Significado

Andrew Rogers, Listen (2010)

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«(…) this bringing of the object into meaning is what constitutes it as a cultural artifact. Meaning is thus intrinsic to our definition of culture. Meanings help us to interpret the world, to classify it in meaningful ways, to “make sense” of things and events, including those which we have never seen or experienced in real life but which occur in films and novels, dreams and fantasies, as well as objects in the real world. (…) Meanings bridge the gap between the material world and the “world” in which language, thinking and communication take place – the “symbolic” world. They dissolve any fixed distinction between the so-called “real world” and, for example, the world of the imagination with its “small objects of desire” (…). We are perfectly capable of understanding such dreams, of interpreting their meaning, even if they only exist in the imagination.»

«It does not follow, of course, that all meanings are equally valid. (…) It is easier to speak of those meanings which are widely shared and agreed upon within a culture, which carry a high degree of consensus at a particular time, compared with those which are held by only a few people. But even this is not a hard-and-fast distinction. Since our frameworks of meaning are constantly shifting (…). And many readings, though perfectly plausible, may not be correct (…).»

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DU GAY, P., HALL, S., JAMES, L., MACCKAY, H., NEGUS, K. (1997), Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Sage Publications - OpenUniversity, p. 10.