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SEMIOTICS
What is Semiotics?
Semiotics is the study of signs. A sign is something that
stands for something other than itself.
For example:
An open sign hanging in the window of a business.
Or:
The sound of a fire engine.
Or:
The smell of smoke. Powerpoint doesn’t allow the
inclusion of smells so use your imagination.
Or:
A word such as,
“Tree” or a picture:
Or a drawing:
What about some random scratches in the dirt? Is that a
sign?
What if the scratches look like so:
OX
What does this represent?
Maybe this
OX
What if it’s this instead?
OX
What does this stand for?
What is the difference?
Two main approaches:
Ferdinand de Saussure 1857-1913
Charles Sander Pierce 1839-1914
Saussure
•
Signs are purely psychological.
•
Signs only make sense in a formal abstract system. A
one word language is an impossibility.
•
A sign refers to what it is not.
Saussure
Saussure believed that signs do not represent reality but
construct it.
•We come to know the world through language.
•Signs reflect the system they are found in.
•The relationship between the sign/signifier is not a
matter of personal choice.
“It is because the sign is arbitrary that it knows no law
other than tradition.”
Pierce had many(read hundreds) different types of sign
but the three most important are:
Indexes
Icons
Symbols
Index:
The signifier is not arbitrary but is connected to the
signified in some way either physically or causally.
Index:
“I smell smoke!” The smell of smoke could be said to
signify fire. It is not arbitrary but directly connected to the
thing it signifies.
Index:
A photograph. Photographs are produced though the
reflection of light off the subject.
Index:
PAIN!!!!!!
Powerpoint also lacks the ability to… never mind.
Index:
Icon:
The signifier is not totally arbitrary but resembles the
signified in some way.
Icon:
A cartoon.
Icon:
A portrait.
Icon:
Sounds that mimic such as Onomatopoeia.
Symbol:
The signifier is totally arbitrary and conventional.
Symbol:
Words and numbers in general fit into this category.
There is no reason why “2” should represent what it does.
The same is true for the word “tree”. Both come to mean
what they do through cultural convention.
What about the roman numeral II ? Is it a symbol?
Codes:
No signifying code(system of signs) can be divorced
from a set of social practices.
Basic features:
•All codes have a paradigmatic(they are members of a
category) and syntagmatic(the chaining together of the
paradigmatic) dimension.
•All codes covey meaning.
•Codes depend upon agreement between their users.
Codes
Representational:
Codes that are used to create texts; something that
stands for something else independent of its encoder.
Presentational:
Limited to face to face communication and concerns
communication through orientation, gestures, eye
movement, proximity, facial expressions, and other
examples of “body language”.
Barths
Connotation Denotation Myth
Barths
Denotation: Refers to the commonsense meaning of a
sign. A photograph of a dog denotes a dog.
Connotation: Describes the interaction that occurs
between the subjective user and their culture. The
photograph of the dog is taken in a way to appear sad.
Barthes
Myth: It is the dominate ideology of or time. It is when
connotations become “naturalized”.
Barths
Barths
I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match
is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro
in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes
uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the
tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture.
But, whether naively or not, I see very well
what it signifies to me: that France is a great
Empire, that all her sons, without any colour
discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag,
and that there is no better answer to the
detractors of an alleged colonialism than the
zeal shown by this Negro in serving his socalled oppressors.
Stuart Hall
1932-
Stuart Hall
Encoding/Decoding
A message is encoded with one meaning but may be
decoded as another.
This draws from Gramsci’s theory of Hegemony.
The reading of a text may be read(decoded) in three
different ways: dominant, negotiated, and oppositional.