Embedded throughout my Ideograph, I use a certain language and terminology to caption my collected artifacts.
This page will help you better understand the language I use in terms of how the word "retard" has created symbolic action in our society and how it continues to be resignified. Resignification and the Semantic Shift. As found on the Origin tab, there are multiple definitions of the term "retard". What once started out as a verb, the word shifted to a noun and ultimately as an adjective used to label. But how does the word shift? The meaning of the word and the context of the symbol is resignified. Resignification occurred as people rejected the original connotation of the symbol and attempt to change it. In this case, people rejected the traditional connotation of retarded as a verb- to slow down or diminish, and began to make meaning of the definition in terms of action and people. By aliding the term with people, "retard" took on a completely different meaning and connotation and the term underwent a semantic shift. Because the connotation of a term is not an inherent part of it, what is signified develops over time. As society repeatedly used "retard" in contexts that infused it with negative meaning , the term retarded was resignified Designifying Retarded Now, in current society, "retard/retarded" is undergoing designification; the process of ensuring the word will not have any potential for rhetorical mobilazation or agency. The amount of controlling power the term retarded gained and held in society has helped it to construct such a powerful social reality for a particular group. Because of the way society has come to know "retarded", those deemed as retarded (having a mental or physical disability), are instantly othered. As the term, retarded, developed a negative connotation, those who were labeled as retarded did as well. The term associated and symbolized ideas of shame and embarrassment. One of my artifacts, the Spread the Word to End the Word Campaign, strives to designify retarded by taking the normalcy out of the word and what it has come to symbolize; normalcy in language is power. In order to designify "retarded", it's ideological commitment, must be challenged and changed. The Terministic Screen A terministic screen is how language has the ability to USE us. This screen determines how we perceive the world around us in regards to terminology. Because language is set up to direct our attention in one way, there is an inevitable deflection of reality in another way. The negative connotation that has been signified by using the term retard to define an individual, has created a terministic screen that selects only one thing - the negative. Utilizing the term to label one as retarded deflects any potential positive realities. The terministic screen is an example of the way in which language enables yet restrains the way in which individuals make sense of the world. Fritch, John, et al. Rhetoric in Civic Life. Strata Publishing Inc., 2012.
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