In this video, we're gong to be talking about the nature of symbols. There are some important terminological distinctions in the technical literature about symbols and signs, but I'm not going to be getting into those here. Instead, I'm going to go with the broad definition of the term symbol. By which we will mean in this class, a something that is an object, a behavior, a word, an idea, story, so forth. A something that stands for something else. The object or meaning for someone. The interpreter in some respect. Here's a diagram to help us think about what we're talking about. I put a dashed line between the interpreter and the object or meaning, to indicate that, from the point of view of symbolic theory, we as humans really don't have direct access to the objective world. Or to meanings that are simply out there, we access those meanings, those objects through symbols. Hence, I put solid lines connecting the interpreter to the symbol, and the symbol to the object or meaning. I think you can pretty readily see, that in the examples we've been talking about, we're dealing with symbols in this sense. The American flag is a symbol of America as a country, and of American culture. The mule, as mascot, is a symbol of United States Military Academy. The goat, similarly, a symbol of United States Naval Academy. In fact, the prank involving the theft in army mules, is symbolically about stealing the power of military academy. We're not going to go into details here, about precisely how a symbol evokes it's object or meaning. That is part of a technical specialty known as, semiotics. If you are interested, there is plenty to be learned in that area. But I do want to stress, that symbols are not just about understanding the world. They are also about getting people to respond to them in particular ways. Take this symbol, you may be familiar with it. It indicates radiation, but it's not just about triggering your understanding, like getting you think, hmm, that's interesting, I haven't thought about radioactivity for a while. Instead, the symbol indicates that there is radiation in the area where the symbol is placed. The symbol gets you, hopefully, to do something about it. Namely, to take precautions. Let's now add to this, a distinction found in the literature between two types of symbol. Because we're going to be especially interested in just one of those types. The two types are called referential symbol, and condensation symbol. A referential symbol stands for something already known to consciousness. A good example of a referential symbol, is a word, like the word cat. The idea of cat is already something known to us, It's part of our consciousness. A condensation symbol, in contrast, evokes affect or feeling, without any necessary awareness or consciousness of why. A mascot may get us excited, but we don't necessarily know why or how. When we are talking, in this unit, about symbols as part of team culture, we're particularly interested in condensation symbols. We're interested in the fact that symbols can stir our emotions. The power of team culture to motivate people is, in considerable measure, the power of the symbol to evoke feelings. Now that you know what a symbol is, and you've learned about the difference between referential symbols and condensation symbols, we're ready to take a closer look at how symbols actually work. That will be the subject of our next lecture.
