Comment # 3

Sorry that I did all my comments at once, but here's my last one on Blake's post for this week:

http://appreciatingsmallthings.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/week-11-institutional-talk-i-found-this.html

I too have no idea what is being said here, but it is pretty intimidating and my first thought was woah you must be smart.

It’s pretty interesting how we attempt to simplify our communications with one another so that it’s more efficient, for example even the common internet terms such as LOL and WTF. We could even go as far to say emoticons like :( and :) represent different emotions and meaning in text, which is usually seen as emotionless.

To an outsider the internet words probably mean nothing, for example, I don’t think my mum would understand any abbreviations, and I’ve had to point out to people that the colon and bracket actually represent the conveying of some sort of emotion. Some emoticons are even unclear, for example it took me a while to understand this one: =/ even though it’s pretty clear now.

In talking about workplaces, even when I worked in a supermarket they had saying I didn’t understand at the start. For example, I’d be told to go to the floor, and I had no idea what this meant, as well as ‘pull down and pull forward’, which made sense when I put it in context.

It just goes to demonstrate the fluidity of symbols and meaning and how they can change depending on context and the individuals involved.