This section of the book is an insightful evaluation of language and our ability to interpret and manipulate typography to further simplify or complicate it’s functionality. The chapter covers a lot of different concepts: Saussre’s’ reflection on language and how it bridges the gap between sounds and symbols; structuralism, post-structuralism, modernism as they relate to typography and “visual language,” which explores the irreconcilable differences between “vision” and “language” as they exist on parallel planes. This entire chapter was particularly thought provoking in the sense it gave several new dimensions to not only typography, but also the very nature in which we visually experience “art.”
What I found most interesting was Sausre’s analysis of language and its bridge like function between sounds and their respective concepts. He attacked the notion that language existed to represent ideas. The common sense view of language explained it as a collection of names assigned to pre-existing concepts. Sausre believed that sounds and concepts had no distinct relationship and that language worked between the two, instead of on a third plane that hovered above.
The image I selected expresses not only the visually stimulating way typography can be used to convey and idea or a design but relates somewhat to Sausre's argument that a concept cannot exist with the linguistic sign between the symbol and sound. The sound of the word tree and the image of the word tree exist on two separate planes. Only with the implementation of the linguistic sign "tree" do these to come together to create any rational meaning.
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