Com 520 - Philosophy of Communication - Week 07

Radford and Arendt successfully developed my ideas about communication.

The concepts we take for granted about thinking is not what is really occurring in the mind.  We have become so reliant on language that we are unable to differentiate linguistic metaphors of thought against the reality of how thought works.  Wittgenstein illustrates that thought language precedes verbal language.  It is a distinction that separates thought from language, and it poses an interesting dilemma that prohibits our ability to speak to the deeper workings and feelings of the mind.  

Radford illustrates these notions with 1984.  The overwhelming oppression of Winston’s culture is structured on forced conformity through Big Brother’s monopoly of language and propaganda.  The more people rely on language, the more they succumb to Big Brother’s agenda.  For Winston to feel anything authentic and to think past his superficial culture, he must retreat from language into the deep feelings of his inner self. Winston’s reality is the separation of language and thought.  One is used to demonstrate conformity, and the other is to experience individual freedom.

The merging of public and private spheres of thinking creates social spheres of conformity.  Individual ideas become marginalized as universal thinking emerges.  People get swept up in the idea of contributing to larger ideals and they are willing to conform to participate.  However, social spheres are prone to unrealistically high expectations, and they are vulnerable to abuse and lack of insight.  Social spheres are self affirming by requiring conformity, and by excluding, marginalizing or discarding other points of view.

Separating public and private thought, along with sincere reflection, is differentiation and it challenges social spheres.  Private thought adds diversity, enriches insight, liberates people from isolated perspectives and increases the ability to weigh the benefits of the group against the individual. 

Both authors spoke to private thoughts as ways to transcend conformity and to gain clearer perspectives of reality through diversity.

I’ve been exploring deeper thoughts associated with creativity and visual expression.  It occurred to me that clothing can be a great example of conformity fused with personal expression. We dress according to expectations of an environment, but many of our selections are personalized with thoughts that emerge from our deeper selves.  It strikes me as a nice balance between public and personal spheres of thought.   If a social sphere mandated pink for girls and blue for boys, then I could see how a segment of our population would be marginalized through narrow viewpoints.   

I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s reading.

References

Arentt, R.C. (2007) Hannah Arendt: Dialectical communicative labor. . In P.A. Arneson. Perspectives on Philosophy of Communication (pp. 45-60). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

Radford, G. P. (2005). On the Philosophy of Communication. South Bank, Vic., Australia: Thomson Wadsworth.