Two Ronnies sketch 'Four Candles/ Fork Handles'
Meaning isn't guaranteed by what you say.
Ferdinand De Saussure defined semiology as the study of sign systems.
By reducing language to sign systems, it introduces the idea of image based signs.
Signifier / Signified / Referent
Signifier is the sign.
Signified is the translation of the concept, what you think of when you are faced with a signifier
The referent is the actual concept itself.
Signs are open to interpretation.
Saussure separated the word (sign) from meaning - that meaning is not inherent within the sign.
Semiotics is a form of meta language - a language about language.
Systems and structures dictate the reading somewhat. Eg. Advertising, Fashion, the English Language.
Different elements and signs within the systems mean what they mean because they have been structured that way.
Walkers is a system that uses colours to signify a flavour, for example blue is cheese and onion when viewed in the context of a shop. Walkers actually swapped associated colours of both cheese and onion and salt and vinegar, influenced the system.
Connotation and denotation.
Provides us with levels of order of signification.
Roland Barthes warns that denotation is not a literal meaning but is naturalised through language.
Most evident where signifiers merely refer to other signifiers .
Myth - myths are signs that are culturally informed. Barthes kinked myths to ideology 'Bourgeois ideology...turns culture into nature' (1974)
Myths often appear to go without saying, yet function to hide dominant cultural values or beliefs.
Example - red wine as a drink in France is associated with intelligence and class, but there is no logical connection between wine and intelligence, but has simply been enforced over time.
Example - milk is associated with natural strength, wholesomeness, freedom and liberty, when in bears no logical relation to that.
Syntagm and Paradigm
Syntagm - a series or collection of signifiers within a 'text'
Syntagmatic relations - how signifiers within a syntagm relate to each other.
Paradigm - Signifiers that relate through function or relative meaning (e'g boy/man, male/female)
Paradigmatic relation - How paradigmatic signifiers contrast and construct meaning.
Dolce and Gabbana The One Gentleman (Matthew Mcwhateverhisnameis)
The image in terms of paradigm - If you replaced Matthew in a clean, sleek tuxedo with the Marlboro man, it now connotes that the perfume is made for rugged men, as opposed to classy rich guys.
Metaphor and Metonym...are both non literal forms of signification, as such require a level of interpretation.
Metaphor is where one signifier is replaced with another that has similar concepts or characteristics.
A metonym is where a signifier stands in for another to which it is conceptually or physically a part of (displacement) - A part to represent the whole or the whole to represent the part...association along a chain of signification.
White House image
Not just the White House, could represent US Politics or Western politics
Rhetoric
The act of effective persuasion using language
Used by advertisers, politicians, journalists, and PR
Photo journalists use this device quite often, trying to persuade you by choosing photos carefully. Reduces things to a simplistic meaning, often biased.
META
Meta is a prefix used to alter purpose of a practice or a system inwards.
Meta-language - a language about language
The Greatest Film ever sold - A movie about a movie
Structuralism is the term used for the broad application of semiotics/semiology to a range of sign systems.
Further than the application solely to linguistics. Structuralism emphasises structures or systems of signification.
Not what it means but HOW it comes to mean.
Semiotic linguistic terms/structures act as analogies for other systems.
Roland Barthes - 'Image, Music, Text' 1977
Barthes analyses a range of visual media in terms of their signifying structures:
Post structuralism
While structuralism focusses on the structures of meaning in any signifying system.
Post structuralism focusses on the interpreter/reader and the precarious nature of meaning.
Structuralism reduces everything to related elements within a signifying system...
This is authoritarian in nature.
It assumes the presence of a meaning - that the meaning is there and can be sought out.
(Logocentrism - anything that does not fit is discarded or ignored)
Post structuralists aim to deconstruct assumptions and emphasise the plurality of interpretation.
Differance
Jacques Derrida established this term both in development of Saussure and disagreement.
Differer - to differ and to defer
Differance is both differing and deferring simultaneously
Derrida states that meaning is not only established in difference/opposition but is also being deferred.
Deconstruction
Where structuralism identified/created structures of signification
Deconstruction aims to target assumed structures of meaning and signification, to break them down and view the gaps, or the things left behind.
Targets binary oppositions - most of the time are languages privilege things in opposition. They cast aside anything in between, are seen in a negative light because they are not addressed by language itself.
Intertextuality
'Every text is from the outset under the jurisdiction of other discourses which impose a universe on it' Julia Kristeva
Intertextuality describes how texts are constructs/collages of previous texts.
When writers write they are also written.
Scary Movie - example - only exists because of the things that it references
Simulacra
Jean Baudrillard introduces the idea of hyperreality in representation - a copy without an original.
We have lost the ability to recognise the difference between nature and artificiality.
"Quote"
Stages of Simulacra - 1.The image is a clear counterfeit of the original (pre modern) 2. Distinctions between the copy and original begin to break down through mass-production and distribution (modern)
3. Pure simulacra where the copy precedes it
Example - Disneyland - supposed to mirror other cities, brought together into a strange, distorted centre.
Brands that are about the status, and the signifier themselves in the society of the hyperreal.
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