week 2 8th March
Excursion:
meet me at 10.20 am at the Art Gallery of NSW
Use the link below to find the gallery. look at the map and plan the trip. bring money for incidentals like thirst and hunger ans transport
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/visit-us/plan-your-visit/getting-here/Address
Art Gallery Road, The Domain, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
Where to find It
On the eastern side of Sydney’s CBD, next to the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain, just down the road from St Mary’s Cathedral.
Getting there on foot
About 5 minutes walk from Macquarie Street, across the Domain, or from Hyde Park.
Getting here by public transport
Bus 441: departs York Street side of Queen Victoria Building on the hour and every 20 minutes during the week and every 30 minutes on weekends and public holidays, and drops off right outside the Gallery.
Sydney Explorer: nearest stop is #12 (outside the Department of Lands)
Train: St James and Martin Place stations are both about 10 minutes walk.
For more information, contact the Transport Infoline on 131 500 or www.131500.info
The Theory of semiotics is a tool for understanding the intention of the author in a work of art or design. (a cultural product) and deciphering it's meaning
Take, for example this option for assignment one:**
Topic:
1/
What is the meaning inherent in the public buildings of Frank Gehry and why are they celebrated today but would probably never got started in the 50s?
The presentation is expected to be professionally presented using appropriate technology. Because your subject is about semiology you must consider the channel, noise, materiality, symbolism, historical and cultural context
The author: is the architect
The channel is Architecture
The Message: is.....
Noise: Is the things that distract us from it, or get in the way
Materiality: Is the stuff it's made with
Historical context: Is what went before in both architecture as a discipline and in that country
Cultural context: The culture of the people in that place
The Theory of Semiotics:
The study of Visual Communications and the meaning of the signs and symbols we use in the form of Typography and images combined with colours and other design elements is a relatively new subject .
We explore the Semiotics or meaning of our symbols and how they form a language. Semiotics began as a way of studying literature. The following reading is not essential but you may find it useful if you persevere.
Semiotics - Saussure
[Please note: in what follows, we shall frequently refer to French semiologists, who generally preferred the term 'semiology' to 'semiotics'. Generally, though, we have used the term 'semiotics', which is more widespread in English-speaking countries.]
The 'linguistic turn'
In this century, Linguistics, the scientific study of language, has seen a quite extraordinary expansion. The study of language has held a tremendous fascination for some of the greatest thinkers of the century, notably Ludwig Wittgenstein and Noam Chomsky, whose influence has been felt far beyond linguistics.
Much of the impetus for this interest in linguistics originated with the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, from whose work (Course in General Linguistics, his lectures published in 1915 after his death by two of his students) French theorists developed 'structuralism', out of which (in part against which) grew 'post-structuralism', both of which have placed enormous influence on language and both of which have had a formative influence on cultural studies. This emphasis on language is often referred to as 'the linguistic turn' in philosophy.
Saussure's vision of semiology
As this section deals with semiology (also known as semiotics, especially in the USA) rather than linguistics, we shall not dwell on linguistics here, but we need to look at Saussure's ideas as it was he who laid the foundation stone of semiology. It was he in fact who coined the term (which he developed from the Greek word for 'sign'). He used the word to describe a new science which he saw as 'a science which studies the life of signs at the heart of social life'. (Saussure (1971(p.33))). This new science, he said, would teach us 'what signs consist of, what laws govern them'. As he saw it, linguistics would be but a part of the overarching science of semiology, which would not limit itself to verbal signs only.
Communication and language
Many semiologists (or semioticians) when commenting on the media have used vocabulary which might strike you as more appropriate to the study of literature. Thus, for semioticians, a TV documentary, a radio play, a Madonna song, a poster at a bus stop are all texts. We users of these texts are referred to as readers. Thus you will find Fiske and Hartley titling their book Reading Television and Monaco calling his How To Read a Film. Similarly, some semioticians will tend to talk about the vocabulary of film, the grammar of TV documentaries and so on, following through the analogy with language, though some commentators would argue that it is fundamentally impossible to draw glib analogies between language and cinema or photography.
