A topic which I recently have learned more about and can’t help but find fascinating is the way in which signs have been developed to convey a widespread and unambiguous idea without any shared basis of literacy. By this, I’m not trying to obtusely refer to traffic signs or the like, but specifically to signs which designate radiation and contagious diseases. After watching a video about sign design and how difficult can be, it made me think about our talks in class regarding literacy.
With the different writing systems there are different manners of reading and writing, but with signs, it’s its own kind of literacy altogether. To understand what a sign means, people reflect back on their life experiences, and these vary from people to people. This is quite different than the writing systems that we’ve seen, but it most reminds me of hieroglyphs. The symbols by themselves hold meaning, and when you take into consideration of the context that they’re in, what’s around them, there are even more.
Although the signs by themselves aren’t hieroglyphs or logographic, they have meaning and convey a message across language barriers. Their design is carefully considered so that each is individual and has their own meaning, much like hieroglyphs, but their function is to have one meaning only. In the end, I simply think that it’s an interesting topic, related to literacy, and gets me thinking.
