1. Signification: Denotation / Connotation
Intro to Communication
Dr. P.M.G. Verstraete
WEEK 8
Signification:
Denotation / Connotation

2. Signification
Recap last week: arbitrary vs conventional codes (aesthetic codes) conventionalisation cultural membership

3. Arbitrary vs Conventional
Codes
Arbitrary Code
= simply defined, and easily understood; where the agreement among the users is explicit and defined; with a stated and agreed relationship between signifiers and signifieds
= symbolic, denotative, impersonal, and static

4. Arbitrary vs Conventional
Codes
Arbitrary codes have a defined, limited paradigm of signifiers with a precisely related paradigm of signifieds. They emphasize denotative meaning. They are simply defined and easily understood.
Arbitrary codes are static and can only change by explicit agreement amongst the users.
They are closed: meaning within the text, not much negotiation, you need to know the code
Conventional codes have open-ended paradigms: new units can be added; existing ones can drop out of use.
Conventional codes tend not to have an agreed paradigm of signifieds. They are thus more dynamic and capable of change.
They are open: active negotiation from the reader

5. Aesthetic Code (= type of conventional code)
Arbitrary vs Conventional
Codes
Aesthetic Code (= type of conventional code)
= more varied, loosely defined, change rapidly
Aberrant decodings are the norm in aesthetic codes
Interior, subjective world (= emotive)

6. Aesthetic Codes

7. But in art… (aesthetic/ conventional code)
Aesthetic Codes
But in art… (aesthetic/ conventional code)
R. Magritte, ‘this is not a pipe’
– it is a convention to read the painted image as a pipe

8. From Art to Decoration
Conventionalisation

9. From Art to Decoration

10. Cultural membership
Codes and Conventions
enable us to understand our social existence and to locate ourselves within our culture.
Only through the common codes can we feel and express our membership of our culture.

11. (cf. de Saussure & Peirce)
Today’s Class
Signification = a process of negotiation between producer/reader and text
(cf. de Saussure & Peirce)
But so far, no attention to
the cultural experience of
the producer/reader.
So: focus on Roland Barthes’
- Denotation
- Connotation: Myth
Symbol
+ Metaphor / Metonymy

12. 2 Orders of Signifaction
Roland Barthes
2 Orders of Signifaction
First-Order:
Denotation
= the common-sense, obvious meaning, surface meaning of the sign
Second-Order:
Connotation
= associated or second meaning, hidden or deeper meaning, (inter)subjective meaning,
based on interaction between
the sign
the feelings/emotions of the users
the values of their culture

13. Roland Barthes
DENOTATION & CONNOTATION
Rose
is just a word
The reader shapes or decodes the meaning
Rose DENOTES a red sweet-smelling flower
Rose CONNOTES (has connotations of) love, passion & romance

14. This image denotes the movie star Marilyn Monroe
Roland Barthes
This image denotes the movie star Marilyn Monroe

15. The image connotes glamour, stardom, sexuality, beauty
Roland Barthes
The image connotes glamour, stardom, sexuality, beauty
If this was one of the last photographs of Marilyn Monroe, we may also associate it with her depression, drug-taking and ultimately death

16. A Movie Poster Roland Barthes What are the connotations of The match?
The globe?
The Mission Impossible Poster denotes a MATCH and a GLOBE OF THE WORLD

17. Photographs (= icons) DENOTATIVE LEVEL: what we actually see
Roland Barthes
Photographs (= icons)
DENOTATIVE LEVEL: what we actually see
the mechanical reproduction on film of the object at which the camera is pointed; what is photographed
CONNOTATIVE LEVEL: what you associate with this image
the selection of what to include in the frame, of focus, aperture, camera angle, quality of film, and so on; how it is photographed

18. Roland Barthes
Connotation is largely arbitrary, specific to one culture, though it frequently has an iconic dimension. For example: soft focus connotes nostalgia, imprecise memory, romanticism, subjective emotion.

20. Roland Barthes
Also clothes can connote…

21. Second Order Signifiers:
Roland Barthes
Second Order Signifiers:
Myth
= a story by which a culture explains or understands some aspect of reality or nature; a culture’s way of thinking about something, a way of conceptualizing or understanding it
Symbols
= something that through convention and use receives a meaning that enables it to stand for something else (cf. Peirce: symbol, icon, index)

22. Roland Barthes
Myths
Primitive myths
Modern myths

23. Roland Barthes
the main way in which myths work is to naturalize history = the product of a social class that has achieved dominance by a particular history
Example:
the ‘modern’ family

24. Roland Barthes

25. Roland Barthes

26. Roland Barthes
Myths naturalize meanings. We need to ‘demystify’ the myth. Change in myths is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

27. Roland Barthes
Myth is not universal: myth and counter-myth

28. Metaphor and Metonymy Roman Jakobson
Metaphor = to express the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar
(‘vehicle’ = the familiar, ‘tenor’ = the unfamiliar)
vehicle and tenor have enough similarity to be in the same paradigm, but enough difference for the comparison to work
Visual metaphors: for example, advertisements
metaphor (vehicle) stands for a product (tenor)
Everyday metaphors: to make sense of our everyday experiences
Literary metaphors: appear widespread, common sense ‘natural’ though they aren’t

29. Roman Jakobson
Visual metaphors

30. Metaphor and Metonymy Roman Jakobson
Metaphor = transposing qualities from one plane of reality to another (they work paradigmatically for imaginative effect)
Metaphors are imaginative, based on association (similarity between different planes)
Metonymy = associating meanings within the same plane (contiguity: nearness or neighborhood); making a part stand for the whole (they work syntagmatically for realistic effect)
cf. (visual / literary) synechdoche
Metonymy in the news = indexical (appearing as ‘natural’ index’) + based on arbitrary selection = one-sided, incomplete picture

31. Roman Jakobson
Literary metaphors (cf. figures of speech):
He was ‘drowning’ in paperwork.
As time is ‘running out’. (= now common usage, ‘dead’ metaphor)
The ham sandwich has ‘wandering hands’.
(metaphor has a metonymic basis)

32. Roman Jakobson

33. Roman Jakobson
Metaphor =
paradigmatic

34. Roman Jakobson
Metonymy

35. Roman Jakobson
Visual synechdoche as a type of
metonymy

36. Roman Jakobson
All photographs are metonyms…
Myth functions in news broadcasts metonymically in that one sign stimulates us to construct the rest of the chain of concepts that constitute a myth, just as a metonym stimulates us to construct the whole of which it is a part.