Lecture (0)Introduction

What is semiotics?

Key Figures in Semiotics?

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?

How to understand the meaning of a text using Semiotics?

Use Semiotics to…

Today’s Lecture...

What is Semiotics?

•The term ‘semiotics’ is derived from the Greek word semeîon = sign.

•It is the theory of signs and symbols and the study of their use in conveying meaning

•It involves the production of signs, communication through signs, the systematic structuring of signs into codes, the social function of signs and finally the meaning of signs

•Semiotics concentrates on three main areas: 1. The study of the sign itself 2. The systems into which signs are structured and organized3. The social and cultural contexts within which these signs operate.

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 -1913) embarked on the study of signs in order to explain language better.

He called this study Semiology.

What is Semiotics?

• ‘Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign.’ (Peirce)

• A sign is something which symbolizes or represents more than one meaning.

What is Semiotics?

Semioticians have developed a variety of theories for classifying and describing the relationships between signs and their meanings, or in other terms, between the "signifier" and "signified.”

What is Semiotics?

“I need a sign…”

For example, an everyday example is a stop sign. In this example, the physical sign is the signifier. The concept of stopping is the signified.

= the signifier

STOP!!! = the signified

sign

What is Semiotics?

“I need a sign…”

However, signfiers can have multiple signifieds. Take the color red for example:

What is Semiotics?

What is Semiotics?

What is Semiotics?

What is Semiotics?

What is Semiotics?

What is Semiotics?

What is Semiotics?

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 Semiotics?

There are particular negative, oppositionaldifferences 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.

What is Semiotics?

Semiotics: ‘the life of signs within society’ (Saussure)

Semiotics involves eexploring language and meaning at the same time.

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 artifact, a literary or media text or event.

What is Semiotics?

Ferdinand de Saussure Linguist (Swiss)1857 –1913

Charles Sanders Peirce Mathematician (American)1839 –1914

Claude Levi-Strauss Anthropologist (French)1908 - 2009

Key Figures in Semiotics?

Charles W. Morris

semiotician and philosopher. (American )1901-1979

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913)

Swiss linguist

considered one of the founders of semiotics

believed semiology or the science of how signs influence social life would investigate the correlation between the nature of signs and their governing laws/rules.

signs can take many different forms such as words, sounds, gestures, images and objects.

used linguistic concepts as a way to explain semiotics.

believed speech represents the most important of all signs systems and is the most influential communication system.

believed linguistics would become a division of social psychology.

Key Figures in Semiotics?

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913)

• Langue vs. Parole

Key Figures in Semiotics?

Langue and parole are more than just 'language and speech' (although this is a useful quick way of remembering them).

Langue: La langue is the whole system of language that precedes and makes speech possible. A sign is a basic unit of langue.• Learning a language, we master the system of grammar, spelling, syntax and punctuation. These are all elements of langue.• Langue is a system in that it has a large number of elements whereby meaning is created in the arrangements of its elements and the consequent relationships between these arranged elements.

Parole: Parole is the concrete use of the language, the actual utterances. It is an external manifestation of langue. It is the usage of the system, but not the system.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913)

• Langue vs. Parole

Key Figures in Semiotics?

By defining Langue and Parole, Saussure differentiates between the language and how it is used, and therefore enabling these two very different things to be studied as separate entities.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913)

• Langue vs. Parole

Key Figures in Semiotics?

Langue is the actual language spoken, for instance; French, German or English. The language of the speaker.

Parole is the individual speech act. Romantic and humanistic readings influence one’s parole.

As a structuralist, Saussure was interested more in la langue than parole. It was the system by which meaning could be created that was of interest rather than individual instances of its use.

Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced "purse")

1839-1914

"the most original and versatile of American philosophers and America's greatest logician“ Paul Weiss

Educated as a Chemist and employed as a scientist for 30 years.

