Introduction:
Welcome!
The first and most important thing to know as you begin this course is that Blissymbolics is a language. Within this language there are Bliss-Words, made up of Bliss-Characters, enabling YOU to produce Bliss-Sentences. A well-planned and well-organized display, along with skill in using strategies, will ensure that the sentences you generate carry a great deal of meaning!
Very soon (Lesson 3) you will begin making YOUR Bliss display and generating sentences with Bliss-words. But first, I want to introduce you to a group of Blissymbols that can tell you much about Bliss-characters and Bliss-words.
We begin with body parts.
It is interesting to note that Charles K. Bliss chose to begin with Bliss-words for body parts to introduce his language in Mr. Symbol Man. This film is recommended for anyone who would like to better understand the origin of Blissymbolics and meet its creator.(See Resource 11)The film also includes a section showing the Canadian children who became the first Blissymbol users in the early seventies. Since that time, children and adults around the world have been introduced to Blissymbolics as their means of communication.
The body parts will all be nouns. They have been chosen because they demonstrate several features of Bliss-words and they provide you with an initial vocabulary from which you can produce other parts of speech, e.g., verbs, adverbs and adjectives. As well, body parts can introduce you to indicators and word-building strategies. If you would like to read about parts of speech, see Resource 7. If you would like to have a preview of all the indicators, see Resource 2; for a preview of word-building strategies, see Resource 8.
Types of Bliss-words
Bliss-words for Body Parts can show you the ways in which meaning is represented within Blissymbolics. You will discover that some of the Bliss-characters and Bliss-words are going to be easy to remember because they look somewhat like the thing they represent. We call them pictographic because they resemble a simplified picture of an object.
Other Bliss-characters and Bliss-words are not so easy to recognize because they relate to their referent in a different way. They are referred to as ideographic (resembling an idea). It is important for the learner to have the relationship between the Bliss-word and its meaning explained, whether or not he or she agrees with it. Sometimes, learners may differ with the explanation given to a Bliss-word by Mr. Bliss. However, knowing the explanation makes the meaning memorable. That is what is important. If the learner wishes, they may attach a different explanation to a Bliss-word, one that is easier for them to remember.
Still other Bliss-characters and Bliss-words are described as arbitrary. They have no direct relationship with their referent. Of them, we say “They have the meaning they do, because Mr. Bliss said so! Case closed!” To maintain the logic of the language as C.K. Bliss created it, we accept the arbitrary meanings he assigned to these symbols. See Reference 5 for examples of pictographic, ideographic and arbitrary symbols.
You will find Bliss-words depicting body parts that fall into each of these types. It doesn’t really matter which way the Bliss-character or Bliss-word represents the meaning. What is important to remember is that every Bliss-word represents a meaning. That is why Charles K. Bliss called his communication system Blissymbolics-Semantography - symbols that are semantic (meaningful).
Every time you encounter a new Bliss-word, you need to ask, “What does it mean and why?” The answer will lie in the Bliss-characters that make up the Bliss-word. They will be either pictographic, ideographic or arbitrary, and they will have a meaning. Through understanding the meaning of each of the components, you will arrive at the meaning of the Bliss-word
Note:
If you have read some of the publications about Blissymbolics written before 1998, you will notice that the vocabulary items were always referred to as Blissymbols. We began using the terminology of Bliss-character and Bliss-word to emphasize that Blissymbolics is a language - a graphic and meaning-based language - and that the elements within this language act as characters and words, rather than as pictures. Because they are semantic, they enable you to spell the meaning of each word! Because they are not pictures, they enable you to analyze the meaning rather than processing it holistically. (This is an important distinction to make in thinking about literacy acquisition. (Read Resource 6 for further discussion of Blissymbolics as related to literacy acquisition.)
It’s now time to begin Lesson One.