models & basic concepts: semiotics
Semiotics: Saussure - the sign
Denotation: Briefly the idea is that a sign 'denotes' or 'refers to' something 'out there in the real world'. It supposes that words (let's stick with words for the time being) are labels attached to things much as labels might be stuck to artifacts in a museum. That seems a pretty sensible idea at first, perhaps - we can readily see how 'London' or 'the Sydney Harbour Bridge'' denote things 'out there'. But as soon as we get on to 'city', 'woman', 'man', things start to get a bit wonky. Which city, woman, man? And when we get on to words like 'ask' or 'tradition', this simple sign-----; thing relationship starts to fall apart. As Wittgenstein puts it '[the idea that the individual words in language name objects] surrounds the workings of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible.' (Wittgenstein (1958) p. 4)
Semiotics - Signifier\signified
Saussure actually saw the division of the sign into sound image and concept as a bit ambiguous. So he refined the idea by saying it might make things clearer if we referred to the concept as the signified (signifié) and the sound image as the signifier (signifiant) - this idea is shown in the graphic, which attempts to show how the signifier and signified coalesce into what we call a sign.
It's worth taking a little time to consider the graphic so that you get it into your head. It's worth asking yourself as well whether you think it makes good sense and whether it's very useful
Signifier<>signified relationship
Same sound image - different concepts?
You might think that the distinction between sound image (signifier) and concept (signified) doesn't get us very far forward in trying to figure out what we mean by 'meaning'. You're probably right. After all, it's no easier to say what the concept of 'the' or 'of' is than to say what thing those words correspond to. And, of course, I don't know if the concepts 'city', 'woman', 'man' in your head are the same as those in mine. As the British linguist, David Crystal, puts it:
Some words do have meanings which are relatively easy to conceptualise, but we certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say. Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might bring to mind.
Crystal (1987)
While that's quite correct, the fact remains that it also explains why Saussure's ideas took things forward. His notion of the sign places the emphasis on our individual 'concepts' corresponding to the sound images. Your mental picture of a car (indeed, for all I know, not only a mental picture, but also a mental smell, mental noise or whatever) will not be the same as mine, for a variety of reasons. (For a discussion of some of those reasons, see the section on Meaning).
Saussure shifted the emphasis from the notion that there is some kind of 'real world' out there to which we all refer in words which mean the same to all of us. Fairly obviously, we in our language community have much of this real world in common, otherwise we couldn't communicate, but, for various reasons, the 'real world' which we articulate through our signs will be different for every one of us. (It is for this reason that Saussure saw semiology as a branch of social psychology.)
Semiotics - Icons, indexes, symbols
At about the same time as Saussure was developing semiology, the American philosopher C. S. Peirce was developing semiotics (as it tended to be known in the US and is now generally known across the world).
Following Peirce, semiologists (or semioticians) often draw a distinction between icons, indexes and symbols.
Icons
Icons are signs whose signifier bears a close resemblance to the thing they refer to. Thus a photograph of me can be said to be highly iconic because it looks like me. A road sign showing the silhouette of a car and a motorbike is highly iconic because the silhouettes look like a motorbike and a car. A very few words (so-called onomatopoeic words) are iconic, too, such as whisper, cuckoo, splash, crash.
Symbols
Most words, though, are symbolic signs. We have agreed that they shall mean what they mean and there is no natural relationship between them and their meanings, between the signifier and the signified.
In movies we would expect to find iconic signs - the signifiers looking like what they refer to. We find symbolic signs as well, though: for example when the picture goes wobbly before a flashback. Certainly the 'real world' doesn't go wobbly when we remember a scene from the past, so this device is an arbitrary device which means 'flashback' because we have agreed that that's what it means. The road sign with the motorbike and car has, as we have just seen, iconic elements, but it also has symbolic elements: a white background with a red circle around it. These signify 'something is forbidden' simply because we have agreed that that is what they mean.
Indexes
In a sense, indexes lie between icons and symbols. An index is a sign whose signifier we have learnt to associate with a particular signified. For example, if we see someone walking down the street with a rolling gait, we may associate the rolling gate with the concept of 'sailor'. We may see smoke as an index of 'fire'. A thermometer is an index of 'temperature'. Peirce gives the examples of a weathercock, a barometer and a sundial.
In old movies, when they need to show the passing of time, they may typically show the sheets bearing the days of the month being torn off a calendar - that is iconic, because it looks like sheets being torn off a calendar; the numbers 1, 2, 3 etc., the names January, February etc. are symbols - they are purely arbitrary; the whole sequence is indexical of the passing of time - we associate the removal of the sheets with the passing of time.
