Language and Critical Thinking
These semiotic considerations are of course central not only to the study of literature, but also to the study of culture in general, and any kind of critical cultural study has to be based on this semiotic understanding of culture as meaning-creation. Semiotics reveals to us that we encounter language everywhere in our social existence, since all the different kinds of knowledge we have about the reality around us are available to us through the language spoken by our culture. This means, in a central thesis of critical cultural studies, that the meanings of the elements of reality are not “out there.” Meaning is not an inherent attribute of reality, in the same way as it is not the inherent attribute of texts, either; it is produced by our culture in a continuous and historical process, and the same text, the same element of reality or the same social phenomenon may have different meanings to society in different historical periods.
Shakespeare’s dramas were very fashionable and idolized in certain historical periods, and less popular in others. Women were considered to be inferior to men in social standing and mental capacities for many centuries, and even suffrage was denied to them until the 20th century. Nowadays, it would be very strange to say in our culture that women cannot vote. There was a time when homosexuality was considered to be a contagious disease – this sounds ridiculous to us now.
The meanings, the “truths” about reality which are offered to us by our culture are not essential, unchangeable, absolute truths, but social productions about which there is a current social, conventional agreement by the majority of society or by those who have the power to say what the truth is. This is why it is always very important to be critical about all the different languages that are circulating around us in culture as discourses, as language in social use (literary, scientific, cultural, educational, religious discourses, the discourses of fashion, health, morals, legality, sexuality, etc.). These discourses are not grounded in absolute, unchangeable truths, but in social belief and ideological interest: we have to be critical when we use or study them, and this perspective of critical thinking is the most important thing to master in academic studies.