Med 7 - Fall 2004 Digital Culture Introduction to Semiotics

Semiotics The study of the nature of signs  sign production, transmission and interpretation  the study of natural and artifitial languages and codes. Transdisciplinarity  philosophy, logics, linguistics, communication sciences, anthropology, art, literature, cultural studies, ethology, biology, psycology, cybernetics.

Today  the term “semiotics” has prevailed. Two main traditions The Saussurean tradition “Semiology”  “a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life”  structuralism  mainly linguistics. The Peircean tradition “Semiotics”  “the formal doctrine of signs”  closely related to Logic.   Today  the term “semiotics” has prevailed.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) ”It is... possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeîon, 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge”.

Structuralism The syntagmatic analysis of a text  (whether it is verbal or non-verbal)  involves studying its structure and the relationships between its parts. Structuralist semioticians  seek to identify elementary constituent segments within the text - its syntagms. The study of syntagmatic relations reveals the conventions or “rules of combination” underlying the production and interpretation of texts  ex: the grammar of a language  the use of one syntagmatic structure rather than another within a text influences meaning.

Charles Saunders Peirce (1839-1914). It is logic which is semiotic and which therefore constitutes the science of signs. Peirce's semiotics  more complex than de Saussure's semiology. Semiotics  not only concerned with (intentional) communication but also with our ascription of significance to anything in the world.   The process of semiosis  the process of communication by any type of sign  signification processes in the widest sense  it includes processes that go beyond the lingüistic sphere  and even beyond human culture  the biological realm  biosemiotics.

Saussure - what is a sign? Signifier  the form which the sign takes. Signified  the concept it represents   The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified. “Signification”  the relationship between the signifier and the signified.

Peirce - what is a sign? A sign is something that stands for something in some respect to some system with capacity for interpretation Smoke Fire Let´s get out of here

Contemporary semiotics Contemporary semiotics  signs are not in isolation but as part of semiotic “sign systems”  such as a medium or genre. How meaning is achieved.   Signs  images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects  have no intrinsic meaning  become signs only when we invest them with meaning. “Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign”  Peirce.

Three types of signs (Peirce) 1. An icon  something which functions as a sign by means of features of itself which resemble an object. A sign that informs by its physical resemblance or similarity with features of its referent. 2. An index  features as a sign by virtue of some form of correspondence of fact, usually a causal connection. A sign that informs by its correlation with or causal connection to its referent  ex: a symptom  a valid measure of something else. 3. A symbol  functions as a sign because of some conventional association between itself and its object.   A sign that informs by convention. Symbols need not have a referent as in ceremonies and rituals. When they do have a referent, its connection with the sign is not one of necessity.

Charles William Morris (1901-1979) Morris (1938)  Foundations of the Theory of Signs   A threefold divisions of a sign: sign vehicle designatum interpreter Morris  a division of signs concerned with “the relations of signs to their interpreters” or users  a sort of behaviourism  which is unsemiotical

C. W. Morris Semiotics consists of: Syntactics  the formal or structural relations between signs. Semantics The relationship of signs to what they stand for. Pragmatics  The relation of signs to interpreters. These divisions  based on a dyadic, positivist reading of Peirce's triadic semiotics  an unacknowledged misreading of Peirce's critique of dyadic views of signs.

Semantics Semantics  logic, linguistics, philosophy and communication research  the study of how and what a sign, symbol, message or system means to an observer.   Semantics  that branch of semiotics which is concerned with the relationship between signs and referents.

Roland Barthes (1915-1980) Semiotics  a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s.   Barthes (1964)  “semiology”  aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits  images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these  which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment  these constitute, if not languages, at least “systems of signification”.

Texts, languages and codes In semiotics  a very general use of the concepts of text, language, codes, medium, grammar, etc

Texts A “text” can exist in any medium and may be verbal, non-verbal, or both  despite the logocentric bias of this distinction.   Text  usually refers to a message which has been recorded in some way (e.g. writing, audio- and video-recording) so that it is physically independent of its sender or receiver. A text is an assemblage of signs  words, images, sounds and/or gestures, etc  constructed (and interpreted) with reference to the conventions associated with a genre and in a particular medium of communication. Text  literally  the original written or printed form of a literary work considered as the authoritative source of interpretations. In cybernetics  data with an inherent pattern, structure or organization through which the meanings are revealed.

Language /Grammar Language (grammar)  a systematic way of arranging symbols, usually to express meaning. Natural languages  Chinese, English, Swahili   Programming languages  programs. Other languages?  post-symbolic languages?

Code Code  a set of rules  a mapping or a transformation establishing correspondences between the elements in its domain and the elements in its range or between the characters of two different alphabets. When a code relates a set of signs to a set of meanings by convention  symbols. When it accounts for the transformation of one kind or signal into another kind of signal it can be seen to describe an input-output device. When applied to linguistic expressions  translation. It is incorrect to call a set of signs (to which a code may apply) a code.

Medium “Medium”  used in a variety of ways  broad categories (speech, writing, print broadcasting)  specific technical forms (radio, television, newspapers, magazines, books, photographs, films, records)  the media of interpersonal communication (telephone, letter, fax, e-mail, video-conferencing, computer-based chat systems)  multimedia. Press  visual channel, written language  it draws upon technologies of photographic reproduction, graphic design, and printing.   Radio  uses an oral channel and spoken language  relies on technologies of sound recording and broadcasting. Television  combines technologies of sound- and image-recording and broadcasting.

Media and channels Some theorists classify media according to the ”channels” involved  visual, auditory, tactile and so on. Human experience is inherently multisensory  every representation of experience is subject to the constraints and affordances of the medium involved  every medium is constrained by the channels which it utilizes. In general  we have no ways of representing smell or touch with conventional media. Differences in channel and technology have significant wider implications in terms of the meaning potential of the different media. Marshall McLuhan's  “the medium is the message”  present media as wholly autonomous entities with “purposes” (as opposed to functions) of their own.

What is new with digital culture?  Technological determinists  emphasizes that semiotic ecologies are influenced by the fundamental design features of different media. It is important to recognize the importance of socio-cultural and historical factors in shaping how different media are used and their (ever-shifting) status within particular cultural contexts. There is a growth in the importance of visual media compared with linguistic media in contemporary society  there is an associated shifts in the communicative functions of such media.

Yuri Lotman (1922-1993) Yuri Lotman  thinks in “ecological” terms about the interaction of different semiotic structures and languages The Semiosphere  “the whole semiotic space of the culture in question”. Teilhard de Chardin (1949) “noosphere”  the domain in which mind is exercised  in cybernetics  the space occupied by the totality of information and human knowledge collectively available to man  the processes operating in this space, e.g., combinatorial mating, classification, reproduction, simplification, selective decay.

Diachronic / Synchronic Diachronic  attribute of descriptions or of theories that focus on the dynamic aspects of a system's structure or organization  on change, evolution and processes  generally as opposed to synchronic descriptions. Synchronic  attribute or descriptions or of theories that focus on the static aspects of a system's structure or organization as opposed to diachronic descriptions.

Other views Content analysis  involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest ”content” of media texts Semiotics  seeks to analyse media texts as structured wholes and investigates latent, connotative meanings. Semiotics is rarely quantitative Just because an item occurs frequently in a text does not make it significant

Biosemiotics Beyond human culture  anthroposemiotics. Biosemiotics  sign interpretation within and by organisms. Endosemiotics. Exosemiotics.

Med 7 - Fall 2004 Digital Culture Introduction to Semiotics