Blog Post #4

The first excerpt talks about words solely don't have a meaning. The writer states that a word by itself can't be "judged as good or bad, correct or incorrect, beautiful or ugly." By this, the writer meant that a word needs to given other words to determine the correct context of the purpose of the the sentence. An example of this idea would be like saying "damn," by itself there is no certainty of the context, but when you add "damn I stubbed my toe" you give the meaning a more frustrated or angry tone.
The second excerpt brings the idea of thinkers giving meanings to symbols. The writer says that symbols can almost give a communicable to people such as when the author brings back the example of the "the gardener mowed the lawn" but in actuality it was the "lawnmower that mowed the grass." The symbol of the gardener is seen as someone who takes care of the lawn but it is actually his tools that get the job done. The writer also included the diagram of "Thoughts or Reference" to demonstrate how words grouped together can give off an emotive.
The third excerpt brings in the question of quoting from the source. The author brings up a book by Dr. Bosanquet where Bosanquet states "never quote or comment on anything in a book which you have not read from cover" The writer of the excerpt then says that he nor anyone he knows practices this and deems that only a scholar might practice. Richard is saying to know the context of a work or at least a margin of it we don't need the whole entire book.
The fourth excerpt talks about how a word can make a contribution the the work as a whole and he explains this when he talks about a note in music.
I found the second excerpt confusing because of the use of the chart and i felt it wasn't explained fully, in my eyes at least.
This relates to our topic of remixes in quite a few ways. The first excerpt especially because when Richard talks about words being nothing by themselves, they need other words to make sense, I felt this works very well for remixes in songs. Some remixed song will just state a few words on loops from the original song, but the original song retains the meaning of the words as a whole, such as if the song was about a break up, the remix may not maintain that feeling. The second excerpt also because of the use of symbols and how some symbols could have one meaning in one work and a different one in the next. For example, in Macbeth, the ghost represented Macbeth's past was going to catch up on him with all of the killing he did to become king. While in a different story a ghost could mean something else such as a fear the character has. The third excerpt as well, because it talks about quoting from the text which is what we talked about in remix such as plagiarism.