Semiotics and the Construction of Reality Ernesto Abalo, Media and Communications, Örebro University
Intro: Methods Qn - occurence, frequency and distribution. Large samples. Content analysis, surveys. Ql - analysis and interpretation of meanings. Small samples. Semiotic, discourse analysis, ethnography. Qn and Ql complement each other, but don’t substitute each other.
Intro: Three important concepts Culture: Way of life, shared meanings of a social group. Language: A representational systems. Use of signs to sustain the dialogue within a culture. Representation: Use of signs that stands for something else. Important for the creation of meanings.
Semiotics The study of signs. Semiology (Saussure) - semiotics (Pierce). Langue: language system Parole: the utterances we make The sign is arbitrary. No natural connection between the word ’dog’ and the animal it represents. Thus, a difference between siginifier and signified.
Codes Social codes - appearance, dress, enivronment, behaviour etc. - Technical codes – camera, lightning, editing, sound etc. - Conventional representational codes – representation of a narrative, conflict, characters etc. - Ideological codes – individualism, patriarchy, ethnicity, class, materialism, capitalism.
Denotation and connotation Denotation: the manifest content of a sign Connotation: the latent/cultural content of a sign
Paradigm and syntagm A set of elements from which one selects signs The combination of the signs chosen from the paradigm Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
The three M:s Metaphor - representation through a sign that is not convenient. Metonomy- ’The White House declared’ Myth- Cultural values and conceptions present at the connotative level (Barthes).
Icons, index and symbols Icon - photographic picture, statue etc. Index - the sign is the directly effect of the object Symbol - a form of representation that is arbitrarily connected to an object.
Photos The photograph - an objective depiction of the world? Angles, color, objects. What is there, how is it there, and what is missing?
Words and images In the media pictures work together with words - written and/or spoken. What implications do the combination of words and images in the media have for the construction of meanings?
Critique against semiotics Signs regarded as fixed and very hard to transform Kress & van Leuween study the use and creation of meanings with symbols. Social semiotics. How do people create meanings with different symbols.
Semiotics as a tool for analysis Things to identify in a given text: Genre, context, medium etc. Main signifiers and connotations Different codes Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations Myths present in the text Ideological consequences of the text In short: We have to discover the latent meanings of a text, and how it is structured