides much more of an effect on the reader. Metaphor’s give us “syntactical paradigms” while metonymy gives us “syntagmatic structure”.

To create a solid definition of what is considered art is one of the more strongly debated topics amongst academics who enjoy it. Poetics being the verbal/written counterpart to the visual art is just as difficult to define. One of the many problems that arise from attempting to declare what is poetic is the connection that poetry has to other forms of art that do not incorporate the verbal aspect of poetics. An example used by Jakobson is the Baroque period in art when he states that, “The problems of the baroque or any other historical style transgress the frame of a single art”, in other words art belongs to the entirety of signs or to “general semiotics”. 

The link between poetics and linguistics is that poetics is part of the existing structure of language, not some interdependent distant form of communication. Poetics entails all the different functions used in linguistics to designate meaning to signs we use all around us. The resulting signified properties of poetics are as much a part of semiotics as they are a part of art, because both of these components of poetics, the structural semiotics, and the substantial content (art) of it play an equal role in determining what is poetry.

Referring to the Jakobson’s explanation of the “emotive elements” of speech, we can conclude that the emotive elements of speech link the structures of poetics to the semiotics of the real world. This connection through semiotics to the real world solidify even more sternly the relationship between poetics and the real world. 

While semiotics can definitely allow us an insight into how we translate what we see around us into verbal message and thoughts is fascinating in its own right, yet that kind of analytical objective analysis of  the world has its shortcomings. The use of poetics within the study of semiotics “promote *s the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects”.

After reading page 1150 of Jakobsons on Linguistics and Poetics I became aware of why there was some difficulty for me when we first began reading Semiotics in class a week ago, and that is the objective and deeply analytical style of the semiotic reading. It was not the complexity but rather the absence of poetics in the early readings. The palpability that is promoted through the use of poetics creates a springboard from which to understand semiotics by allowing a more accessible point of reference for reading it. Though now through Jakobson I have begun to experience a different understanding when re reading earlier readings like Strauss, by reading it as poetry like I would read a book,  rather than trying to wrap my head around everything that is being said in an analytic frenzy.

 The inner workings of language seem to be so much more complex than I would have ever expected…I though we just spoke.

Hey! So these are my puzzling’s about this weeks readings. Enjoy guys!

1). Maupassant’s anecdote that the only place in France that one doesn’t see the Eiffel Tower is the Eiffel Tower – sets us up to to understand how the monument acts not only as a metaphor but as a metonymy for Paris and Parisian culture. Not only do we associate the Eiffel Tower with Parisian culture, but all of Parisian culture is sort of imbued with the idea as well as the physicality of the ‘Eiffel Tower.’ (With whatever meaning that may have.)

“It’s incorporated into daily life until you can no longer grant it any specific attribute, determined merely to persist, like a rock or the river, it is as literal as a phenomenon of Nature whose meaning can be questioned to infinity but whose existence is incontestable.”

The idea of the Eiffel Tower as a force that anchors the city and it’s inhabitants makes it perhaps more potent than humanity. Barthes goes on to say: “With it we all comprise a shifting figure of which it is the steady center.”

I think this really helps ground the significance and profundity of the image. Even though it’s easy to become so inured and sutured into our daily lives that we don’t notice the world around us, there are real and important social, political, and economic consequences that the buildings/architecture/infrastructure/advertisements have on our daily lives.

(Question: Could it be posited that the Eiffel Tower is, in a way, a metonym for Barthes philosophy about the importance of representations?)

2). Barthes then goes on to state the global consequences of the Eiffel Tower. “There is no journey to France which isn’t made, somehow, in the Tower’s name. [it is] the major sign of a people and of a place: it belongs to the universal language of travel.”

