It occurs to me i only answered part of your question. To answer the other question that i perceive, what i consider a signifier's "real meaning" to be is the reaction the original utterer intended to provoke in anyone exposed to it. With many things there is no "original utterer" in which case we'd consider the item to be a cultural artifact -- that is, a signifier understood to provoke a reaction of cultural recognition.
This can be a very complex and subtle thing; for example, the American flag can mean many things to many people, but underneath it all, it provokes a reaction of cultural recognition.
Since Tuesday was the Feast of the Epiphany and Carnival is now underway in my erstwhile home of New Orleans, i was thinking the other day about king cake and gazing at the Mardi Gras beads i have hanging in my cubicle. These are cultural artifacts -- their meaning to me is multiplex and myriad, but i can communicate a few brief words to another New Orleanian about king cake and she will know on numerous deep levels what i mean, but someone else who had never become a member of that culture would only understand this conversation by way of what they had read or been told about king cake -- it is, for the third party, an encyclopedic thing and not a gut reaction. And in that difference is where the potential for cultural misappropriation is born.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-01-08 07:32 pm (UTC)This can be a very complex and subtle thing; for example, the American flag can mean many things to many people, but underneath it all, it provokes a reaction of cultural recognition.
Since Tuesday was the Feast of the Epiphany and Carnival is now underway in my erstwhile home of New Orleans, i was thinking the other day about king cake and gazing at the Mardi Gras beads i have hanging in my cubicle. These are cultural artifacts -- their meaning to me is multiplex and myriad, but i can communicate a few brief words to another New Orleanian about king cake and she will know on numerous deep levels what i mean, but someone else who had never become a member of that culture would only understand this conversation by way of what they had read or been told about king cake -- it is, for the third party, an encyclopedic thing and not a gut reaction. And in that difference is where the potential for cultural misappropriation is born.