Don't think, though, that these three categories are mutually exclusive. A sign could very well be all three at the same time. For example, TV uses all three at the same time - a shot of a man speaking (iconic), the words he uses (symbolic) and the effect of what is filmed (indexical).
Don't think either that because a sign is iconic then it is in some way more natural than any other sign. With any kind of sign, we always have to learn the cultural conventions involved:
Convention is necessary to the understanding of any sign, however iconic or indexical it is. We need to learn how to understand a photograph... Convention is the social dimension of signs...: it is the agreement amongst the users about the appropriate uses of and responses to a sign.
Sign-systems and 'cultural baggage'
Roland Barthes & 'second-order signification'
One of the most expert and elegant practitioners of semiology was the French philosopher, Roland Barthes, whose style is immensely witty and incisive. His masterly works cover the semiotics of subjects as diverse as the classics of French Literature, pasta adverts, magazine photos, Citroën cars and wrestling. During the course of the development of structuralism, the 'linguistic turn' in philosophy, anthropology, sociology and so on became so dominant that Barthes was prepared to consider the reversal of Saussure's classification and consider that semiology is a part of linguistics. Though Barthes did not take this as far as later post-structuralists were to develop the primacy of language, his underlying idea is that semiology itself is implicated within the significances with which language is laden. Thus, there cannot be 'method' (semiological, scientific, sociological, linguistic, whatever), which can claim to be outside of the values, ironies and aporias of language.
Connotation
Barthes draws an important distinction between what he refers to as different orders of signification. The first order is, for example, the iconic sign where the photograph of the car means the car. In the second order of signification there is a whole range of connotations. Barthes, in the 'Rhetoric of the Image' (1977) argues that in photography the denoted (first-order) meaning is conveyed through the mechanical process of reproduction. Connotative (second-order) meanings are introduced by human intervention - lighting, pose, camera angle etc.
The connotations of signs become particularly important when we look at the use of signs in advertising. A photograph of a car certainly refers to the signified car in the real world, but it can also connote virility, freedom, wealth etc. An advert for an expensive whisky shows the bottle together with crystal glasses on a table in front of an open fire. At the back of the room, the shelves are full of leather-bound books. These books do not simply signify books, they also connote a high level of education and wealth. They are therefore signifiers of membership of a certain social class. This is what is referred to as second-order signification.
Communication and language
Many semiologists (or semioticians) when commenting on the media have used vocabulary which might strike you as more appropriate to the study of literature. Thus, for semioticians, a TV documentary, a radio play, a Madonna song, a poster at a bus stop are all texts. We users of these texts are referred to as readers. Thus you will find Fiske and Hartley titling their book Reading Television and Monaco calling his How To Read a Film. Similarly, some semioticians will tend to talk about the vocabulary of film, the grammar of TV documentaries and so on, following through the analogy with language, though some commentators would argue that it is fundamentally impossible to draw glib analogies between language and cinema or photography.
Semiotics: Saussure - the sign
denotation: A sign 'denotes' or 'refers to' something 'out there in the real world'. It supposes that words (let's stick with words for the time being) are labels attached to things much as labels might be stuck to artefacts in a museum. That seems a pretty sensible idea at first, perhaps - we can readily see how 'London', 'Margaret Thatcher', 'Michael Portillo' denote things 'out there'. But as soon as we get on to 'city', 'woman', 'man', things start to get a bit wonky. Which city, woman, man? And when we get on to words like 'ask' or 'tradition', this simple sign-----> thing relationship starts to fall apart. As Wittgenstein puts it '[the idea that the individual words in language name objects] surrounds the workings of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible.' (Wittgenstein (1958) p. 4)
Saussure tried to get around this problem by saying that 'the linguistic sign does not unite a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound image' (see graphic). (Saussure (1971) p. 98). If we consider printed language, then we could say that a sign consists of the printed form of a word and a concept; if we consider a black and white photograph, then the sign consists of a particular set of shapes/shades and a concept. Structuralism (i.e. the philosophy which derived later from Saussurean linguistics), then, 'brackets the referent', in the current jargon. In other words, the thing referred to (the referent) is taken out of the sign-----> thing(referent) relationship and is replaced by 'concept'. Clearly, the 'linguistic turn' is strengthened by this, since any notion of a reality external to language and concepts is de-emphasized.
models & basic concepts: semiotics
Semiotics - Signifier\signified
Saussure actually saw the division of the sign into sound image and concept as a bit ambiguous. So he refined the idea by saying it might make things clearer if we referred to the concept as the signified (signifié) and the sound image as the signifier (signifiant) - this idea is shown in the graphic, which attempts to show how the signifier and signified coalesce into what we call a sign.
