The Death of the Author

I found Roland Barthes’ ideas in “The Death of the Author” to be very interesting. Barthes introduces his argument by skillfully using the “They Say/I Say” technique to inform the reader what common belief he will be arguing against in his writing. He opens by stating the wide held belief that the author is the person who writes the text. Barthes then argues this belief by explaining his own meaning of what constitutes an author.

The common belief, as Barthes explains, is that the writer of a text gives meaning to it because it is his ideas and words that create the text.  However, Barthes argues otherwise.  Barthes’ argument is centered around who gives original meaning to a text and how the ideas of writers are not original thoughts of their own. Instead, the thoughts created are a result of the culture that surrounds the writer making them unoriginal.  This expresses how even the words of a writer is not his own work.  Every word that a writer uses in his text has a predetermined meaning by society, making the writer’s meaning of the word unoriginal.

In addition, Barthes argues that it is the reader who gives the text original meaning. It is only when the text is read and then interpreted by a reader, that it can be given any sort of original meaning. This is because, according to Barthes, a reader is not affected by the same influences that take away originality like that of a writer.  The reader can interpret the text in an infinite amount of ways original to only himself.  Since it is only the reader who has the ability to form an original meaning of the text, it is the reader who truly writes the text.

Even though I enjoyed the ideas that Barthes had, I would like to add that I believe that Barthes could have stated his argument in a simpler way. I felt that Barthes’ argument was slightly buried under complex sentence structures and wordy sentences.

Intellect vs. Intelligence

In Hofstadter’s “On the Unpopularity of Intellect”, Hofstadter focuses his writing on the qualities of our American society that contribute to the unpopular view of intellect. Before Hofstadter begins to explain these qualities, he first takes the time to explain the commonly unrecognized difference between intellect and intelligence. Even though Hofstadter only includes this explanation in order to clarify a misconception before he goes into his argument, I found this portion of the reading to be one of the more interesting.

I have always thought, like many others, that intellect and intelligence went hand and hand. I viewed people with intelligence and people with intellect alike as intellectuals. Hofstadter does a great job addressing this misconception and spends the needed time to fully clarify the difference between intelligence and intellect. In Hofstadter’s words: “intelligence is an excellence of mind that is employed within a fairly narrow, immediate and predictable range…Intellect, on the other hand, is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind” (Hofstadter 25). Intelligence allows people to grasp and apply concepts while intellect allows people to theorize and develop unknowns. To better explain the differences between the two, Hofstadter uses many diverse examples that clearly support his point. One example that I found very interesting was his example of the engineer. Hofstadter explains how engineers, as well as many other professionals, have “professionally trained intelligence.” Engineers go to school in order to learn an array of various engineering concepts that allow them to be successful in their profession. Hofstadter compares these concepts to instruments that the engineer uses to accomplish his task. Engineers simply grasp concepts that are taught to them and put them to practical use. They do not develop their own concepts, but instead apply preexisting ones, which may make them intelligent people but not intellectuals.

This example, along with many others that Hofstadter includes, allows the reader to fully grasp the difference between intellect and intelligence and enables Hofstadter to lay the foundation for the remainder of his text. 

The Value of Words and Actions

I found Jerome Bruner’s, “Act of Meaning” to be disengaging and hard to follow. Bruner’s intended audience for this text was other psychologists who already have a solid understanding of the debated topic at hand. Due to the assumption that the audience is already familiar with past research in the field, Bruner references the work of many other psychologists without taking the time to fully explain their relevance. This assumption makes it difficult for readers who are not of the intended audience, like myself, to understand the Bruner’s text fully.

Of the ideas that I was able to grasp, I found Bruner’s commentary on the power of words and actions especially interesting. We have heard over and over throughout our lives the popular saying “it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.” Bruner explains in his writing that this is not only believed by society but also by many psychologists: “we have been taught to treat such ‘said’ accounts as untrustworthy” (Bruner 16). Bruner, on the other hand, disagrees with this mentality and explains why society should value what a person says, not only what the person does. He talks about how psychology is not dependent on one aspect but is the combination of several: “psychology is and must be based not only upon what people actually do, but what they say they do and what they say caused them to do what they did” (Bruner 16). Bruner highlights how without taking into account what a person says it is impossible to fully understand the thoughts and intentions of a person’s actions.

In Bruner’s text he explains how both a person’s words and actions are significant to the field of psychology because it incorporates both the mind and the body. Even though I did not fully understand all of his approaches to different psychological ideas, I was able to understand his view on the importance of both words and actions in psychology.