Semiotic 1+2

design theory.
7

mercredi, 25 mai 2011

Introduction
to
Semiotics

Semiotic, from form to Gestalt to design
Designers are among those professionals who have shown a first
and continued interest in the modern revival of semiotics. In search
of a theory for a field of human practice characterized by a lack of
conceptual discipline, designers, especially those formed in the
Ulm School tradition, were willing to adopt semiotics as their
theory. Maldonado (1967) undoubtedly deserves credit for being
receptive to semiotics and making it part of his own design
concept. This happened when Europe discovered Charles S.
Peirce; when Bense, continuing his search for a scientific
foundation of aesthetics, arrived at sign theory (1970, 1971).
On the American continent, designers' interest in semiotics was
expressed quite late through students and scholars from Ulm or by
contamination from other fields—predominantly from literary
studies.

Semiotic, Semiology (theory of signs)

Term "semiology" (from Greek semeion "sign", and logoes "
speech, knowledge ") was proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure
(Courts of general linguistics), and the discipline that it indicates
defines as studying " the life of signs within the social life ".

Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs, symbols, and
signification.

It is the study of how meaning is created, not what it is.


Semiotic,
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)

The founder of American semiotic.
Pierce was interested in how signs signify meaning, and examined
the power of images and the ways in which we read them. His work
can help us understand how images function symbolically in
different ways.
He was a tireless and brilliant thinker whose extensive writings
have received international attention for over a century.


Semiotic,
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

Swiss linguist. One of the founders of modern linguistics, he
established the structural study of language, emphasizing the
arbitrary relationship of the linguistic sign to that which it signifies.
Saussure distinguished synchronic linguistics (studying language
at a given moment) from diachronic linguistics (studying the
changing state of a language over time); he further opposed what
he named langue (the state of a language at a certain time) to
parole (the speech of an individual).
Saussure's most influential work is the Course in General
Linguistics (1916), a compilation of notes on his lectures.


Semiotic,
Max Bense (1910-1990)

Founder of what became known as the "Stuttgart School", probably
more a thought direction than a coherent semiotic movement,
Bense was an extremely controversial scholar and teacher. His
entire work is shaped by his formative years of study in physics,
expanded, not accidentally, in mathematics, chemistry, and
geology.. For the reader aware of this background, Bense as
writings, in philosophy, aesthetics, semiotics, text theory, and even
his atheistic literature, political articles, and his poetry, appear as a
continuation of his scientific work. Indeed, his ambition was to
establish a scientific foundation for those areas of the humanities in
which he became interested.


Semiotic,
Algirdas Julien Greimas (Tula, Russia, 1917 - Paris, 1992)

French linguist of Lithuanian origin. Its research relates to general
semantics, the application of the methods of the phonological
analysis to semantics, and on semiotics.
Emigrated into France on the eve of the war, Greimas becomes, in
1949, a doctor in letters in Sorbonne (he had previously studied at
the university of Grenoble), specialist of the history of the French
language (he will publish moreover in 1968 a Dictionary of ancient
French); he begins to be interested in semantics and plunges into
the reading of the linguists: Ferdinand de Saussure, Viggo Brøndal,
Roman Jakobson... His meeting with Roland Barthes in Alexandria
will contribute to the interest of this last one for the linguistics.


Sign
In the heart of De Saussure project takes place the conception of the sign
as an entity in two faces:

The signifier, reducible in an acoustic image or physical form of the sign,
or any material thing that signifies, e.g., words on a page, a facial
expression, an image.

The signified (concept, reality) a mental representation of the sign, or the
concept that a signifier refers to.

Together, the signifier and signified make up the Sign: the smallest unit of
meaning. Anything that can be used to communicate (or to tell a lie).

This is fundamental linguistic unit linking a signifier to that which is
signified, one of the natural units into which linguistic messages can be
analyzed.

Sign is intellectual concept different from signage.


Sign
A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces or
modifies.... That for which it stands is called its object, that which it
conveys, its meaning; and the idea which it gives rise, its
interpretant....[the sign creates in the mind] an equivalent sign, or
perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the
interpretant of the first sign.

This sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object,
not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea which I have
sometimes called the ground of that representation."

C. S. Peirce, quoted in Umberto Eco (1979) The Role of the Reader 7.2.


Sign
We perceive permanently signs: olfactory signs (a smell of roasted
chicken), visual signs (the colored skin of the roasted chicken),
hearing signs (the chicken Who crackle in the farmyard) tactile
signs (the skin roasted of the chicken who burns fingers), gustative
signs (the white flesh of the chicken which preserved all its taste on
the tongue and in the palate because the animal was fed in the
farmyard).