It's worth taking a little time to consider the graphic so that you get it into your head. It's worth asking yourself as well whether you think it makes good sense and whether it's very useful
Signifier<>signified relationship
Same sound image - different concepts?
You might think that the distinction between sound image (signifier) and concept (signified) doesn't get us very far forward in trying to figure out what we mean by 'meaning'. You're probably right. After all, it's no easier to say what the concept of 'the' or 'of' is than to say what thing those words correspond to. And, of course, I don't know if the concepts 'city', 'woman', 'man' in your head are the same as those in mine. As the British linguist, David Crystal, puts it:
Some words do have meanings which are relatively easy to conceptualise, but we certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say. Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might bring to mind.
Crystal (1987)
While that's quite correct, the fact remains that it also explains why Saussure's ideas took things forward. His notion of the sign places the emphasis on our individual 'concepts' corresponding to the sound images. Your mental picture of a car (indeed, for all I know, not only a mental picture, but also a mental smell, mental noise or whatever) will not be the same as mine, for a variety of reasons. (For a discussion of some of those reasons, see the section on Meaning).
Saussure shifted the emphasis from the notion that there is some kind of 'real world' out there to which we all refer in words which mean the same to all of us. Fairly obviously, we in our language community have much of this real world in common, otherwise we couldn't communicate, but, for various reasons, the 'real world' which we articulate through our signs will be different for every one of us. (It is for this reason that Saussure saw semiology as a branch of social psychology.)
Semiotics - Arbitrariness of the sign
Saussure stressed the arbitrariness of the sign as the first principle of semiology.
When we say something is 'arbitrary', we mean that there's no good reason for it. If you make an 'arbitrary choice' between two things, then you choose for no good reason; you probably don't care which one you choose. By saying that signs are arbitrary, Saussure was saying that there is no good reason why we use the sequence of sounds 'sister' to mean a female sibling. We could just as well use 'soeur', 'Schwester', 'ukht'. For that matter, we could just as well use the sequence of sounds: 'brother'. Of course, as he pointed out, we don't have any choice in the matter. If we want to talk about female siblings in the English language, we can talk about 'female siblings' or 'sisters' - and that's all; there are no more options. You can't do a Humpty Dumpty.
Saussure saw language as being an ordered system of signs whose meanings are arrived at arbitrarily by a cultural convention. There is no necessary reason why a pig should be called a pig. It doesn't look sound or smell any more like the sequence of sounds 'p-i-g' than a banana looks, smells, tastes or feels like the sequence of sounds 'banana'. It is only because we in our language group agree that it is called a 'pig' that that sequence of sounds refers to the animal in the real world. You and your circle of friends could agree always to refer to pigs as 'squerdlishes' if you want. As long as there is general agreement, that's no problem - until you start talking about squerdlishes to people who don't share the same convention.
models & basic concepts: semiotics
Semiotics - Semiotics and culture
Saussure freely admits that when he is stressing the arbitrariness of the sign, he is stressing something which is actually fairly obvious. As he sees it, though, the problem is that people haven't paid enough attention to the implications of the fact that sign-systems are arbitrary.
Since it is the case that the codes (see Code) we use are the result of conventions arrived at by the users of those codes, then it is reasonable to suppose that the values of the users will in some way be incorporated into those codes. They will, for example, have developed signs for those things they agree to be important, they will probably have developed a whole array of signs to draw the distinctions between those things which are of particular significance in their culture.
In other words, you might reasonably expect that the ideologies prevalent in those cultures will have been incorporated into the codes used:
...'reality' is always encoded, or rather the only way we can perceive and make sense of reality is by the codes of our culture. There may be an objective, empiricist reality out there, but there is no universal, objective way of perceiving and making sense of it. What passes for reality in any culture is the product of the culture's codes, so 'reality' is always already encoded, it is never 'raw'.
