Understanding Semiotics: Signs & Structures

Source: Fiske’s Television Culture, Chandler’s Semiotics for Beginners

Signs R us… Who are we?

•  Homo significans - The Creators and Interpretors of Signs – the meaning-makers.

Why?

• ‘We think only in signs’- Peirce (1931-58)

What are Signs?

• Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. 'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign‘ - Peirce. Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of conventions.

What is Semiotics?

• It is the study of this meaningful use of signs.It explores the reltaitonship between a sign and its meaning. It also investigates how signs are made, interpreted and combined into codes.

Source: Daniel Chandler, ‘Sign’ in Semiotics for Beginners

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html

Text in the language of Semiotics

Text : An object such as a television programme, a film, a novel or a poem, considered as a network of meaningful signs that can be analysed and interpreted.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced purse) (1839 – 1914)

Who developed Semiotics as a science?

Saussure’s Signs A Sign is made up of a Signifier and a SignifiedSignifier: any material thing that signifies, words on a

page, ‘Happy’; a facial expression and an image of happy.

Signified: the concept that a signifier refers to. E.g in this case, the concept of happiness.

Basics of Semiotics

Sign= Signifier to SignifiedTogether, the signifier and signified make up theSign: the smallest unit of meaning. Anything that

can be used to communicate (or to tell a lie).

Sign = Signifier + Signified

Signs - what it is/what it is not • Saussure - Concepts are defined not

positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system.

• What characterizes each concept most exactly is being whatever the others are not.

• E.g. Happiness is not sadness, a tree is not a bush; a rose is not a sunflower and that is how we make signs of what is/ ( in relation to )what it is not.

What is/what it is not -Binary Oppositions• There are particular negative, oppositional differences between signs.

These are called binary oppositions: what is/ what it is not

• Some examples of binary oppositions are: life/death, man/woman, good/evil, nature/culture; rich /poor, reason/passion, society/individual etc.

Semiotics/ Social structure/ Values – Codes

• Codes: A code is a rule governed system of signs , whose rules and conventions are shared by members of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meanings in and for that culture.

• They function as general maps of meaning, with belief systems about oneself and others, which imply views and attitudes about

• how the world is (and/or) ought to be / how the world should not be. • who is right / who is wrong? • what is positive / what is negative?

• Codes are where semiotics and social structure and values connect.

Representational and ideological codes

• Representational codes: are used to represent narrative, character , setting , theme, conflict, viewpoint. These codes include, metaphor, and simulation. These are a kind of connotation where one sign is associated and used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.

• Ideological codes work to organize the other codes into a congruent, coherent set of meanings. The purpose is to serve the dominant interests of society e.g. patriarchy (man/woman), capitalism (rich/poor), race (white/black), class (upper/lower), materialism (consume/save).

Semiotics, therefore, is:• The study of signs, representation codes

(simulation/metaphor) and emergent ideologies (obvious through the play of binary oppositions).

• It provides a model of understanding the meaning of a cultural artefact, a literary or media text or event.

How to understand the meaning of a text using Semiotics?• The ideology of a text will point to the binary oppositions upon which it is

based.• These binary oppositions will be encoded into the text through codes and

signs which will be decoded by the reader/audience. • These codes and signs, grouped together in a semiotic superstructure will

create and support a certain perspective, an ideology, based on the interaction between binary oppositions. This ideology would serve the dominant interests of society.

Use the Structuralist/Semiotic framework to…

• Identify and evaluate the meaning created by the codes/signs / binary oppositions and ideology represented in the advertisement

Signifier + Signified = Sign___________ (signifier) + __________(signified) = ____________________________(Sign).

Interpreting a visual text…•What does the ad signify? • What binary opposites do you think this ad points to? • How does the advertisement use a range of signifiers to convey the sign? (Use visual literacy techniques) • What representational and ideological codes are used in the ad?•What is the dominant ideology? •Will this sign be interpreted in a similar way today?