Intermittently employed in various scientific capacities from 1859-1891

Peirce enjoyed his highly influential father's protection until his death in 1880

His employment exempted Peirce from having to take part in the Civil War

Key Figures in Semiotics?

All thought is in signs, issuing in and from interpretation, where 'sign' is the word for the broadest variety of conceivable semblances, diagrams, metaphors, symptoms, signals, symbols, texts, even mental concepts and ideas. —Peirce 1868.

Peirce believed that there were three basic elements in semiosis1. A sign (or representamen)2. An object (or semiotics object)3. An interpretant (or interpretant sign)

Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced "purse")

1839-1914

Key Figures in Semiotics?

We will discuss later

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French Anthropologist and Ethnologist

Studied Law and Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris

He was a secondary school teacher, then last minute

was asked on a cultural mission to Brazil, he studied sociology by staying with many different tribes.

Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced the theory of binary oppositions; a pair of related terms that are opposite in meaning.

He suggested that narratives (the way events are put together to be shown to an audience) had to be driven by conflict from contrasting forces and that they’re theoretical opposites and set off against one another.

Claude Levi-Strauss 1908 - 2009

Key Figures in Semiotics?

• Claude Lévi-Strauss’ theory can be used to assess groups of texts and genres.

• The theory makes different genres of text (discourses) successful as throughout them conflict happens creating climax, strength and tension until some sort of balance is achieved at the end.

• This theory can also be explained by juxtaposition. By putting the words ‘Good and Evil’ next to each other, the opposition expresses the struggle between the two.

Claude Levi-Strauss 1908 - 2009

Key Figures in Semiotics?

Charles W. Morris 1901-1979

Morris’ semiotic theory established a claim that symbols have three types of relations

1. Syntactics: the study of relations of visual elements within text to each other2. Semantics: the study of relations of visual representations to referents3. Pragmatics: the study of relations of visual representations to conditions of their production and use

Pragmatics is that portion of semiotics which deals withthe origin, uses, and effects of signs within the behaviourin which they occur; semantics deals with the significationof signs in all modes of signifying; syntatics deals withcombinations of signs without regard for their specificsignifications or their relation to the behavior in whichthey occur -Charles Morris

Key Figures in Semiotics?

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?Semiotics is one theory that can explain the human process of meaning making in the learning environment. It’s the bridge between psychological theory and educational theory.

Its a framework for understanding the ‘connection-making of meaning making’

Peirce’s theory can help teachers to ‘read’ students thoughts more accurately and effectively.

Learning involves the interaction of a universe of signs, objects, and interpretantswhile a student’s concepts move closer and closer to their ‘final’ interprantants.

Peirce expresses the importance of ‘something stopping us from doing the usual’ -that is, we should search for something that makes us acquire ‘a habit of changing habits’. In visualizing the knowledge structure as an explicit tool, concept mapping can be a method that encourages the student to acquire ‘a habit of changing habits’.

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?

Semiotics is important because it can help us not to take 'reality' for granted as something having a purely objective existence which is independent of human interpretation. It teaches us that reality is a system of signs.

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?

Studying semiotics can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and of the role we play in constructing it.

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?

Meaning is not 'transmitted' to us, we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware.

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?Becoming aware of such codes is both inherently fascinating and intellectually empowering.

We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized.

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?

Through the study of semiotics we become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and disguise our task in ‘reading’ them.

How does semiotics relate to the learning settings?

In defining realities, signs serve ideological functions.

The ideology of a text will point to the binary oppositions upon which it is based.

These binary oppositions will be encodedinto 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.

Make a semiotic analysis of an advertisement. Conclude from this semiotic analysis what is expressed in the

advertisement: what does this advertisement mean? Link these meanings to your own values. Explain why you like/ not like this advertisement, based on the link

between your values and the meaning of the advertisement.

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? • 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?

Identify and evaluate the meaning created by the codes/signs / binary oppositions and ideology represented in the “Fight Cancer” advertisement below