PHYSICS 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Conversation Analysis, The Main Point, Social Fact
Document Summary
There are, broadly speaking, three approaches to explaining how representation of meaning through language works: reflective, intentional, constructionist/constructivist. In the 4th century bc, the greeks used the notion of mimesis to explain how language, even drawing and painting, mirrored or imitated nature; they thought homer"s the. Iliad, as imitating" a heroic series of events. Visual signs to bear some relationship to the shape and texture of the objects which they represent. Constructionist approach acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Simplest example is the traffic light: a traffic light is a machine which produces different coloured lights in sequence. Meaning and representation seem to belong irrevocably to the interpretative side of the human and cultural sciences, whose subject matter society, culture, the human subject. Is not amenable to a positivist approach.