All these signs, what we perceived at first, it is the signifier that is:

A MATERIAL PERCEPTION.


Sign
Later, sometimes in the microsecond, which follows, we interpret.
And in it signified, we associate one (sometimes some) meaning:
that is:

A MENTAL PERCEPTION.


Sign
(for example)

Signifier Signified

Smell of the chicken I am hungry
Texte

Copper-colored skin It is appetizing

Cackling chicken Produces natural

Ardent skin That burns but I am hungry too much

Taste of the chicken Better than the chicken packed in plastic


Sign
Type of Sign:

It is common to divide signs into three types:

Icon

An icon is a sign which is linked to its object by qualitative
characteristics. For example, a map is an icon because it shares
some quality (spatial organisation) with its object. A photograph is
iconic because it is linked to its object qualitatively (e.g. shape or
colour). In language only onomatopoeic words like 'cuckoo' and
'boom' are iconic.


Sign
Type of Sign:


Index

An index denotes its object by being physically linked to it, or
affected by it. For example, smoke is an index of fire, and a knock
at the door is an index of someone's presence on the other side.
In language, demonstrative pronouns ('this' and 'that') are indexical,
as is a word such as 'Ow!' denoting pain.


Sign
Type of Sign:


Symbols

A symbol has no qualitative or physical link to its object. It is
'conventional'; that is to say that it is defined by social convention.
Most words are symbols. For example, if the word 'dog' was
replaced in English by the word 'cat' and vice versa, there would be
no change to the meanings we could convey. However it would be
impossible (or at least very confusing) to use a photograph of a dog
(an icon) to mean 'cat'.


Sign
Type of Sign:

Object denoted Icon Index Symbol

The Queen Texte

A portrait of the Queen The Crown Princess Dianna's badge

A Tree

A picture of a tree Part of a tree, (a leaf,) The word 'TREE'

In written texts you will mostly be analysing signs which are symbolic.

Sign

A sign is anything that can be used to
tell a lie.

Umberto Eco


This is a famous painting by Rene Magritte called "The Treachery of
Images." Magritte's caption says, (in French) "This is not a pipe."


Sign

All of which illustrates Magritte's point, which is simply that an image or
sign of a thing is not the thing itself.

One could make the same point with any number of images, signs, and
symbols.


Semiotics

The process of communication

The process of communication can be understood as a 'circuit of
meaning', in which meaning is first encoded by an emitter, then
decoded by a receiver, then recoded in the receiver's interpretation,
which can then be the object of further decoding and so on. Note that
each link in the process is not transparent: the result of a decoding is
not the same as what was originally encoded - the process of
communication is said to be 'mediated' (as in mass media) and this
mediation affects the meaning.


Semiotics

Simple Semiotic model

This version of the semiotic model adapted from the work of Charles
S. Pierce, provides a coordinated way of talking about how the
thoughts in our minds can be expressed in terms of the world outside
of our minds.

The model contains three basic entities:

the sign: something which is perceived, but which stands for
something else,
the concept: the thoughts or images that are brought to mind by
the perception of the sign,
the object: the "something else" in the world to which the sign
refers.


Semiotics

This model is most often
represented as the semiotic triangle


Semiotics

Signification

SIGN

PERCEPTION CONVENTION

CONCEPT OBJECT
EXPERIENCE


Semiotics

Simple Semiotic model

Notice that
the sign and the concept are connected by the person's
perception,
the concept and the object are connected by the person's
experience,
the sign and the object are connected by the conventions, or the
culture, of the social group within which the person lives.

These connections are important to the study of how meaning arises
during the daily encounters with the many signs that fill the human
environment.


Semiotics

Signification

OBJECT

CONVENTION EXPERIENCE

SIGN CONCEPT
PERCEPTION


Semiotics

Signification

One of the founders of semiotics was Ferdinand de Saussure.
Saussure proposed a theory of signification.
He argued that a linguistic sign is in fact composed of two elements:

the idea being represented (the 'signified')

and

the word doing the representing (the 'signifier').


Semiotics

Signification

A key insight of Saussure was the suggestion that the relationship
between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. There is no
necessary or fixed link between words and ideas. Thus many different
words ('dog', 'hund', 'chien' etc) can be used to represent the same
idea.
Note that Saussure always refers to the signified as an 'idea'. The
term he used for the real objects which are sometimes linked to ideas
was 'referent'.
Thus a furry animal which barks is a referent, our idea of that referent
is the signified and the word 'dog' is the signifier.


