reading media texts journal

the last few days have been the first time ive ever really thought about text and context. pretty stupid really that im a commdesign student…but anyway it means i have a lot to take in, a lot to try and understand.
ill start by trying to explain to myself what i think we learned yesterday.

TEXT

from what i gathered from the lecture, and our kind of confusing tute yesterday is that a text can be anything at all, as long as a meaning can be derived from it. Rebecca Hills definition was “any type of practice that is meaningful”. so here i find it gets difficult, because i would intuitively think of a text as an object, a thing, not something intangible like a smile, or faith, for example.
i will try to unpack a couple of examples for myself to make this less mysterious to me.
to use the examples from class, a text can be something as straightforward as a newspaper, a book, a poem, or can be as abstract as a plant, food or religion. this seems simple enough.
lets use the newspaper as an example-i interpret the information in the newspaper so it has a meaning to me. i can find out whats happening in the world, i can find out what paris hilton is wearing today and who won the football and those sort of FACTS. but i can also get more information from it that is not so obvious (or is so obvious you dont even notice- ie cultural literacy)- for example- say i see someone reading The Age newspaper. what meaning does it have?
i am probably in melbourne
i am probably in an english speaking country
the person reading it is probably educated
so, by the word meaning, do we actually mean clues? and would The Age have a (different) meaning if it was being read by a different person in a different CONTEXT?
in class, we used another, more abstract example of a text- a clock.
how does a clock have meaning? it defines things, it provides information, it has an aesthetic, it is designed. this is a bit challenging for me, so i will try my on example and see what i can get.
food. how does food have meaning? it may show what country you are in, it has been designed (thought about), it may be packaged (which offers other meanings), it may be restaurant food or a packet of chips, it might tell what sort of diet you have (ie, vegetarian, vegan etc).
i think i might be getting the hang of this?