Intro to Semiotics Part 1: Donald Trump and the Intentional Fallacy

In which we ask whether what we mean is actually what we mean, and then discuss briefly why Donald Trump doesn’t have control over the meaning of his anti-Semitic tweets.
The first of a multi-part series of videos looking into how language and meaning function.
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Twitter: / electricdidact
Reddit: / electricdidact
Blog/Author Site: electricdidact.wordpress.com/
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Works Cited:
William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” 1946
Michael Wreen, “Beardsley’s Aesthetics,” 2014, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu/entries/bea...)
MedievalPOC (medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/12...)
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author (1968)
SEE ALSO:
Reginald Shepherd, “On the Intentional Fallacy,” March 19, 2008, Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org/harri...)
Alana Horowitz Satlin, “Trump Claims Star of David Picture Isn’t Anti-Semitic,” Huffington Post, July 5, 2016 (www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/d...)
Michelle Ye Hee Lee, "Everything you wanted to know about Trump and the six-pointed star," Washington Post, July 6, 2016 (www.washingtonpost.com/news/f...)
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Assets:
Donald Trump (www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-f...)
MedievalPOC (medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/12...)
Corrupt Hillary poster: (nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/...)

[@octaviaakoulitchev8221]

Please could you do one of these on Barthes's the third meaning? Was so helpful

[@timothyfoster8297]

Really interesting. I agree completely when the intended meaning is unclear, especially with the statue, hahaha, human destiny much? One tricky thing about this, is that the human race assigns so much historical meaning to everything, too much bias to their interpretation of a person's meaning, that they stop listening. As in, there are fewer and fewer ways to say anything or convey meanings without conjuring up some historical meaning that completely transfers all attention away from the intended meaning. Does that make sense or am I way off?

[@ElectricDidact]

[oops, commented from the wrong acct] So I think I'll be talking more about connotation in subsequent videos. I think you're on to something, but it's not "bias" that you're thinking of. Rather, it's what theoreticians would call connotation or signification. Rather than there being "fewer ways to say something," groups come up with NOVEL ways to say the same things. This is really important to semiotics. There can be multiple ways to SIGNIFY the same SIGNIFIED (I'll define those terms in the next video). In other words, the situation you're describing comes from the fact that a signifier (say, a word or a symbol) comes to signify something it didn't originally; in that case, sometimes groups come up with new SIGNIFIERS (say, a new word or symbol), even though it may bear the same signified (or concept). Other times (as with Trump's "sheriff's star" or his recent defense of the slogan "America First"), people try to insist using the original signifier and fight against the unalterably changed signified. Half of that probably didn't make any sense to you now. BUT IT WILL. I hope. :D

[@kyawzayyarlwin8003]

Thanks

[@GameLimbs]

Barthes? Semiotics? I will be waiting with bated breath for more on this!

[@ElectricDidact]

Yiss. Also don't die.

[@gangabhetwal9]

good.

[@SecondComingTwice]

Poems are crafted. So is the English language and spelling. Stanley Kubrik's films and the others from the brotherhood in Holly-wood.

[@Unathi96]

buy a nail clipper.

[@keyboarddancers7751]

Never have I encountered such a whimsically expressed exhortation!