Discourse, Text, and the University

As a university student, I’ve been asked to participate in a conversation on society and its underpinnings. The whole concept of the university has been based on the idea that we will be talking about ideas and spreading information. So how does discourse actually work? And how do we know what they mean?

Discourse is based on communications, language, symbols and signs. Signs indicate the presence or occurrence of anything else, such as an image of a man or a woman indicating a washroom. Symbols stand in for something else.

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols as well as their interpretations. In this context, a word could be considered a sign, since it's in place of the actual object.

Now, signs and symbols are arbitrary and therefore have different meanings in different contexts. They became what they mean by random. This makes sense, because there are so many languages
out there and we can therefore call glue in more than a thousand ways, including the French "colle."

Signs therefore, only make sense when they are in place within a set system. Signs can also have different meanings when placed in different contexts. The swastika could be a holy symbol of good luck in India, and it could be a unholy symbol among German Jews as the insignia of the Nazis.

The idea of signs and symbols being arbitrary also leads to the fact that hey can be shaped by ideologies, as in the case of the Nazi's above. These ideologies and viewpoints can change the meaning of a symbol immediately.

Now, let's talk about text. It is based on semiotics as I just mentioned. They are "linguistic structures" made up of words and phrases woven together into understandable statements.

There's another term, and it's "Text" with a capital T to boot. It stands for all text that has ever been written. Don't confuse the two.

The two are related with work, which is essentially a piece of literary expression, like a story. Work has a set meaning. That mans it has to make sense.  That "Buffalo" one is perhaps so confusing.

As our language changes, so does our work, and it can change the meaning of it as well. Text is a social space for discussion, as in academic discourse.

Also notable is the death of the author. With multiple reader interpretations, its up to the reader to determine the text. Therefore, the role of the author is now meaningless as the author no longer conveys meaning.

And that's the beauty of the university. It allows us to interpret the meaning of what's discussed each and every day by every one of us. We see text and we must determine what it actually means, and how others will see it. In fact, this applies to anything the university engages in. From here, we can fix society by lifting prejudices on one another.

This is just one of the many ways we can see the importance of the university. There are countless many others. But you can see here that all centres on one thing, the issue of discourse. It is the whole base of the concept  of the university.