Semiotics Lecture Notes

7/31/2019 Semiotics Lecture Notes

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An introductory guide to semiotics

(for practicing semioticians)


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Volvo Dentsu, Young & Rubicam Tokyo 1996 Art director: Masakazu Sawa Copywriter:

Minoru Kawase, Photographer: Megumu Wada


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1960 VWBeetle ad by

DDB


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Crying children, including 9 year old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang,Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places Pic: Ni Ut AP June 8th

1972


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Gary Winogrand Lost Angeles California1969


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Reading the constructed image:

The image can be regarded as a text, a material result of cultural production.

Visual elements within the ad produce meaning, and the meaning they represent is notsingular but multiple. These layers of meaning are different from each other. Signs produce

their meaning in our minds.

Visual elements relate to each other in a sequence, meaning is generated by their

interrelationship and is changed by it. - Derrida

Signs are culturally and historically bounded

Signs have multiple associations although some will be privileged over others, the chain of

associations will be curtailed. (Pierce)

Signs are complex both in the way we understand them and in the nature of that

understanding.

Signs do not generate meaning of themselves within this text but derive meaning from other

texts. intertextuality (Kristeva)


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Do we need to be actively aware of this process to follow the meaning or is this

another order of understanding that creates a different relationship to the text?


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Definitions

Semiotics the analysis of signs or the study of the functioning of sign systems.

According to the Fontana dictionary of modern thought.

The general science of signs: systems of signification, means by which human beings

individually or in groups- communicate or attempt to communicate by signal: gestures,

advertisements, language itself, food, objects, music, clothes, and many other things that qualify.

Structuralism can be defined as a theoretical and philosophical framework relevant to the social

sciences as a whole that stresses the universal, causal nature of structures.

a movement characterised by a preoccupation not simply with structures but with such structuresthat underlie and generate the phenomena that come under observationwith deep structuresrather than surface structures.

Although the philosophy and agenda of structuralism and latterly post-structuralism has framed

the use of semiotic analysis particularly in Europe they are distinct. Semiotics offering thepossibility of a system of analysis, a tool, structuralism attempting a theoretical explanation of

human culture and the factors that determine is form.


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Two Schools of Semiotic analysis

Charles Sanders Pierce 1839-1914 Ferdinand de Saussure 1857-1913American European

The universe suffused with signs Human signs and discourse

C.K Ogden 1889-1957 Michel Foucault 1926-1984

Charles Morris 1901-1979 Jacques Lacan 1901-1981

I.A Richards 1893-1979 Jacques Derrida b1930

Karl von Frisch 1886-1982 Claude Levi-Strauss 1908

Thomas Sebeok b1920- Roland Barthes 1896-1982Jean Baudrillard

Julia Kristeva

Roman Jakobson 1896-1982

Umberto Eco b1932


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Saussure structural linguistics

A division of language into Langue (the structure of language, a system of signs) and Parole(language as speech the act of communication between human beings)

Only the system the langue should be the object of study. It is the underlying system that makes the

use of language (parole) possible.

(Denial of the parole in analysis denied the importance of the context of the communication)

This idea of a langue or underlying system or structure opened up the possibility of extending this

model of analysis from linguistics to all cultural systems e.g. myth, ideologies, national cultures and

their material production.


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Key aspects of Saussures approach

A sign has two parts the Signifier and the Signified

The Signifieris the sound image the material form of the sign.

The Signified is the concept, object or idea to which it refers. The mental aspect of the sign.

The connection between the two is arbitrary. It results from a conventional relationshipagreed rules apply.( Although Saussure believed the relationship of signifier to signified in

language was arbitrary this is not the case in culture here there are codes and conventions

that govern or determine and ensure specific associations.)

Through this mechanism, which is structural, language imparts meaning and it is Languageitself that determines meaning not the external world.

Meaning is determined by difference between the signifiers, e.g. the variation in the letters and

on this basis signs are allocated to their respective categories.


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Combination and Substitution

Syntagmatic relationships - a logically ordered sequence of signs e.g. a sentence. E.g. the cat saton the mat.

Or for example a narrative sequence.

Paradigmatic relations - relations of substitutability e.g. cat, feline, moggy.

Or bundles of relationships e.g. a series.


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Hilla & Bernd Becher


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Nigel Shafran Washing up


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The myths which suffuse our lives are insidious precisely because they appear so

natural. They call out for the detailed analysis which semiotics can deliver.