3). He then takes it a step further – and talks about how there is a human consequence that the Eiffel Tower must then have. This seemed like a key quote for me, and I thought it was really beautifully worded. “Further: beyond its strictly Parisian statement, it touches the most general human image-repertoire: its simple, primary shape confers upon it the vocation of an infinite cipher: in turn and according to the appeals of our imagination, the symbol of Paris, of modernity, of communication, of science or of the nineteenth century, rocket, stem, derrick, phallus, lightning rod or insect, confronting the great itineraries of our dreams, it is the inevitable sign; just as there is no Parisian glance which is not compelled to encounter it, there is no fantasy which fails, sooner or later, to acknowledge its form and to be nourished by it; pick up a pencil and let your hand, in other words your thoughts, wander, and it is often the Tower which will appear, reduced to that simple line whose sole mythic function is to join, as the poet says, base and summit, or again, heaven and earth.”

The Eiffel Tower stands for something ineluctable and ineffable. Because it is a cipher, it’s sort of ends up being all-encompassing – so in a way it not only negates it’s cipher status, but it reaffirms it by becoming infinite. I think it’s that’s a really beautiful sentiment, as I mentioned earlier – if I did understand it correctly.

I think it’s really interesting how Maupassant identifies himself with the Eiffel Tower – and by extension how people – like the Tower, are blinded to themselves. It really explodes the metaphorical aspects of the Tower as representative of humanity.

4). The Tower as an object that isn’t just seen, but also itself sees – being simultaneously passive and active. (Making it a complete verb)

5). Voyeuristic undertones.

6). The tower as an entity that bridges this separation between seeing and being seen.
**Need to revisit the implications of this/the idea of a spectrum of perception.

7). Inutility as a quality that keeps the Tower from being hemmed into a certain meaning or purpose: because it historically was devoid of artistic (or any specific scientific) value, it was able to take on new meanings, or rather, all meanings.

8). “Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.”

So for Barthes, the inutility, which is linked to the infinite, supersedes the utility of a structure. An architect might present his monument as a utilitarian endeavor, but men will always return it “in the form of a great baroque dream.”

(the type of graph with a downward slope – that type of relationship)

9). The Sun Tower – “Relied on masonry and not on steel.” Had a bonfire on top that illuminated the entire city of Paris through a complex system of strategically placed mirrors. Barthes uses this anecdote to prove the naiveté of utilitarianism. “Use never does anything but shelter meaning.” He goes on to talk about “ascensional dream[s] released from “its utilitarian prop” to become an object of art.

10). “The function of art [is] to reveal the profound uselessness of objects.”

11). “The Tower, almost immediately disengaged from the scientific considerations which had authorized its birth, had arisen from a great human dream in which movable and infinite meanings are mingled: it had reconquered the basic uselessness which makes it live in men’s imagination.”

12). Barthes points out that there is nothing to be seen inside the tower. It’s emptiness/cipher status is realized in both it’s physicality and it’s potential cultural groundings. Yet it receives twice as many yearly visitors as the Louvre/movie houses, visitors who are trying to participate in a dream. However, I think that Barthes is putting too much faith into people – I visited the Eiffel Tower when I was 13, because that’s the thing one does when they go to Paris. But it’s not a symbol/metonym because people like me visit it – Most people will visit it because of it’s iconic status – not to create/find some deep.

14). Nevermind- Barthes talks about how the masses are able to transform this touristic rite into an adventure of sight and of the intelligence. He is smarter than me.

The major symbolic and the final meaning of function of the Tower (according to Barthes)

1). The Tower looks at Paris, so therefore, by transitive properties, when one visits and identifies with the Tower’s point of view they are able to “perceive, comprehend, and savor a certain essence of Paris”.

2). The Tower is able to convey the city into something natural…. throughout it’s romantic vantage point, it almost like, softens the harshness of the city. In a way, it’s a bridge from mankind to the sky- the contiguous border between the two elements. “By it, starting from it, the city joins up with the great natural themes which are offered to the curiosity of meN: the ocean, the storm, the mountains, the snow, the rivers.”

3). A new nature of human space is created by the tower – making it essentially a transitional era onto itself.

