Tutorial 3 And 4 Questions On Culture, Interaction, And Visual Culture

ENGL1090 Critical Reading and Writing

• Life-world is shaped by habits and routines (Inglis, 2007). According to Inglis, for people to ensure proper functioning in their daily lives, they require a certain form of habit and routine.
• In other words, life would be so unpredictable and full of surprises if people did not have a normal way of doing things. The routine and stability is what brings about orderliness in the life-world.
• Life-worlds are shared. This notion connotes that the aspect of life-world cannot solely be analyzed as an individualized aspect. Thus, life-worlds comprises of the ideas as well as the expectations held by members of a given group.
• There are numerous groups within a culture and these may comprise: ethnic group, religious group, class or nation. Therefore, an individual’s life-world comprises of all the forces/attributes of the intersecting groups that the person belongs to.
• Life-world is primarily shaped by the cultural forces (Inglis, 2007). People live within a culture although they may not be aware about it. Consequently, the aspect of defamiliarizing with the obvious routine equal to looking at the life-world from a more critical dimension. In other words, it entails disassociating the self from the life-world and assessing it from the outside or as if one is not a part of the life-world.
• The life-world is taken for granted. That is, the life-world is perceived by many as a natural phenomenon (Seamon, 2015). Nonetheless, the perceived natural characteristic of the life-world ceases to be when one finds him/herself in a challenging situation or when one if forced out of the routine by circumstances.

The most important aspects of my life-world are culture and interaction with others. Culture is a way of life and one cannot live outside a culture. In other words, culture is ubiquitous.

• The manner in which one perceives the world cannot be well understood in absence of culture. Primarily, culture informs ones opinions, attitudes and behavior.
• Culture also teaches one about the socially accepted values and social norms. For one to co-exist peacefully with others in a given society, the understanding of what is expected of him or her is very important.
• My life-world is not complete without interacting with others. An individual is not self-sufficient. Relating with other people is important in shaping my opinions, attitudes and perception about life.
• Association with others helps me in understanding why some people behave the way they do, why they do their things in certain manner as well as determining how and why people’s opinions differ.
• In general, interaction is one way through which I acquire vast knowledge about numerous aspects in life.

Visual culture intrinsically relates to both ideology and power relations (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001).

• While ideologies are propagated through such institutions as law, medicine, education, family, government and education, visual image, on the other hand, is a tool mainly used in providing evident, identification, categorization and regulation (Aiello, 2006).
• Visual culture significantly influences ideologies (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001). For example, traditionally, people adhered to the observation of the practices of the rites of passage such as birth, marriages and deaths.
• Consequently, the use of visual culture such as the photography was highly regarded. A similar ideology was and is still propagated in other fields including the criminal justice system, medicine, correction facilities, science, study, and population surveillance.
• The appearance of a given visual culture informs power relations to a greater extent (Griffiths, 2013: Goode, 2016). The darkening of Simpson’s skin, for instance, represented the association of black with delinquency behavior of social deviance (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001).
• In essence, it signifies the power relations between the blacks and the whites. It is a common culture used in the cinema, literary and theatre performance. Additionally, it equally signifies the social ranking whereby the whites are considered as belonging to a higher social status as opposed to the blacks.
• In addition, visual culture possesses the power to influence people’s perception about a given scenario (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001). Take for instance the case of Simpson. He was originally known for his frequent appearance in the celebrity media, sports media and in advertising.
• However, his involvement in the mug shot and the appearance of his image in the Newsweek and Times pages had power to render him a mere criminal. In this instance, therefore, the visual culture plays a role in changing people’s perception about him. In essence, this signifies the relationship between the visual culture and power.

• The notion that the meanings of an image are numerous and are developed every time an image is viewed is true and evident (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001).
• It means that an image does not necessarily contain a definite meaning. In other words, an image contains different meanings according to the context.
• Every time the meaning of an image is interpreted, it carries a different meaning from the previous one. The production of an image and the construction of its meaning are determined by its aesthetic and social conventions.
• Therefore, while some signs and codes such as road signs are conventional, the meanings of other signs and symbols vary significantly.
• For this reason, it is quite clear that there is there is the aspect of arbitrariness between an image and what is represents of means (De Saussure, Baskin & Meisel, 2011). Thus, the interpretation of the meaning of a given image includes the rarely suggested meaning, the unintended meaning and the intended one.
• For instance, a viewer’s interpretation of an image may be influenced by such factors as the contrast, style, depth, color and the perspective.
• The meaning of a given image is also determined by the time or the social happenings of the time. For example, the use of various images by the political parties during the campaign period may denote a party’s ideologies, manifesto or the intensity of the campaign. Such tendency of images to convey different meanings (depending on the time, context and the viewer’s perception) was theorized by a Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the philosopher, Charles Peirce (De Saussure, Baskin & Meisel, 2011).

