Representations..........?

Representation is so ambiguous to understand. Obviously, it has denotation but it has number of connotation's meaning both positive and negative. A single thing can represent a number of other things. It is not so easy to get a particular meaning about this. Before doing the 'Reading Media Text' course, I had a common concept about representation. Now I am felling great to say that I completely have different ideas about this word. For example, if I talk about a simple word like 'Rose', what doest it represent? Well the answer is that very first thing about the word rose- it is a kind of flower, then it represents beauty, love, affection, adore and so on. Now if I add some other words before rose as if red rose represents love, yellow rose represents friendship, white rose represents peace etc as far as I know. As I am observing the various function of representation, I am getting more interest about this. Now take another example, 'Bangladesh', this word represents as many things that we cannot imagine. First, it represents a very small country, and then it represents a country that got its independent through a liberation war. It represents a part of colonialism then a group of people with different culture, natural beauty, a country with fighting spirit people. These all are positive connotation’s meaning. It also represents some negative meaning toward the whole world like natural disaster, corruption, economically weak etc. Why does representation so critical in its meaning? Because sometimes a thing, object or a person represents a meaning on behalf of something but at the same time it also represents its own identity. Therefore, these two things are happening simultaneously. I think it is going to be very critical, to make it simple I want to give another example. Political leaders of a country represent the whole countries need, want, achievement, development etc. in parliament. Nevertheless, at the same time they are representing their personalities, attitude and behavior as well as their social class toward the whole nation. Now I want to consider this topic with myself. If I ask a question to me – ‘What am I representing? Indeed, I am representing a number of things. As a person I am identify with human being then Bangladeshi then women and also my gesture, way of talking, educational level, attitude, behavior all these things are representing my family background, social class, economical level and many other things. Well I will love to add another thing that is somehow a person or an area represents some myths or other superstitious belief. If we talk about media, we will see different kinds of media represent different things. Like a 200 years ago novels represent the time, people, and their behavior, culture and so on. Print media are representing society’s culture, difficulties, achievement, changes and many other things as well as other media are doing it. Therefore, I cannot say, I represent a particular thing. At last, I want to say it is very interesting to analyze this issue in different connotation and I am getting surprise to think about it.