1. Slides available at: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent under “Material from Guest Lectures” Introduction to Semiotics Doug Brent

2. Semiotics The art (science?) of describing and interpreting the potential meaning of signs

3. Every sign is composed of: a 'signifier' - the form which the sign takes and the 'signified' - the concept it represents.

4. index: physical relationship (smoke = index of fire) icon: graphic relationship (visual representation) symbol: arbitrary relationship Types of sign (Peirce):

5. Iconic or Symbolic?

8. tree » More iconic More symbolic º (more “constrained,” more “motivated”) (less “constrained,” less “motivated”) No sign is purely iconic

9. No matter how iconic a sign is, its meaning is not “in” the sign. It’s in the person who interprets the sign according to a code.

10. Anodized Gold Plaque from Pioneer 10 Space Probe

11. What “messages” does the picture convey? What codes must be shared in order to make sense of the picture? What cultural assumptions are encoded?

12. Semiotic codes are systems laden with cultural meaning. Cultural meanings are learned, usually unconsciously.

16. Signs can be recoded by their context...

17. semiotic analysis: can be applied to any sign system not empirically verifiable looks for social, not individual effects becomes a major tool of cultural studies

18. See “Semiotics Links” at the end of Chandler’s article for examples of semiotic analyses, including student essays (articles titled “A Semiotic Analysis of …”)