Fiske (1987 pp 4-5)
Semiologists generally prefer the term 'reader' to 'receiver' (even of a painting, photograph or film) and often use the term 'text' to 'message'. This implies that receiving a message (i.e. 'reading a text') is an active process of decoding and that that process is socially and culturally conditioned.
models & basic concepts: semiotics
Semiotics - Paradigm & syntagm
One of Saussure's fundamental insights, then, was that sign-systems are arbitrary systems, a set of agreed conventions. Since there is no simple, natural sign=thing relationship between sign systems and reality, it is we who are the active makers of meanings. The sign-systems (or codes) which we use provide us already with sets of meanings (the 'always already encoded' reality which Fiske speaks of). We activate the meanings within the repertoire which the code offers us.
Saussure points out that the value (valeur) of signs is culture-specific. The French mouton may have the same meaning as the English sheep, but it does not have the same valeur. Why? Because English has the terms mutton and sheep, a distinction which is not available in French. He emphasizes that a sign gains its valeur from its relation to other similar valeurs. Without such a relationship signification would not exist
Syntagm
This is a very useful insight in the analysis of signs. Language is linear: you produce one sound after another; words follow one another. When we think of signs interlinked in this way (for example, in language, coming one after another: she+can+go), then we are thinking of the in terms of what Saussure calls a syntagm. There is a syntagmatic relationship between them.
Paradigm
However, at the same time as we produce these signs linked to one another in time, we also do something which is outside that temporal sequence: we choose a sign from a whole range of alternative signs. So, when a journalist writes:
IRA terrorists overran an army post in Londonderry in Northern Ireland
she chooses each sign from a range of alternatives. She could say:
'IRA scum', 'IRA active units', 'IRA paramilitaries', 'IRA freedom fighters', 'IRA lunatics'
She could refer to Londonderry as 'Derry', the name more commonly used by nationalists; she could refer to Northern Ireland as 'Ulster', the 'Six Counties', the 'occupied counties' etc.
When we look at this range of possibilities, we are examining a paradigm. We are examining the paradigmatic relationship between signs. Not uncommonly, syntagm and paradigm may be conceived of as two axes:
The signs signify because of their valeur, which derives from the relationship between them. How can you say that repeated occurrences of the same word are in fact the same word? Saussure gives the example of calling a meeting to order by shouting 'Gentlemen!' several times: there may be significant variations between each of the pronunciations, at least as significant as the differences used to distinguish between two entirely different words and yet we perceive it as being the same word. How come? The answer is that it is a relational identity which is at stake here. As an example of the sort of relationship we are talking about, Sausssure gives the example of two 8.45pm expresses from Geneva to Paris, leaving at 24 hour intervals. For us, they are the same express we are talking about the same entity when we refer to it, even though its carriages, locomotive and personnel are probably quite different on the two occasions. But it is not such material identities we refer to when we refer to the '8.45 Geneva-Paris express'; rather it is the relational identity given in the timetable - this is the 8.45 Geneva-Paris express because it is not the 7.45 Geneva-Heidleberg express, the 8.45 Geneva-Turin etc. (Sausssure (1971) pp.151-2)
We can examine the syntagms and paradigms in any medium. In Advertising as Communication Gillian Dyer takes the example of a photographic sign, namely the use of a stallion in a Marlboro ad. The paradigm from which the stallion is drawn includes ponies, donkeys, dray horses, mules, mares. The connotations of stallion rely, as Dyer puts it, on the reader's cultural knowledge of a system which can relate stallion to feelings of freedom, wide open prairies, masculinity, virility, wildness, individuality, etc.. Why were these choices made? What is communicated by them?
One way to examine the ideological closure suggested by the signs in the message is to see how the message would differ if another were chosen from the relevant paradigm. I would have to say, however, that it is not clear to me exactly how you determine what signs belong within the paradigm. If mare, stallion, donkey, mule form part of the paradigm, does fairground horse also belong to it? Ostrich? Llama? For that matter, do chair and sofa also belong within the same paradigm?
If you have been through the unit on meaning, you'll be aware that what we are concerned with here is the difference between what we referred to in that unit as denotation and connotation. The phrases 'IRA terrorists' and 'IRA freedom fighters' denote the same people, but they connote something quite different. (In fact, Saussure used the term 'associative relationship' rather more than 'paradigmatic relationship' - and that clearly suggests associations or connotations.) The sign we choose to use gains much of its meaning, not so much from what it is, but what it isn't. Its meaning is determined by the rejection of all the other signs we have chosen not to use.