4). Both human beings and the Tower consume each other – it’s a mutual execution of transformation. This moves the Tower from being a cipher into an active sphere, in which it’s able to exert agency over the city and it’s people.

5). The Tower as a literary structure materialized into physical space. Really like the idea of this. So basically, the Tower realizes the bird-eye point of view conceptualized in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as well as Michalet’s Tableau chronologique.

The power of intellection is assumed in a panoramic birds-eye view. Metonymy. We don’t just see the world from this vantage point, we read it. This ties into the transformational powers that the Tower has – to turn the city/it’s people into a work of literature. It gives us a new sensibility of vision, permitting us “to transcend sensation and to see things in their structure.”

6). This new mode of perception/intellect is akin to putting Paris/France under Victor Hugo’s pen, allowing for a new category of concrete abstraction. When we think of the word structure, there is implicitly “a corpus of intelligent forms”

7). Structuralism – realized whether the person visiting the tower knows it or not. Separate points are recognized and irrevocably linked together (this process is called decipherment).

8). Reconstitution of the panorama – seeking out other monuments. Memory and sensation cooperate in order to produce a unique, personalized “simulacrum” of Paris.

9).  Panorama’s have a complex, dialectical nature which must be visited with a sense of continuity and struggle. Comes from a familiarity with history and myth. Can never be consumed as a work of art, in part because it’s continuously changing, unlike a fixed image. In this way, it seems that art would be aspire to the panorama.

“[To] perceive Paris from above is infallibly to imagine a history; from the top of the Tower, the mind finds itself dreaming of the mutation of the landscape which it has before its eyes; through the astonishment of space, it plunges into the mystery of time, lets itself be affected by a kind of spontaneous anamnesis: it is duration itself which becomes panoramic”.
How does this compare to Genesis?

10). Barthes goes on about how the Tower is representative of the history of Paris. Academic b.s., but basically there are two (three?) histories. “Paris, in its duration, under the Tower’s gaze, composes itself like an abstract canvas in which dark oblongs (derived from a very old post) are contiguous with the white rectangles of modern architecture. ”

11). “The visitor to the Tower has the illusion of raising the lid which covers the private life of millions of human beings; the city then becomes an intimacy whose functions, i.e., whose connections he deciphers.”

12). 3 functions of human life, all accessed by the Tower (business, knowledge, habitation).

13). The Tower as a witness, drawing the visitor to the westward and southward views (where the more affluent neighborhoods reside. West is where the sun sets. The Tower follows theses movements of development- “it even invites the city toward its pole of development.”

“The gaze fixes… the whole structure-geographical, historical, and social-of Paris space. The deciphering of Paris, performed by the Tower’s gaze, is not only an act of the mind, it is also an initiation.”

14). Cities themselves as an evolution to superior values and culture. The tower initiates non-parisians into this.

15). To visit the inside of something/the outside of something

16). The Tower offers two provisions:

a). technical, for consumption performances/paradoxes. To be an engineer by proxy. “A demystification provided by simple enlargement of the level of perception”

b). “a familiar ‘little world.'” the commerce surrounding the Tower (souvenir stalls, etc.), which harkens back to basic human instinct, and conquering of nature (with some sort of Christian-root tie-in).

17). The Eiffel Tower as a comfortable object, both modern and old.

18). IMP. QUOTE: “the Tower ultimately reunites with the essential function of all major human sites: autarchy; the Tower can live on itself: one can dream there, eat there, observe there, understand there, marvel there, shop there; as on an ocean liner (another mythic object that sets children dreaming), one can feel oneself cut off from the world and yet the owner of a world. ”

Vocab: Ineluctable – Adj. Inescapable (e.g. the ineluctable facts of history)
Oneiric – Adj. Of or relating to dreams or dreaming

Anamnesis- The idea that humans possess knowledge from past incarnations and that learning consists of rediscovering that knowledge within us.

