Loss of Meaning: Use of Archaic Symbols
The title of this piece is belies a humorous situation I was party to. Some years ago, I had the pleasure to provide orientation training for new medical staff at a hospital that I worked. During the course of the training, I asked one of the new staff to save the file they were working on. They asked me how, to which I responded: click on the save disk symbol. They stared at me blankly. It occurred rapidly to me that they had no idea what a disk symbol was. In fact one could say that they had never seen a disk. What struck me at that moment was that although the symbol of the save disk was available in the software (Word), the actual meaning of the symbol was no longer known. One observation I could make was that these symbols became more and more like Egyptian hieroglyphics seem to us: a series of strange symbols that depict wavy lines, animals and some strange shapes. Their meaning to the ancient Egyptian was entirely something different. We can see this process occurring all around us as archaic symbols such as the diskette are still in use but their underlying meaning is lost.
While all written language is made up of a variety of symbols, when symbols that represent objects are used to convey activity of some sort, there is the increasing possibility with time that their original meaning is lost. While words themselves can be restructured to reflect new patterns of usage, an object is considerably harder to transform to reflect the current convention of speech and thought. Consideration that the symbol of the falcon means something very different to the 20th century Canadian as opposed to his ancient predecessor from 2000BC. Such symbols are used all around us and run the increasing risk of being misunderstood over time. I think we can all recall in our personal experience the wide variety of EXIT signs that exist with different characters. What is remarkable about the entire process is how slow and gradual it is…my ‘ureka’ moment was purely by accident but upon consideration, there are examples of this in many places. What I find particularly fascinating is that in that symbols are used primarily as a way to get around cultural and language barriers by using non language based ideas which allow, in theory, for individuals of different backgrounds/cultures to understand the activity by virtue of the image. However, in doing so, we run the risk of the symbol becoming complete divorced from its original meaning and purpose. It becomes another strange shape that future archeologists will write papers about in an effort to uncover the original meaning of the authors.
A very interesting article written by Cangelosi shows the gradual evolution of symbols in communication and I would recommend reading it if the subject is of interest.
Just my thoughts for now.
Best Wishes
Maxim
Cangelosi, A. (2001). Evolution of communication and language using signals, symbols, and words. Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on, 5(2), 93-101.