You may find it a little difficult to remember the difference between syntagm and paradigm. Students sometimes find it a bit easier if they remember that:
• the contents of your wardrobe = paradigm
• what you are actually wearing = syntagm
As you can see from the example on the right, a paradigm is a set of associated signs which are all members of the same category. In language, the idea is fairly obvious, but don't forget that semioticians see other sign systems as having the same features as language. Thus, in TV the range of transitions between shots, cut, fade, dissolve, wipe, fancy computer effects and so on constitute a paradigm. The transition effect which is chosen signifies through its opposition to the other signs in the paradigm. Imagine, for example, those slow-motion, backlit, soft-focus shampoo ads which have dissolves from one shot to another. What difference would it make if they had straight jump-cuts instead. The meaning of the sign would also be changed by the genre. Imagine the same slow dissolves in a pacey Coke ad.
The paradigmatic analysis of a media text involves looking at the opposition between the choices which are actually made and those which could have been made. This structuralist analysis of texts tends to focus on binary oppositions.
models & basic concepts: semiotics
Semiotics - Icons, indexes, symbols
At about the same time as Saussure was developing semiology, the American philosopher C. S. Peirce was developing semiotics (as it tended to be known in the US and is now generally known across the world).
Following Peirce, semiologists (or semioticians) often draw a distinction between icons, indexes and symbols.
Icons
Icons are signs whose signifier bears a close resemblance to the thing they refer to. Thus a photograph of me can be said to be highly iconic because it looks like me. A road sign showing the silhouette of a car and a motorbike is highly iconic because the silhouettes look like a motorbike and a car. A very few words (so-called onomatopoeic words) are iconic, too, such as whisper, cuckoo, splash, crash.
Symbols
Most words, though, are symbolic signs. We have agreed that they shall mean what they mean and there is no natural relationship between them and their meanings, between the signifier and the signified.
In movies we would expect to find iconic signs - the signifiers looking like what they refer to. We find symbolic signs as well, though: for example when the picture goes wobbly before a flashback. Certainly the 'real world' doesn't go wobbly when we remember a scene from the past, so this device is an arbitrary device which means 'flashback' because we have agreed that that's what it means. The road sign with the motorbike and car has, as we have just seen, iconic elements, but it also has symbolic elements: a white background with a red circle around it. These signify 'something is forbidden' simply because we have agreed that that is what they mean.
Indexes
In a sense, indexes lie between icons and symbols. An index is a sign whose signifier we have learnt to associate with a particular signified. For example, if we see someone walking down the street with a rolling gait, we may associate the rolling gate with the concept of 'sailor'. We may see smoke as an index of 'fire'. A thermometer is an index of 'temperature'. Peirce gives the examples of a weathercock, a barometer and a sundial.
In old movies, when they need to show the passing of time, they may typically show the sheets bearing the days of the month being torn off a calendar - that is iconic, because it looks like sheets being torn off a calendar; the numbers 1, 2, 3 etc., the names January, February etc. are symbols - they are purely arbitrary; the whole sequence is indexical of the passing of time - we associate the removal of the sheets with the passing of time.
Don't think, though, that these three categories are mutually exclusive. A sign could very well be all three at the same time. For example, TV uses all three at the same time - a shot of a man speaking (iconic), the words he uses (symbolic) and the effect of what is filmed (indexical).
Don't think either that because a sign is iconic then it is in some way more natural than any other sign. With any kind of sign, we always have to learn the cultural conventions involved:
Convention is necessary to the understanding of any sign, however iconic or indexical it is. We need to learn how to understand a photograph... Convention is the social dimension of signs...: it is the agreement amongst the users about the appropriate uses of and responses to a sign.
Signs are not 'value-free'
If you have looked at the section on Semiology and Culture, then you will be aware that a question fundamental to semiotics is the way that the values of our culture (or sub-culture) are incorporated into the sign-systems we use. This is a theme which recurs again and again in communication studies, as you can see from the section on codes and ideology.
All such claims relate to the concept of ideology, which you will find particularly important in your study of the mass media.
Sign-systems and 'cultural baggage'
If you've read through the previous sections on semiotics, you may recall Gillian Dyer's reference to the 'reader's cultural knowledge of a system', which allows the reader to see the stallion in the Marlboro ad as signifying freedom.
