Our second set of readings are excerpts from two books; Ferdinand de Sausurre’s Course in General Linguistics and a collaboration between J. Abbot Miller and Ellen Lupton entitled Design Writing Research.

The Saussure reading consists of the first two chapters from Part One of the Course, which are in this PDF:

Saussure_CourseGenLing_ExcDownload

The  Ellen Lupton & J. Abbot Miller reading includes 3 short essays – Counting Sheep, Modern Hieroglyphs and Language of Dreams – which can be found in this PDF: 

LuptonMiller_DesignWritingResearch_ExcDownload

Here are some questions for these readings:
What is language? What distinguishes a proper language from other forms of communication? How are symbols or icons related to language? How are signs, signifiers, and the signified employed in general communication? Or in graphic communication? What role does language play in design? What does design do that language cannot? How are language and design related to one another in today’s culture?