Trusty Liberal Arts Education

Lippman's discussion of stereotypes repeatedly reminded me of the literary critical approach of semiotics. Semiotics maintains that one can never know the signified (the actual thing) but only the signs (representations) for it. The classic example is apple. The word "apple" is a sign that brings to mind the taste, smell, color, of apples perhaps along with personal anecdotes of making apple sauce as a child, or stealing crab apples from the neighbor's yard, or bobbing for apples. All of these things are signs for the actual thing. They are what is associated the apple, they represent the apple, but they are not in fact the apple. This theory is a little dense, but the following quote from Lippman seemed to me as though it could just as easily have been talking about semiotic theory. "Thus there can be little doubt that the moving picture is steadily building up imagery which is then evoked by the words people read in their newspapers." (Walter Lippman p. 50).
I wanted to make this connection because the reason for cluster courses (or at least the most basic reasons that I have heard) is that students were not making the connections between their classes. I feel as though I usually do make connections among my classes, and a lot of times a concept from, say English class, will help me understand another theory in Communications, Sociology, etcetera.