Roland Barthes in 1988 discussing the writing of Mythologies


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The analysis of Barthes and others extends the complexity of the sign from the initial

ideas of Saussures signifier and signified. Firstly this acknowledges that meaning is

not simply confined to the specific or literal meaning but has a wider associativemeaning defined by our experience of culture. This will be both shared and

individual. These different kinds of meaning are defined as

The denotive or literal meaning

The connotive or symbolic meaning

Barthes also distinguishes differences in the nature of signs

The indexical/ linguistic and the iconic/visual.

To understand these differences through example, to explore their relationship andto do this in the particular context of the photograph Barthes looked at the press

photograph and at advertising.


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Roland Barthes The Photographic message from Image Music Text

Press or ad image is a message from paper/agency/company (staff) to public carried by achannel - the medium(paper or ad)

Photograph is a structured object in relationship with other elements. Text, graphics, layout,name/image of the context which carries it.

Although text and image relate he analyses them separately then looks at their combination

The photographic image appears to transmit a literal reality, there is no division intocomponent signs to express meaning. Its a perfect analogy, a message without a code.It is entirely denotive, but is it?

Like other mimetic arts it also has Connotive meanings carried through various codes e.g.effects, pose, composition(objects), photogenia, aestheticism and syntax (images insequence)

Paradox - photographs appear to have no code, yet they do have a connotive code. In thepress photograph this also relates to the ethical paradox between neutral objectivity & theinvestment of values.


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The photographic message

The image does not illustrate the text. The text loads the image, it burdens it with culture.(Although Vilem Flusser believes the opposite is now the case and we live in a world where images lead and

define text not vice versa)

The closer the text to the image the less it connotes e.g. the caption is less loaded than the

headline.

The image innocents or naturalises the text through its apparent denotation

Text can amplify connotive meanings in the image but it can also add or redirect meaning.

Reading of the image is cultural/historical, therefore it is learnt, based on knowledge.

Therefore it may vary individually and culturally.

Our actual experience of the image is through verbal language, in our minds except in cases

of traumatic images (is this the case? Does Barthes himself in Camera Lucida take a contradictory view inhis discussion of the Punctum and ideas of the wildness of the photographic image).


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Readers particularly of visual signs may recognise meanings so quickly, and this may seem like

such a natural process that they do not realise that this is happening. So that although there is

a logical process of reading what the sign depicts and then going on to make various cultural/

social associations this process is so natural that we do not notice it and as a result we do notseparate the denotive from the connotive when we derive meaning from the visual sign.

This strongly emphasizes the role of the reader in the creation of meaning.

There is a problem for Barthes ideas though. His analysis relies on the idea of a system of

societal signs ( a cultural version of langue) but has to admit that this system is vast and

dynamic.

The cultural diversity and constant change that makes up the realm of the connotive signified is

global and diffuse.


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Jacques Derrida Julia Kristeva

Through a re-reading of Saussure Derrida recognising the importance of mediation e.g. the form

of writing and unlike Saussure who regarded this as a contamination of the pure sign, champions

its role and with it the complexity of intertextual references identified by Julia Kristeva

Difference and Differance. (the latter defined by Derrida and only distinguishable from Saussures

term in writing and not in speech. Difference to Saussure was simply that the separate meanings

of signs are distinguishable by their difference from one another not their intrinsic qualities. Derrida

extends this by suggesting that meaning is deferred and that it is defined as a syntagmic structuree.g. a sentence unfolds. To Derrida this is not a linear relationship either. Signs at the beginning of

the sequence add/define meaning in those at the end and vice versa. Equally a sentence or othersequence of signs will contain meanings derived from other related (by the reader) syntagms.

Derrida uses the song 10 green bottles as a simple example, we could easily use the sequence of

the fashion feature in a similar way.

This introduces the concept of intertextuality that all texts contain the traces of other texts and that

our understanding is derived from our recognition of other texts within the text we are considering.

We may not recognise all the references that are contained but this does not mean they are not

there.

In the pre-semiotically aware world meaning was created in this way but without awareness now

the use of intertextuality has become part of a conscious creative practice.


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Derridas ideas also place emphasis on the medium and form of the communication not

simply on content. On style on the look of the work

.


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Thomas Struth


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Introduction to semiotics references.

Useful books.

Mythologies Roland Barthes 1957 English translation 1972

Image Music Text Roland Barthes translated by Stephen Heath 1077

Thinking Photography Victor Burgin ed. 1982

Representation, Cultural representations and Signifying practices Stuart Hall 1997An introduction to theories of popular culture 2nd edition Dominc Strinati Routledge 2004

Introducing Semiotics Paul Cobley & Litza Jansz Icon Books 1999Photography a critical introduction Liz Wells pages 22 35, case history on migrant mother pg

35-45 and Chapter 4 Photography and Commodity Culture.

Travels in Hyperreality Umberto Eco Picador 1987

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Semiotics Lecture Notes