What I got from reading McCloud, Lakoff, and Johnson.

The readings we have been going over this past week all have something to do with language and the symbols/ideas that go along with language. This week's readings raised something new to question, the ties/associations people and cultures put on images/symbols. In McCloud's reading, "The Vocabulary Of Comics", McCloud argues that a simplified cartoon does not distract us from the concept of the story as much as an embellished one would. In other terms, the lack of individuality of a cartoon is directly related to the ability to understand the story's concept/main idea. Then on the other hand we have Lakoff and Johnson's reading, "Metaphors We Live By", states that cultures and people add meaning to difficult and abstract ideas in order to make them more approachable and understandable. This concept about language also argues that these meanings and feelings we add to difficult ideas then becomes so intertwined with the idea that it is hard to then separate them from the meaning we have put upon them.

Both of these readings, in some way, describes how we have added meaning and understanding to our lives. Sometimes we need to break apart the meaning/definition we have created about a certain idea in order to really understand what it is at the core. And to do this you have to ignore the details added to distract us from the true meaning/main concept.

Works Cited:

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Excerpts from Metaphors We Live By (1980). The Literary Link. Janice E. Patten. 2010. San Jose State University.

McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics.” In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. 24-45.