Posted by Ben C on 02/20/07 11:29

On 2007-02-20, Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesmiths.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:14:03 -0600, Ben C <spamspam@spam.eggs> wrote:
>
>>On 2007-02-19, Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>>[...]
>>> Saussure's distinction between langue and parole is relevant here.
>>> HTML expresses the parole or "speech" but the stable underlying
>>> meaning (which we need to recognise before we can attach a stable and
>>> relevant presentation to it) must depend on the langue or "language"
>>> instead.
>>
>>I'm confused. Do you mean HTML itself is the speech, or that the
>>author's actual content is the speech?
>
> I'm not surprised - neologism always tends to do this.
>
> In Saussure's langue / parole model, "content" is the underlying langue
> and HTML code is the visible but less vital parole. "Signified" and
> "signifier", if you prefer the terms that are usually applied to "signs"
> (as HTML elements would be termed in linguistics or semiotics).
>
> Wiki is good on philosophy and linguistics.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism
>
>>You might think: HTML is a language, a document written in HTML is some
>>speech in that language.
>
> No, I mean a lower level than this. The simpler, nmore obvious level is
> the HTML, the expression of a set of elements applied to specific usages
> in one page's situation. The deeper level represents the structure that
> re-occurs between pages in a site and is expressed through the same
> recurrent groupings of element-meanings. It's hard to describe this any
> more clearly because it is simply hard to do so -- our problem is that
> we must first invent terminology to do it with.

So are we basically saying this: HTML is a language full of terms like
"paragraph", "list", "heading". But if I'm making a music download page,
say, my information might be organized in some other structure:
"artist", "album", "details" etc.

So I might approach this with things like <p class="details">. And/or I
might store my data in some other XML language which actually has
elements like <details>, which I transform into HTML.

So what I'm trying to signify is artist/album, but all I have to signify
it with is HTML (heading/paragraph/etc.)?

But in other cases, it's not so obvious what the real structure of my
data is. But if I could find it, perhaps I could organize my site better.

[...]
> It's famously difficult to read Saussure in the original (It was written
> after he was dead, which is always hard on an author).

It is hard to write once you're dead.

Thanks for the explanation.

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