I found Photography and Electoral Appeal to be a very potent deconstruction of political photography and photographs. In the beginning of his essay, Barthes asserts that the necessity of political portraits “presupposes that photography has a power to convert”– therefore, a political portrait exists to serve a means, that means being the conversion of those who view it to the side of the politician in the portrait. It is in this way that photographic political portraits function as a kind of image-based rhetoric, existing only to persuade those who view it. Furthermore, I believe Barthes is correct when he states that “the effigy of a candidate establishes a personal link between him and the voters”. The way in which the portrait converts its viewers is by reflecting the values and ideals of its viewers. In American society (I know Barthes was French, but his essay is incredibly pertinent to American political portraits), where family, health, and moral justness (which is often believed to be inherently synonymous with those who value and engage in family life) are primary values, Americans seek those values in those for whom they vote. Viewers look for someone who reflects what they believe to be the sum of all their values, the epitome of their moral and social idealism, whether they themselves do or do not live up to those values.

On top of the the viewers’ desire to have the utmost faith that the portrait is indeed the real deal, the real representation of this ideal leader, they seek a protector in the form of a man in a uniform adorned with medals. Like most aesthetics, the military aesthetic is a lie in the form of symbolism as well. Aside from covering one’s nakedness, the uniform is merely a symbol of the power those who wear it have, although some viewers are mistaken in their belief that the uniform itself indicates that the person wearing it is indeed the sum of their ideals as well as a superhero. Regardless of the savageness and depravity of the war during which the uniform was worn, he who is in it is justified by it.

There is much more I would like to say about this piece, however I’m running out of time right now (completely my fault). I would like to end this commentary with a point I brought up last class:

Although depictions of politicians in portrait photography are incredibly posed and loaded with symbolism and image-based rhetoric and are therefore deceptive, lying depictions of those photographed, what precisely would an accurate, true, and genuinely revealing portrait of a candidate, or any human for that matter, be? Like how we can never understand a thing in itself, we can never understand a person in him- or herself, as a photograph is merely a moment in time, a single instance of a person being this way or that way. I think because of this, it is fair to say that an accurate depiction of a politician (or anyone, really) is wholly impossible to attain. To attempt to do so would be futile.

In Roland Barthes essay titled “Photography and Electoral Appeal,” he closely analyzes the underlying methods used by politicians.  Specifically, he breaks down electoral photography, which I found interesting because I never put much thought into the thought that goes behind it.  While the technicalities of photography and the deeper meaning behind it were interesting, I tried to compare his analysis to literature or language in general.  Barthes’ states, “What is transmitted through the photograph of the candidate are not his plans, but his deep motives, all his family, mental, even erotic circumstances, all this style of life of which he is at once the product, the example and the bait (1320).”  In regards to literature, I found the “candidate” to be the author, and the “photograph” to be parallel to a work of literature.  When an author writes a piece, he expects for a reader to see his true intentions behind his writing.  He expects for his piece of work to be analyzed, discussed and examined, just as we would do to a picture of a politician.  People criticize a candidate’s facial expressions, and overall looks with no filter, just as people do to literature.  We don’t hesitate to call a picture ugly, the same way we wouldn’t hesitate to judge a piece of writing as not worth reading.  However, at times while I was reading this essay I wondered this were not simply just an analysis on how candidates take pictures for electoral photos.  The last paragraph of the essay was my favorite to read but also the most confusing.  I couldn’t help but find myself confused at Barthes’ true meaning behind this piece.  While it wasn’t as dense as other pieces we have read, it seemed almost too straightforward.  Another excerpt from the piece that I found interesting is the following, “Needless to say the use of electoral photography presupposes a kind of complicity: a photograph is a mirror, what we are asked to read is the familiar, the known; it offers to the voter his own likeness, but clarified, exalted, superbly elevated into a type.”  This statement also contributes to the evidence that Barthes’ is using photography as a metaphor for authors and writing.  A picture, in itself is just what it is, a picture and nothing more.  But if it is appealing to a reader, it becomes something more and we would give that piece our vote, so to speak.