Semiotics

Signification
Referent
animal which barks

CONVENTION EXPERIENCE

Sign
Signifier Signified
the word the idea
PERCEPTION
Dog


Semiotics

Relations of denotation and connotation

The basic, most fundamental form of sign, that is, of the relation of
signifier to signified, is denotation (other name for referent), roughly,
the literal meaning of a sign.

Denotation
(not the image above,
but the concept in your head)
The word "rose" literally signifies a kind of flower. But semiotics starts
to get interesting when it explores connotation..


Semiotics


Because the sign is arbitrary and there is no fixed or essential
relationship between the signifier and the signified, other ideas (other
signifieds) can easily become attached a particular signifier.
These 'extra' meanings are called connotations. Thus a word like
'white' denotes the colour of this sheet of paper, but connotes a range
of other meanings such as purity, cleanliness and so on. In turn these
connotations may themselves have further connotations. We can
think of a series of linked connotations as a 'chain of signifiers' which
give the original message a whole range of additional possible
meanings


Semiotics


Connotations involve signifying signs, signs that become the signifier
for a second signified. Here the sign "rose" becomes a signifier for a
secondary signified, namely . . .

. . . passion.

It's important to remember that this graphic representation of how signs work is itself made up of signs. The image
of the rose above is not really the signified, it's another sign, that I'm using to signify the signified. (The signified,
remember, is what's in your head.) One of the reasons semiotics can be so difficult to understand is because it
inevitably involves using signs to talk about signs. So sometimes a more concrete example is helpful . . .


Semiotics

Signification

Signifier 1 Signified 1

the word
Dog Signifier 2

Signified 2
Connotation


Semiotics

Greimas' Semiotic Square

According to Greimas, the semiotic square is the elementary structure
of signification, marking off the oppositional logic that is at the heart of
semantic, thematic, or symbolic content.
Greimas' schema is useful since it illustrates the full complexity of any
given semantic term (seme). Greimas points out that any given seme
entails its opposite or "contrary." "Life" (s1) for example is understood
in relation to its contrary, "death" (s2). Rather than rest at this simple
binary opposition (S), however, Greimas points out that the opposition,
"life" and "death," suggests what Greimas terms a contradictory pair (-
S), i.e., "not-life" (-s1) and "not-death" (-s2). We would therefore be left
with the following semiotic square :


Semiotics

Semiotic square

Relation between
Life contraries Death

Relation Relation between Relation
of implication contradictories of implication

Relation between
Not Death contraries Not Life


Semiotics

Semiotic square

Relation between
Assertion contraries Negation


Relation between
Non- Negation contraries Non-Assertion


Semiotics

The Dürer Woodcut:


Semiotics

The Dürer Woodcut Square

This image is of interest for one thing, the image presents an entire
narrative sequence as a single pictorial representation. The story goes
something like this:
1) The first "frame" of the sequence is the right-hand half of the image,
in which a travelling knight is stopped by the devil, who holds up a die
to tempt the knight to gamble;
2) the second "frame" is the bottom-left-hand corner of the image,
where a quarrel breaks out at the gambling table;
3) the third "frame" is the top-left-hand corner of the image, where the
knight is punished by death on the wheel
The Greimassian square for this wordless narrative could be as
follows.


Relation between
Forbearance contraries Temptation


Restriction Relation between
contraries Transgression
Punishment

Semiotics

The Dürer Woodcut Semiotic Square

In this semiotic square, "restriction/punishment" takes the place of
"non-temptation," while "transgression" takes the place of "non-
forbearance," following the tendency of the contradictory term to be
more than the term to which it is associated by a "relation of
implication."


Semiotic Square
Typology of the design philosophy

Referential design contrariety Mythical design
Regime of the representation Regime of the construction
Shape represents the Logical function Logic Shape ( re ) creates the Logical function,
Endomorphic dimension

of correspondence and equivalence Logic of shock and break down, Existential

Exomorphic dimension
Utilitarian valuation of the object Examples Valuation of the object
razor Braun, Examples The toothbrush Fluocaril, iuicy Salif,
robot Marie ( Moulinex) Hot Bertaa ( Starck)

contra diction

Substantial design contrariety Oblique design
Regime of the non-construction Regime of the non-representation,
Shape incorporates the Logical function Logic Shape extends beyond the Logical function,
of conformation Logic of surprise,
Critical Valuation of the object Playful Valuation of the object
Examples La Marie ( Starck), Examples Mister Meumeu, Richard reads, Louis XX, This
Perrier ( Szekely) is not a wheelbarrow ( Starck), the whistling kettle (Grave),
the family " King-Kong "

STARCK ( Alessi), the iMac, etc.


Semiotic 1+2

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