What I Just Read

This book discusses the evolving semiotic landscape across the last few decades of the Soviet system. If you are at all interested in semiotics, linguistics and the iterative cultural reactions a society has in response to its government's various methods of control, you'll find the author's journey towards proving his thesis fascinating--actually quite a bit more interesting than the thesis itself. I also consider this book to be a useful exercise in metadiscourse, helping the reader better perceive and navigate the terrain on which ideological, cultural and even personal discussions can take place, and how our discourse can be externally directed and influenced. Once you understand the types of things that can "grow" on a given informational terrain, you begin to see how governments and regime-compliant media till the ideological soil and "plant" things--in the form of propaganda, opinions we are encouraged to hold or not hold, or even certain words an...