Roland Barthes essay “The Eiffel Tower” is most definitely an interesting one as it deconstructs the various ways in which the tower provides meaning to its visitors.  Moreover, it provides the reader with something of a concrete manipulative (like those at children’ science centers) to work with while trying to understand Barthes’ take on the signifier and the signified.  However, once again, I find myself wondering how our mentor’s (in this case Barthes) theories can be applied to literature.  The following is my tentative attempt to translate these ideas to something from my own lexicon – Dante’s Inferno.

First, let me say that my choice of The Inferno seemed obvious because it is one of those pieces in literature that most every educated person has heard of and identified with (even if they haven’t read it themselves), much like how everyone has some sort of Eiffel Tower experience (even if they have never seen it themselves).

1)  What is The Inferno’s purpose?  Is it a useless monument as many Parisians have claimed of the tower or is it an engineering marvel as Gustave Eiffel purported his creation to be?  Well, the fact is that Christians did not actually have a concrete vision of what hell was like until Dante gave it to us.  Rather than “aerodynamic measurements” and “studies of the resistance of substances,” Dante provides us with contrasting images of the various forms of sin.  In addition, the tower’s scientific revelations on the “physiology of the climber” and “meteorological observations” mirror Dante’s (the traveler in the text not the writer) experiences and observations of the various sinners and the environments in which they dwell.

2)  What is the natural beauty that is revealed by The Inferno?  Hmmmmm… “Abanon all hope ye who enter here!”  Just kidding.  The beauty that The Inferno shows it readers is not so much the “new nature… of human space” as it is the intricate and frighteningly obvious nature of human vice.  You cannot avoid having your breath taken away by the shear awesomeness of the vista provided to us by Dante (the writer, not the traveler).

3)  How does The Inferno require decipherment?  According to Barthes, a panorama is “an image we attempt to decipher, in which we try to recognize known sites, to identify landmarks.”  Thus, the viewer creates a structure by grouping parts of the panorama in his/her own mind.  This sounds a lot like associative discourse to me, but I’m not completely sure.

In The Inferno, Dante (the poet) organizes each of the circles of hell associatively.  The lustful sinners, the hoarders and squanderers, the violent sinners, etc. are all grouped in specific levels according to their sins.  Thus, much of the deciphering is done for us.  However, during his travels, Dante (the pilgrim) recognizes several characters in certain levels of hell, particularly in the Malebolge, the 8^th circle housing the sinners of fraud.

As Dante explores each pouch on this level, he begins to decipher the difference between the residents of each pouch based on what he knows about the people within them.  He realizes that the 3^rd pouch must house Simoniacs because he sees Pope Nicholas III there; someone with whom Dante associates using the church to gain money and power.  Later, when he sees the jovial friars in the 6^th pouch, he realizes that this must be where the hypocrites are kept.  The entire section goes on like this with Dante (the pilgrim) mentally categorizing each pouch of the Malebolge based on his historical and political knowledge.

4)  How does The Inferno provoke “spontaneous anamnesis”?

I looked it up.  Anamnesis simply means “recollection” or “remembrance”.  Normally, I don’t complain about someone’s advanced vocabulary, but “anamnesis”…seriously?!  Anyway, Barthes point is that looking at Paris from the vantage of the Eiffel Tower naturally forces visitors to recollect the various stages of history experienced by the land being viewed from the pre-historic days of flood to the architecture of the middle ages, to the more recent history of the last several hundred years, to the present history in the making.  It seems to me, though, that The Inferno does much the same as it is provoked by humanity’s innate sense of good and evil, constructed on the foundation of the Bible and inextricably linked with the history of Christianity.  Moreover, Dante wrote his text with a very specific political agenda very much driven by his experiences with the historical events of the time in Italy.

