the signifier, and the second element - the corresponding ''';:lIi rim\ concept it triggered off in your head - the signified.

You will recognize much about Saussure's thinking from what we have already said about the constructionist approach

Representation is the production of meaning through language. In representation, constructionists argue, we use signs, organized into languages of different kinds. to communicate meaningfully with others. Languages can use signs to symbolize. stand for or reference objects, people and events in the so-called 'real' world.

Provided the code tells us clearly how to read or interpret each colour, and everyone agrees to interpret them in this way, any colour will do. These are just colours, just as the word SHEEP is just a jumble of letters. In French the same animal is referred to using the very different linguistic sign MOUTON. Signs are arbitrary. Their meanings are fixed by codes

No. the constructionists argue. This is because what signifies is not the colours themselves but (a) the fact that they are different and can be distinguished from one another; and (b) the fact that they are organized into a particular sequence

We use a way of classifying the colour spectrum to create colours which are different from one another. We represent or symbolize the different colours and classify them according to different colour-concepts. This is the conceptual colour system of our culture

The third approach recognizes this public. social character oflanguage. It acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don't mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems - concepts and signs. Hence it is called the constructivist or constructionist approach to meaning in language

the intentional approach is also flawed. We cannot be the sole or unique source ofmeanings in language. since that would mean that we could express ourselves in entirely private languages.

The second approach to meaning in representation argues the opposite case. It holds that it is the speaker, the author, who imposes his or her unique meaning on the world through language. Words mean what the author intends they should mean. This is the intentional approach.

So the theory which says that language works by simply reflecting or imitating the truth that is already there and fixed in the world, is sometimes called 'mimetic'

In the reflective approach, meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea or event in the real world, and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world

There are broadly speaking three approaches to explaining how representation of meaning through language works. We may call these the reflective, the intentional and the constructionist or constructivist approaches.

The main point is that meaning does not inhere in things, in the world. It is constructed, produced. It is the result of a signifying practice - a practice that produces meaning, that makes things mean.

conceptual system and our linguistic systems

It is we who fix the meaning so firmly that, after a while, it comes to seem natural and inevitable. The meaning is constructed by the system of representation. It is constructed and fixed by the code, which sets up the correlation between our conceptual system and our language system

Visual signs are what are called iconic signs. That is. they bear, in their form, a certain resemblance to the object, person or event to which they refer. A photograph of a tree reproduces some of the actual conditions of our visual perception in the visual sign. Written or spoken signs, on the other hUlld, are what is called indexical.

In order to interpret them, we must have access to the two systems of representation discussed earlier: to a conceptual map which correlates the sheep in the field with the concept of a 'sheep'; and a language system which in visual language, bears some resemblance to the real thing or 'looks like it' in some way.

but concepts organized, arranged and classified into complex relations with one another. That is what our conceptual system actually is like.

We have called this a 'system of representation'. That is because it consists, not of individual concepts, but of different ways of organizing, clustering, arranging and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relations between them.

So there are two processes, two systems ofrepresentation. involved. First, there is the 'system' by which all sorts of objects. people and events are correlated with a set of concepts or mental representations which we carry around in our heads. Without them, we could not interpret the world meaningfully at all.

The figures in the painting stand in the place of, and at the same time, stand for the story ofCain and Abel. Likewise, the cross simply consists of two wooden planks nailed together; but in the context of Christian belief and teaching, it takes on, symbolizes or comes to stand for a wider set of meanings about the crucifixion of the Son of God,

representation is the production of meaning through language.

Most of the chapter will be spent exploring the constructionist approach, because it is this perspective which has had the most significant impact on cultural studies in recent years. This chapter chooses to examine two major variants or models of the constructionist approach - the semiotic approach, greatly influenced by the great Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the discursive approach

the practices of representation.· The aim of this chapter is to introduce you.to this topic, and to explain what it is about and why we give it such importance in cultural studies.

Culture' is one of the most difficult concepts in the human and social sciences and there are many different ways of defining it. In more traditional definitions ofthe term, culture is said to embody the 'best that has been thought and said' in a society.

Representation through language is therefore central to the processes by which meaning is produced.

representational system

But what does representation have to do with 'culture': what is the connection between them?