1. Semiotics and the Construction of Reality
Ernesto Abalo, Media and Communications, Örebro University

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Denotation and connotation
Denotation: the manifest content of a sign
Connotation: the latent/cultural content of a sign

7. 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

8. 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).

9. 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.

10. Photos The photograph - an objective depiction of the world?
Angles, color, objects. What is there, how is it there, and what is missing?

11. 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?

12. 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.

13. 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