• A metaphor refers to a figure of speech that compares one thing to another. The items or things compared may be dissimilar in appearance but typically share something in common. For example, referring to another person as a pig has such meanings as greedy or untidy.
• Metaphors assume both visual and verbal forms. In this sense, a metaphor shows the correlation between the signifier and the signified. A metaphor, thus, effectively transfers the qualities of one sign to qualities of another.
• Additionally, metaphors express syntagmatic and paradigmatic effects. Paradigmatically, a metaphor substitutes the quality of one item with another of a different set. In terms of syntagmatic relation, a metaphor usually makes up a preposition. That is, if one element is compared to another, it means that the two elements belong to the same paradigm.
• A metonym, on the other hand, refers to a concept used in the place of another name which is similar in meaning. There are various forms of metonym. These include; examples and stereotype. For instance, a stereotype such as relating the people of color with crime is equal to a metonymy.
• One of the unique feature f metonym is that it has a visual form. For instance, in places where cigarette smoking is prohibited, there is a sign of cigarette with a crossing line.
• Also, like a metaphor, metonyms have both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. Metonyms and metaphors express an inner meaning and avoid direct mention of an item or person or character.

• Context is fundamental when it comes to understanding of interpreting a given metaphor (Hall, 2007). Nonetheless, some metaphors can be understood unambiguously even without considering the aspect of context. For instance, a metaphor such as “an iron lady” can be understood directly.
• However, the context remains integral in the comprehension of metaphors (Thwaites, et al. 2002). As a matter of fact, Vosniadou (2007) maintains that the process of comprehending metaphors is interactive and does not only depend on the linguistic input but also the context in which it is uttered.
• The comprehension of metaphor thus depends on two contexts. These include; situational context and extrinsic context. Vosniadou (2007) also argues that the latter can be linguistic or situational while the former refers to the physical context shared by the listener and the speaker.
• The situational context is therefore influenced by the things than can be touched, seen or heard. For example, Joe was a monkey climbing up the tree. The comprehension of such a metaphor entails answering some questions such as’ where was Joe? What was he doing? Why was he referred to as the monkey?

• In order to understand the representation and the meaning of metaphors, there is the need to employ more mental construction than the power of decoding (Thwaites, T, et al. (2002: Vosniadou, 2007).
• Most important to note is that metaphors are representations of certain ideas but are not the ideas themselves. The symbolic images used in metaphors shape ones understanding of abstract objects (Lodge, 2015).
• For instance, by saying that a certain person is a lion cannot be understood to mean that the person roars or has claws. In other words the understanding and the meaning of such a metaphor depends on the character of the person in question.

References

Aiello, G. (2006). Theoretical advances in critical visual analysis: Perception, ideology,

Mythologies, and social semiotics. Journal of Visual Literacy, 26(2), 89-102.

De Saussure, F., Baskin, W., & Meisel, P. (2011). Course in general linguistics. Columbia University Press.

Fenyo, I. (2013). Culture and Ideology. Questions and Perspectives in Education, 24.

Goode, J. (2016). Culture and Ideology Face Gender, Race, and Sexuality. In the 23rd  International Conference of Europeanists. Ces.

Griffiths, A. (2013). Wondrous difference: Cinema, anthropology, and turn-of-the-century visual  culture. Columbia University Press.

Hall, S. ( 2007). The Cultural Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. P 477 – 487. Inglis, D. (2007). Culture and Everyday Life. London: Routledge.

Lodge, D. (2015). The modes of modern writing: metaphor, metonymy, and the typology of  modern literature. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Seamon, D. (2015). A Geography of the Lifeworld (Routledge Revivals): Movement, Rest and  Encounter. Routledge.

Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. OUP: Oxford.

Thwaites, T, et al. (2002). Introducing Cultural and Media Studies: A Semiotic Approach.

London: Palgrave. P 48 – 74

Vosniadou, S. (2007). Context and the Development of Metaphor Comprehension. Centre for the

Study of Reading. University of Illinois.