5)  How does The Inferno provide both a technical order and a familiar “little world” to the reader?

Technical Order:

1. While the Eiffel Tower shows order in the way the four bases impact its form, Dante’s Inferno is shaped like a funnel in which each circle is smaller than the previous and, therefore, houses less sinners, until you get to the worst of the worst – Satan in the final circle.
2. “Then come the elevators, quite surprising by their obliquity, for the ordinary imagination requires that what rises mechanically slide along a vertical axis.”  Here is where my comparison seems a bit strained to me, but I do think that an analogy can be made between the tower’s elevators and the various monsters that Dante (the pilgrim) must hitch a ride with to get from one level to another.  They are surprising in that they seem like an inappropriate mode of transportation for the task and yet they do get the job done.
3. Much like those taking the stairs at the tower, Dante is witness to the specific intricacies of the structure of hell from one level to the next.  The tower’s observer is witness to “a whole series of paradoxes, the delectable contraction of an appearance and of its contrary realtity.”  Though Dante (the pilgrim) does not see paradoxes in hell, he does by “[insinuating] himself into it” realize the dual nature of God’s punishments to the sinners as each penalty serves as a contrapasso to the committed offense.

Little World:

From Barthes’ perspective the Eiffel Tower has also become a comfortable “little world” in which tourists buy postcards highlighting the beauty of Paris from the souvenir stands and foodies can enjoy artful and elaborate cuisine at the restaurant.  Similarly, The Inferno has become a “comfortable object” for both the religiously inclined and lovers of literature.  For the religious, The Inferno provides a simple and clear warning, through vivid imagery, for why one shouldn’t sin.  For the readers of the world, Dante provides a rich text to be explored and enjoyed for its nuances and artistic fluidity.

Conclusion/Question:  So here is my problem with Barthes.  Why the hell (pun intended) is that a monument that creates a panoramic view for its visitors cannot be consumed as a work of art?  I just don’t get that.  It seems like several of the critics that we have worked with this semester have in some way or other said that art exists:  in spite of its creator, outside of its creator’s intent, within the reader’s reconstruction, etc.  So why is it that a beautiful work loses its art cred simply because the mind of the viewer must engage in decipherment and spontaneous anamnesis?  Isn’t art supposed to provoke thought?  I’m very confused.