Semiologists have emphasised that language exists as a structured system of symbolic representations. We do not live among and relate to physical objects and events. We live among and relate to systems of signs with meaning. We don't sit on a complex structure of wood, we sit on a stool. The fact that we refer to it as a STOOL means that it is to be sat on, is not a coffee table. In our interactions with others we don't use random gestures, we gesture our courtesy, our pleasure, our incomprehension, our disgust. The objects in our environment, the gestures and words we use derive their meanings from the sign systems to which they belong.
The sign systems we use are not somehow given or natural. They are a development of our culture and therefore carry cultural meanings and values, cultural 'baggage'. They shape the consciousness of individuals, forming us into social beings.
The French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva expressed it this way:
What semiotics has discovered ... is that the law governing ... any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies; i.e. it is articulated like a language.
quoted in Billington et al.(1991))
The important idea in what Kristeva says is that any social practice is 'articulated like a language'. Any social practice has meanings which arise from the code it uses. Everything in our social life has the potential to mean. Not everything does mean. Wearing clothes in our society doesn't signify much in itself - though not wearing them certainly does! But what clothes we wear - that's a choice that signifies something. In the college where I work, senior managers are immediately recognised by their expensive pin-stripe suits, Communication Studies, Photography and Art & Design lecturers are recognised by their lack of ties, departmental secretaries by their stiletto heels - and so on. In Algeria recently a young woman was shot by so-called Islamic fundamentalists - her failure to wear the veil signified her refusal to accept Islamic law and Algerian men who do not wish to risk being seen as having espoused European values would be well advised to wear an Islamic beard.
Since the codes we use are located within specific cultures, it should not be surprising that those codes express and support the social organization of those cultures. From this point of view there is no such thing as meaning which is independent of the ideological and political positions within which language is used. Many analysts have drawn attention to the way that codes express and maintain existing power relationships. The French sociologist, Bourdieu, for example, considers that 'every linguistic exchange has the potential to be an act of power' (1992). He highlights the way that the close correspondence between social structures and mental structures fulfils a political function. For him systems of symbols are not merely systems of understanding, they are systems of domination.
Thus, signification is not neutral, value-free. Therefore, Marxist critics of literature and the media have placed so much emphasis on the 'politics of signification'. If discourse is not merely a reflection of reality, but actively constitutive of it, then those who control the discourse control the reality. Therefore we have seen underprivileged groups (women, blacks, workers (or their supposed champions, the Marxist intellectuals engaged in an assault on the dominant signifying practices. For example, Eagleton describes Julia Kristeva's language as opposed to all fixed, transcendental significations; and since the ideologies of modern male-
dominated class-society rely on such fixed signs for their power (God, father, state, order, property and so on), such literature becomes a kind of equivalent in the realm of language to revolution in the sphere of politics
Eagleton (1983: 188)
Roland Barthes & 'second-order signification'
One of the most expert and elegant practitioners of semiology was the French philosopher, Roland Barthes, whose style is immensely witty and incisive. His masterly works cover the semiotics of subjects as diverse as the classics of French Literature, pasta adverts, magazine photos, Citroën cars and wrestling. During the course of the development of structuralism, the 'linguistic turn' in philosophy, anthropology, sociology and so on became so dominant that Barthes was prepared to consider the reversal of Saussure's classification and consider that semiology is a part of linguistics. Though Barthes did not take this as far as later post-structuralists were to develop the primacy of language, his underlying idea is that semiology itself is implicated within the significances with which language is laden. Thus, there cannot be 'method' (semiological, scientific, sociological, linguistic, whatever), which can claim to be outside of the values, ironies and aporias of language.
Connotation
Barthes draws an important distinction between what he refers to as different orders of signification. The first order is, for example, the iconic sign where the photograph of the car means the car. In the second order of signification there is a whole range of connotations. Barthes, in the 'Rhetoric of the Image' (1977) argues that in photography the denoted (first-order) meaning is conveyed through the mechanical process of reproduction. Connotative (second-order) meanings are introduced by human intervention - lighting, pose, camera angle etc.
We immediately know that these fonts are 'wrong':
But in what sense are they 'wrong'? They are wrong because in our culture those fonts are not used in that way. When we look at connotations we are looking at the activation of meanings deeply rooted in our culture.
