This PowerPoint helps students to consider the concept of infinity.
Semiotics, narrative and genre lecture 1
1. Semiotics, narrative and genre
A course about media texts, how
they signify, and the implications this
has for society
2. Why semiotics?
• 'semiotics tells us things we already know in a
language we will never understand' (Paddy
Whannel, in Seiter 1992:1)
3. Why semiotics?
• “makes the world strange”: we no longer take
reality for granted
• What we experience as “reality” does not
have an objective existence outside of human
understanding or interpretation
• Understanding how signs works is an act of
intellectual and political emancipation
4. Semiotics helps us to
• see that we collectively construct reality
• understand that an event’s meaning (eg. an
accident, or Nkandla, or a sports event) is not
something that the media simply collects and
distributes to an audience
• see that we create meaning within sets of
codes and conventions (unconsciously)
• become aware of these codes and
conventions
5. Denaturalising the sign
• Signs are the means through which we
organise and understand our world(s): signs
“define” reality
• Be becoming aware of the codes through
which we “make sense” of the world, we
become aware of how signs privilege certain
world views
• Awareness of codes assists in challenging
power
6. Semiotics
• The study of signs
• How is meaning created within a language?
• How do things in the world come to have
social significance (meaning)
• Verbal language one of many systems of signs
– can you give examples of others?
7. Different approaches to language
• Reflective: Language reflects the world its
meaning
• Intentional: Language reflects the intentions
of the speaker
• Social constructivist: Language is socially
constructed to produce shared meanings
8. Exercise 1
– Look at something in this room
– Do you “recognise” it? What is the basis of
this recognition – what does “recognise”
mean?
– Close your eyes. Can you still “see” the
object? What does this have to do with
“recognising” it?
– Look at me and tell me what the object is –
say it aloud “It’s a lamp”.
9. Exercise 2
• What does each colour
“mean”
• What else could they
mean?
• Does it matter what colours
we use?
• Construct a set of traffic
light rules using yellow,
blue and pink
10. What can we learn from this exercise?
• Signs are arbitrary: any colour will do if we
agree to obey the rules
• Meanings are fixed by codes (rules)
• Anything can function as a sign if assigned a
concept and a meaning within our cultural
and linguistic codes
• Signs create real effects (material and social
consequences) in the world
11. de Saussure
• Language is a system of signs
• Sounds, images written words, paintings,
natural objects function as signs “only when
they serve to express or communicate ideas…
[To] communicate ideas, they must be part of
a system of conventions” (Culler 1976:19)
12. The sign
• divided analytically into two parts:
– Signifier (spoken word, image etc)
– Signified (the mental concept)
SIGN
SIGNIFIER
SIGNIFIED
13. Try this…
• Write down a few words
• Try to separate the word from its meaning – it can help
by saying it over and over
• How difficult is it to separate the word (signifier) from
its signified (concept)
• Look at the list again and contemplate the words as
signs (combined signifier and signified)
• Then put the list away and conjure up the concept or
mental image
• Try to explain to someone what you have done, using
the terms “sign”, “signifier” and “signified”
14. The sign
is the union of a form which signifies (signifier)
and an idea signified (signified). Though we may
speak... as if they are separate entities, they
exist only as components of the sign [which is]
the central fact of language” (Culler 1976:19)
15. The meaning is in the difference
• There is no natural or inevitable link between
the signifier and the signified
• Signs do not possess a fixed or essential
meaning
• In the traffic light example, what signifies
(means)is not red or green, but the difference
between red and green
16. “Members of systems”
• Signs are members of systems and are defined
in relation to each other
• Organised within “systems of differences”: it is
the differences between signifiers that signify!
– eg, father because not mother, not child etc
• Binary opposites a simple way of marking
difference
– black/white
– man/woman
Hinweis der Redaktion
Seiter, Ellen (1992): 'Semiotics, Structuralism and Television'. In Allen, Robert C. (Ed.) (1992): Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. London: Routledge.
As media workers, we all make signs: this is the business of the media, to make signs of the world – representations – for other people – our audiences – to “consume”: to read, listen to, watch, and in the end, hopefully to act upon in some way, to embody ‘the message’. By becoming aware of how signs participate in the construction of representations of the world, we become more responsible, able and insightful media workers. We all know that the world is an unequal place. Some people are more privileged than others. This privilege is systematically skewed in favour of some groups over long period of time. We explain privilege and powerlessness by drawing on codes, or maps of meaning, that explain the world. If signs, and the codes we employ to make and decipher them are ways of organising and understanding social reality, we can see clearly that these codes may be part of the problem of inequality!
We “think” through using concepts. Concepts enable us to think about material things that are not present, or do not exist (like little green men from Mars) or about abstract things, like “love”, “loyalty” and “justice” that have no tangible existence.This exercise demonstrates that we operate on two levels of representation: first, a conceptual “map” of objects in our culture that allows us to differentiate between a table and a lamp; and second, the ways words or images (photographs, TV clips, sounds) are correlated with those objects
In Hall, S. 2013. The work of representation. In Hall, S., Evans, J. and Nixon, S. (eds). Representation (second edition). London: Sage. p16.
In Hall, S. 2013. The work of representation. In Hall, S., Evans, J. and Nixon, S. (eds). Representation (second edition). London: Sage. p16.