md words

Spoken word is often thought of as the most sincere, natural and therefore the most “real” method of communication between people. Plato, Saussure, Levi-Strauss and others have all denounced the written word, and lamented speech as the actuator of pure meaning, often arguing that speech is the representation of mental thought, of experience, and of cultural and self realism. Saussure for instance points to the fact that symbols (alphabets) can never be attributed directly to what they signify, and because of this speech, sound and the interaction of talking, is more pure, more direct. Jacque Derrida however argues that these same ideas could be attributed to text, that there is no universality in anything, and therefore speech is just as natural and direct as writing. Language, both written and spoken is defined through subjective interpretation, deconstruction and binary opposites.

Deconstruction is hard to define, because one of its main goals is that of proving nothing has any real definition. Niall Lucy has said

While in a sense it is impossibly difficult to define, the impossibility has less to do with the adoption of a position of the assertion of a choice on deconstruction’s part than with the impossibility of every ‘is’ as such. Deconstruction begins, as it were, from a refusal of the authority or determining power of every ‘is’, or simply from a refusal of authority in general.

Seeing the obvious mental gymnastics needed to head down that path of discussion, its better to explore what deconstruction does with its undefinability: Deconstruction exposes the dualistic hierarchies of language, both spoken and written, by examining its parts and then distorting and adjusting the meanings, often showing that they can mean the exact opposite of that which was originally perceived.

Deconstruction’s analysis of language is done with various methods, the most common and effective of which is that of binary opposites in context. Inside-outside relationships, and the idea that everything can be interpreted in opposition to itself, is the basis of these binary opposites. The main example is that of Plato’s pharmakon. He argued that its meaning could only be expressed vocally, because it can mean poison and cure at the same time, the context of it in speech being more obvious than in the written language. Derrida argued that it was just as transitionally meaningful in speech as writing, but that writing allowed for the relationship of the word to its context to play a greater, more transparent role, while still being both poison and cure to itself. This example helps show the fluidity of speech and writing, the lack of static meaning and the interpretive possibilities of language in the aspects of personal definitions.

One point Derrida makes often is the relation time has with an interpretation of language. It’s often said that time, or the idea of ‘now’ is the primary factor in the dissemination of meaning from speech. The meaning of the words are more obvious in the instant relationships with speech, as opposed to the static and unchanging relationship with a written language. This of course, was broken down by Derrida, where he presents and explores the idea that time, in and of itself, is impossible. That there is no ‘now’, time is irreducible to any instant, and that as soon as ‘now’ has existed, another ‘now’ has taken its place, with just as much non-existence as its predecessor. The static nature of writing is as unreal, unstatic as speech, and yet more so accessible because of its unchanging nature. Speech and text can not be more instant than each other, because the idea of instantaneousness exists only in perception, with time being irreducible to individual moments, and therefore cannot be more ‘real’ based on time, as both exist in a vacuum of impossibly unmeasurable non-existence.

This idea of the impossibility of experiencing ‘now’ applies to a personal experience as well. The exploration of self falls into a spatial flux, in that its impossible to think of oneself as you exist now, without considering and being affected by the self of the past. This now being based on before makes it so now is nothing but a reflection of that which already exists, creating a fluctuation of time that never presents itself with a singular instant.

So looking at this idea of language and self-defining it through various means, I will extend (and alter a bit) my previous post’s point about design. When does design mean Visual Communication, Industrial Design and when does it mean ‘creativity’ or ‘engineering’. Or does it always mean all of those things at all times?

While ‘design’ can mean anything and everything, it is also fundamentally important for conversation that it mean something in context. The context for those around me is that ‘design’ apparently is a text book definition, regardless of the importance of claiming the word for its greater purposes of Design. So, maybe that’s just it? Maybe we say Design vs design. It’s been proposed before (big d design, as its referred to within academia) and I think that can be the goal we strive for. Design is not design.