The connotations of signs become particularly important when we look at the use of signs in advertising. A photograph of a car certainly refers to the signified car in the real world, but it can also connote virility, freedom, wealth etc. An advert for an expensive whisky shows the bottle together with crystal glasses on a table in front of an open fire. At the back of the room, the shelves are full of leather-bound books. These books do not simply signify books, they also connote a high level of education and wealth. They are therefore signifiers of membership of a certain social class. This is what is referred to as second-order signification.
Myth
Second-order signification, then, is what we have elsewhere referred to as connotation. But it is also what Barthes refers to as myth. Barthes quotes in Mythologies (1957) the example of a photograph on the cover of the magazine Paris Match. It is of a black soldier wearing a French uniform. He is giving a military salute and his eyes are gazing intently upward, no doubt at the French tricolore flag. That, as Barthes says, is the meaning of the photo. That is the meaning in terms of the first order of signification, that is what the photo denotes.
But Barthes goes on to explain the further meaning of the photo. The further meaning, the second order signification (connotation) must arise from the experiences we have had and the associations (connotations) we have learnt to couple with signs.
However, such connotations cannot be independent of the culture we live in and within which our sign-systems operate. The sign of this particular soldier becomes the signifier of the cultural values that he represents in the photograph. That takes us into what Barthes refers to as myth. Under the operation of this myth, the sign becomes a second-order signifier. The signified is: 'France has a great empire; all her sons, without distinction of colour, serve faithfully under the French flag and that there is no better answer to the critics of colonialism than this black's zeal in serving his supposed oppressors.'
Third-order signification
Third-order signification is a matter of the cultural meanings of signs. These cultural meanings derive not from the sign itself, but from the way that society uses and values the signifier and the signified.
We draw meanings from the stock of images, notions, concepts and myths which are already available in the culture in a particular context and at a particular time: that
Clearly, Barthes sees the photo as being much more than a signifier signifying merely its signified, the black soldier saluting. He is concerned here with the ideological import of the photograph. By ideology we mean more or less what Barthes himself prefers to refer to as a mythology: the sets of myths which operate as organising structures within a culture, organising the meanings which we attach to the signs. (1957)
In Barthes's view the function of myth is to legitimise bourgeois ideology. Its function is to present to us a 'reality' which serves the interests of the bourgeoisie in such a way that the values incorporated in that 'reality' appear to be quite natural, taken for granted, common sense (allant de soi).
Practical work
In your practical work, semiotics should play a major rôle, particularly at the stage where you are analysing existing artefacts. Don't simply take them at face value; try to use semiotic analysis to delve below the surface of the signs.
Say many members of your audience regularly read a particular magazine: take what appears to be a typical double page spread - what are the signs in it? linguistic, photographic, layout - look at them in terms of 'signifiers' and 'signifieds'. What is denoted, what connoted? What myths are activated - myths of the subject under discussion, myths of this readership?
mental acts at all. Specifically, Lévi-Strauss's well-known critique of totemism seems to reduce to little more than this conclusion.'
Visual Communication in Culture.
Notes from Art, Design and Visual Culture: By Malcom Bernard
Intro
Sight or vision is as vital and important a system of human communication and cultural
expression as language. Guy Debord: People passively consume images and
representations, spectacles that are divorced from real life.
Michael Foucault says we are a society of surveillance. People are not watching but being
watched, inspected and recorded all the time
“Our common culture seems increasingly a product of what we watch”
Culture
“ The two world wars were followed by a profound loss of cultural values which found
expression in art movements such as Dadaism. The doubt entertained by many European
intellectuals concerning the possibility of universal cultural values was intensified by
their developing awareness that modern mass communication and entertainment
technologies would increasingly threaten traditional distinctions between elite and mass
forms of culture.
DEBATE about reality television vs. fine art or classical music
Cultural themes become more and more important to intellectuals as one of the few areas
that they still have any control over.
Paying attention to the popular press can give away what society is worried about.
Camille Paglia: ‘Western culture is built on perceptual relations’ All the products of
western culture from religion art and architecture to advertising, fashion and films she
says are profoundly visual phenomena.
People in everyday life often make instant decisions regarding quite important topics on
the basis of how something or someone looks. The clothing of certain subcultures has
made it possible to know what a person is interested in. Choices about T-shirts and shoes
as well as choice of colour, for example mean things to groups like the Goths and Raggas
of the 1980s. The visual ques define and differentiate these cultural groups to themselves
and from other such groups.
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