Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices

Traditional definition of culture says that the culture represents the best that has been said and
thought in a society. It is the sum of all great ideas represented in literature, music, philosophy
etc. Culture is usually divided into two streams: high culture and popular culture, also called
the mass culture. The distinction between these two streams is that the high culture is more
serious and classical, whereas the popular culture is represented by widely distributed forms
of popular music, publishing, art, or activities and entertainments that fulfil everyday lives of
so-called ordinary people. Culture is actually a set of practises because it is concerned with
the production and the exchange of meanings between the members of some group or a
society. Therefore, culture depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is
happening around them and having shared meanings of the world. But this shared meaning
can make culture sound too unitary. The truth is that in every culture exists a great diversity of
meanings about any topic, and the way of interpreting and representing these topics is what
makes culture so different, and yet understandable to other people, even if they do not agree
with that point of view. That is very important because there is no one, fixed meaning of
something. The participants in a culture are those who give meaning to people, objects and
events within a certain context. We give them meaning by our use of them, and what we feel,
say and think about them. This meaning we give to things gives us the sense of our own
identity. Meaning is produced in every interaction in which we take part. It is also produced in
media or whenever we express ourselves. But the language is the media through which the
meaning is mostly produced. The language is here meant in much wider sense. We do not
have to literally speak the same language; we just have to speak enough of the same language
to be able to understand what someone is saying to us. This means we have to be able to read
visual images and interpret body language in similar ways. Language is a system of
representation which uses words, sounds, notes, gestures and even clothes to say something.
The importance of these elements is their function; they construct and transmit the meaning.
They function as signs representing our ideas and feelings enabling the others to decode or
interpret their meaning in the approximately the same way that we do. These codes are crucial
part of our culture that do not exist in nature but are the result of social conventions which we
learn and internalize as we become members of the culture.

Tihana Kaera