Language and communication

So, umm....

I'm kind of continuing my thoughts from where I left off last week, because I've been studying communication theory for next week's exam, so my head is full of it. Also, because it really is interesting.

When studying communication, there are seven traditions, which are basically different points of views or ways to see communication. I will concentrate on two of them here, the semiotic tradition and the socio-cultural tradition.
The semiotic tradition basically sees communication as meanings transferred with signs. For example words are just symbols that we say or write in order to tell someone something. The words themselves don't mean anything, but we give them meaning. This of course means that the person receiving the message has to know the meaning of these symbols in order to understand the content of the message.
The socio-cultural tradition sees communication as building culture and society and the world, which is pretty close to where I ended up last week. From a person's perception of reality to cultures everything is constructed by communication between people, from the language and the words people speak and have spoken since they are little.

So basically how the world works is when people are little, they learn a bunch of signs. They absorb the meanings of them and they remember them. They begin to use them in order to let other people know what they want, or fear, or are going to do. Our societies are filled with these signs, some obvious, like words or a wedding ring, some less obvious, of which I can't think of an example right now because they are less obvious, but I am sure there are tons of them.
These signs, or rather they're meanings, are what constructs the social reality. People act depending on the signs they get from other people, and depending on how they interpret these signs.

Hmm... I'm getting to this all wrong.

Because that's not the clever bit. This is the clever bit, I remember now that this is the clever bit.

The clever bit is, imagine a life without any signs culturally (or universally) agreed upon, meaning a life without language and communication. There is no culture. There can't be any culture, because if you have no language, you don't have words for anything, meaning you don't have names for anything even in your head. You can't ever think of anything except strictly concrete things. You can think about a fish, but when you think about it, you have to think about the actual fish, because you don't have a word for it. Without words for things you can't have complex thoughts, and without complex thoughts you can't have culture. Or the human kind for that matter. (Though I'm sure that humans aren't the only animals with some level of culture, but the same applies. No thoughts, no culture.)
Also, the communication and signs are what create the way we think, because we think in language. The way of thinking is limited with language and the culture it creates. It is extremely difficult to imagine something that is completely different to anything you have ever known, because your brain is wired to think in a language, and if it is something completely inexpressible by the language you think in, you can't get a grasp of it. All the signs we have created to be able to communicate is what creates the way we see the world, from the very, very fundamental things to... well, everything.

I am getting my brain into knots again. I have all these thoughts very clear in my head, but I don't seem to be able to get them out. Do you understand what I mean with all this, why I say signs are the thing that create thinking and culture and everything we know and can understand?
I'm not saying, that we can't imagine things no one has ever thought of before. I'm just saying we can't imagine anything, because we are restricted by the way we think.

I guess the most important think here is, that signs construct communication and language construct culture constructs the way we think and see the world.
Language changes the culture.
Culture changes the language.
Culture and language change the way we think.
The way we think change our culture and language.
Without signs and they're meanings, none of the things above exist.

It's all very fascinating, if you just understand what I mean.

Because my exam is next week Wednesday, you will very likely get another post not too far from these topics next week, because, well, I need to have my head full of all this. And because it is interesting.
After that I will do something else.

This turned out to be a very poorly constructed post.
Also, it has the word construct in it way too many times.

~matu