Ferdinand de Saussure is considered “the father of modern linguistics.” Having read the excerpt from his student-generated book Course in General Linguistics, I can understand how he earned this distinction. His theories are thoughtful, intricate, complex and were certainly novel at the time he taught them. However, I am truly at a loss as to how the study of linguistics at the level that Saussure delves relates to the appreciation or criticism of literature.
Saussure’s work seems much like that of a scientist who claims that childbirth cannot be truly appreciated or understood without a thorough analysis of cellular biology. He goes so far as to contend that language “is a type of algebra consisting solely of complex terms” (863). However, I find that Saussure’s analysis takes all of the joy, humanity, and well, poetry, out of the experience of language and, apparently, I am not alone. Terry Eagleton and other critics of Saussure argued that “it is impossible to speak of language without speaking of reference, things, history. After all, they argue, language is not chess. How can it be studied apart from the world to which it refers? How can reference not have a role in structure?” (849-850)
To be sure, there are many interesting points addressed in Saussure’s course, such as: the arbitrariness of signs (particularly in written letters and our use of money), the inconsistencies of words from one language to another (particularly in terms of verb tense), and the associative relations of discourse, which reminds me of why toddlers will ask the same questions repeatedly. (They are making associative connections in their brains. i.e.: What’s that? A ball, a red ball, a large ball, a rolling ball, etc.) But outside of his use of such examples that help to elucidate semiotics for the average lay person, his analysis become so technical that I find myself wondering why a lover of literature should care so much about linguistics.
I wish I could say that Roman Jakobson’s application of Saussure’s theories has helped to mitigate my frustrations with this field of study. I wish. Initially, I was relieved by some of Jakobson’s comments in “Linguistics and Poetics.” For example:   • “It is evident that many devices studied by poetics are not confined to verbal art. We can refer to the possibility of transporting Wuthering Heights into a motions picture, medieval legends into frescoes and miniatures or [The Afternoon of a Faun] into music, ballet, and graphic art” (1145).   I earnestly thought, “Now this guy is speaking my language!” (Pun not intended.) But then came the schemes. Oh the schemes! Let’s just say that because of our class lectures, I understand what Jakobson was talking about, but meh, I could have lived without this topic. On the other hand, I do have to admit that I found the phatic and metalingual explanations kind of interesting. (When I go back into the classroom next year, I will definitely be referring to vocabulary lessons as “Meta Time” from now on.). Plus, Jakobson’s discussion of the metaphoric and metonymic poles in language is something I wouldn’t mind reading more about.
However, to be perfectly honest, the rest of Jakobson’s essay reminds me very much of one of my favorite scenes in the film Dead Poet’s Society. Robin Williams’ character, Mr. Keating, asks a student to read the preface of their poetry text, “Understanding Poetry” by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. According to Dr. Pritchard the greatness of a poem can be determined by calculating the area covered by the connecting point between the x-axis – the perfection of the poem and the y-axis – the importance of the poem. Three minutes into this scene, Mr. Keating orders his students to rip the entire preface out of their books calling it “excrement.”
Poetry is not a series of mathematical logarithms! Somewhere along the way, Jakobson, like Saussure, seems to have forgotten that point. Poetry, in the words of Mr. Keating” is meant to “drip from our tongues like honey.” Therefore, I am just not buying (with my arbitrary signs) what either of these critics are selling (in their messages).

Roland Barthes’s objective in “Photography and Electoral Appeal” from “Mythologies” is to break down the normative associations we generally hold with photography of political candidates during election time. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is an old saying of which I do not know the origin, but which is undoubtedly true. An image is instantaneous, imprinting various associations in the brain you might not even be consciously aware are being made at the time, but shape however you perceive that image and what it stands for potentially well on into your future. It would seem generally obvious at first glance that if we were to vote for someone with the potential to lead us to a better future we would want to see what they look like first, however to Barthes a photograph of a politician – especially during election season – is never so innocent in its intentions. To Barthes, these ‘types’ of photographs are often presented in such a way as to manipulate the emotions of potential voters so that what is “transmitted through the photograph of the candidate are not his plans, but his deep motives” these deep motives consist of anything from his familial and social status, intelligence, or even “erotic circumstance” (1320).  Barthes goes on to describe the various tricks these conniving politicians will pull in the photos taken of them, from subtle expressions, to a casual photo of the ‘happy family man,’ in Barthes’s opinion it’s all an unapologetic ploy.

While the idea that a politician would manipulate voters in whatever possible way in order to gain votes is simply astonishing, what I find more interesting, and also what I feel is the main purpose of this essay is the way in which Barthes approaches the analysis of politician photography. He describes how the conventions of these types of photographs are “replete with signs” (1321) a phrase which calls back to me visions of Ferdinand De Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” in which Saussure creates “a science that studies the life of signs within a society” (851) which he terms ‘semiology.’ In “Course in General Linguistics” Saussure is mainly interested in semiotics as applied to linguistics – in that language is a system of signs which we use in order to express ideas and communicate with each other verbally – however Saussure is aware that linguistics is only a part of what can be classified as ‘semiotics.’ In “Photography and Electoral Appeal” Barthes utilizes Saussure’s approach of semiotics to portray a photograph as a sign which can be broken down into more signs and signifiers which explicate how unnatural and perverse political photography really is. Regardless of how adapted to most aspects of modern culture we become as a society, it is important to realize all ‘norms’ of society are socially constructed, and if one actually takes the time to break down their societal significance one will more often than not come up with nothing at all significant or really even at all inherently useful.