Blog #4

I definitely have to say that after reading these excerpts quite a few times there are still a few things that confuse me. For the most part, I have an understanding of what Richard's was attempting to portray, but his explanations in some areas were hard to follow. One part that I hope I can understand more after class was his references to psychology on page 13. I couldn't comprehend what he was trying to say. Aside from the confusion, I thought Richards had some good insight in relation to what we have been discussing as far as remixes in class.

I thought it was interesting how Richards approached the Usage Doctrine, and how some people have this belief that there are good and bad, or right and wrong, ways to use words. He made the point that there cannot be a right or wrong way to use a word, especially because the different uses usually mean completely different things. Depending on the context that the word is used in, and the words that support it, we arrive at the initial word's meaning. As Richards says, "Words, as everyone now knows, 'mean' nothing by themselves". He goes on to state, "for we can obviously do nothing with such words as these by themselves, in the blue. They may mean all sorts of different things in different literary contexts". This statement reminded me of our class discussion, and particularly of my genealogy of the rose flower. We can't really do anything with a rose, unless we know the prior roots (no pun intended) of it, and what the traditional meaning of it is. In essence, words and how they are put together from what several different people have said or written through language, are assembled to create a remix to communicate ideas. Richards makes it clear that without a 'thinker' to make sense of assemblages of words, words have no meaning. Rather, words are 'instruments' that must be put together to create meaning, just as the pieces of a movie plot are meaningless if they aren't mixed and transformed together to create an entire film.

The greatest thing I was able to take away from Richards' excerpts in relation to remixes was that he begins from the very beginning, the very piece that combines and transforms with other pieces alike to create something greater. He starts with a word, discusses its use in language, its combination with other words, and leads to a final greater creation of communication. He concluded in saying, "a seen color is only what it is with respect to the other colors co-present with it in the visual field", and I personally took this as a metaphor in comparison to all creations ever made. The final creation is never anything meaningful without the pieces that were pulled together in assemblage to create it.