Chapter 19: “Language, Culture, and Curriculum…” that is a paper presented by Ted Aoki and Ken Jacknicke in 2000, from the text Curriculum in a New Key – The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki. The chapter is filled with ideas that tie together many concepts from the larger text, and today, I am thinking about metonymic moment #3 “Opening up to the third space midst representational/ nonrepresentational discourses.” In the chapter, Aoki explores the space between:

Representational   /   nonrepresentational discourses.  

Jacques Lacan, an interesting (but controversial) psychoanalyst who reinterpreted the semiotic positions of Saussure and Jacobson, is quoted and his view of spaces between signified and signifiers is explored. There is an interesting graphic on page 325 (copied below) that helps visualize the idea, which I find otherwise hard to grasp.

As Lacan purports, the signified is erased, hence, absent. “Meanings, always partial and incomplete, are constituted in the spaces of difference between signifiers in a signifying chain” (Aoki, 325). As meanings are always partial, we come to a space “between representational discourse and nonrepresentational discourse… a ‘third space of ambivalent construction’” (Aoki 325). If signifiers (words) and signified (concept or reality) have such a large space between them, in practice, this means that words have infinite meanings that are possible. The third space that is vast is where the meanings of words exist in a realm that is the fertile place, Aoki mentions in a different chapter.   

The concept acts as a window for me to see the meanings of words in a completely different way. I think about how everyone interprets words in their way, and when you consider how words are such a critical part of teaching English, I am glad that I am not a rigid teacher who criticizes students on their “WC” or word choice like I remember seeing written on my essays as a student. Who is to say what the correct word is? The chapter also gives me ideas for sharing this concept with my students and challenging them to practice living in the third space and unraveling the way that words mean multiple things to them and each other. I am picturing a word on a page as a ball of wool that can be unfurled, and meanings pulled out along the string. The string in this case would be so long, that the original signified is lost and “erased” along the way, and a new meaning is created from the many meanings of the interpreter.

Photo by Jean-Marc Vieregge on Unsplash.

Curriculum in a New Key | The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki | Ted T. (n.d.). Retrieved July 4, 2024, from https://www-taylorfrancis-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/pdfviewer/