Week 3 Meaning and Semiotics PDF

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Richard McMaster...

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Meaning Reading: Take Aways ➢ Each person’s emotions and perception may be perceived different with different meanings ○ Representational: ○ Conceptual: ➢ Society wise, language and code makes up our cultural and we perceive things different with meanings ➢ Play of signification means that it is very different to pin down meaning exactly ○ Polysemy: Our efforts and interpretation give rise to many interpretations ➢ We live by codes: systematic structure and organization of signs ○ Collected body of signifiers ○ Dictate our experience in the world The Meaning of Texts is the site of Struggle ➢ Codes are produced by people over time with very different experiences of social reality ➢ Power is deeply involved in the creation of meaning (dominant and resistant interpretations, competing narratives) ➢ Social groups struggle to make their code accepted as “natural” in society. Who gets to say what things mean? What constitutes “normal”? Sign: something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity (Peirce) ➢ The basic unit of meaning ➢ It is the “associative total” of two elements: ○ Signifier: the material form of the sign (image, object, sound, etc) received by the senses ■ E.g. physical ringing bell ○ Signified: the concept or meaning to which the signifier refers ■ E.g. bells rings→ schools over ➢ SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN Arbitrary (Conventional) nature of the linguistic sign: ➢ There is no natural or inevitable link b/w the signifier and the signified (linguistically at least) ○ “The bond b/w the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary” (Ferdinand de Saussure → 1857-1913) Charles Saunders Peirce (1839-1914) ➢ Like Saussure, Peirce argued that all signs are structured by cultural codes; there is nothing “natural” about their emaing ○ However; he attempted to develop a typology for all signs, not just for linguistic signs Pierce’s Three Types of Signs: 1) Iconic (Icon): signifier resembles signified (e.g. snapped picture)

2) Indexical (index): signifier is caused by signified 3) Symbolic (symbol): signifier is related to signified purely by convention An Icon (Pierce) ➢ Signifier resembles the signified examples or exhibits the object ➢ Highly motivates (strong connection b/w signifier and signified, the extent to which signified determines the signifier) ➢ Physically resembles the meaning ➢ “Exhibits...the relations of the quantities concerned” ➢ Images/ pictures, diagrams, maps, cartoons, models, sound effects Specific properties common to their objects An Index (Peirce) ➢ Signifier refers to or calls attention to the signified ➢ Points to, references or suggest something: smoke, thunder, measuring instruments, medical symptoms, knock on the door Directly influenced by objects A Symbol (Peirce) ➢ The signifier is associated with signified only by convention ➢ Arbitrary and unmotivated ➢ Relies on conventional use and “agree upon” meaning ➢ Stands for the quality of an object ➢ Requires a reader or “interpreter” ○ E.g. Metaphor ➢ meta= beyond/ over + share in “to carry”: to carry over ➢ Compares two different things by speaking of one in terms of the other Metonymy ➢ The evocation of the whole by a connection, consisting in using for the name of a thing so relationship an attribute, a suggested sense, or something closely related, such as effect for cause….the imputed relationship being that of contiguity (Wilden 1987) ➢ Does not require an imaginative leap - connection exists ➢ Invites the reader to fill in the gaps ○ e.g . the press is hounding Mr. Trudeau Synechdoche ➢ “Substitution of part for the whole, the genus for species ➢ Sometimes considered a sub-set of metonymy ○ E.g. pay the hired hands, one hundred sails Irony ➢ Signifier seems to signify one thing but it actually signifies something very different (often the opposite) ➢ Distinction b/w what is said and what is meant ➢ Double-coded foregrounds the signifier

Hyperbole ➢ Bold overstatemnet or extravagant exaggeration of fact or possibility ➢ Sometimes ironic or comic Meiosis ➢ The opposite understatement. Represents something as less in magnitude or importance than it really is. Semiotics ➢ Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) ○ “Course in General Linguistics” (1907-1911) ➢ Semiotics: the study of the production of meaning ○ “How is meaning produced?” (Rather than, “What is the meaning?”) ➢ Focuses on the use of signs and rules that govern the use of code (system of signs) What is a Code? ➢ “A rule-government system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meanings in and for that culture” (John Fiske) ○ E.g. the English language, traffic lights, fashion, emoticons, music ➢ To Understand a Code: ○ Identify meaningful signs in a code ○ Unravel how the code came about ➢ Decoding: “We need to learn that even the most ‘realistic’ signs are not what they appear to be. By making more explicit the codes by which signs are interpreted, we may perform the valuable semiotic function of “denaturalizing signs.” ➢ Think of the conventions and codes you need to know to interpret this sign. ○ Arrow: leads the direction ○ men: broader shoulders ○ Women: dress ➢ Polysemy: the openness of signs to multiple meanings (and the openness of texts to multiple interpretations) ○ E.g. Inuitshook 2010 Vancouver Olympic Symbol ➢ ➢ Intertextuality: ➢ Texts do not constitute a pure field ➢ We make sense of texts on the basis of other texts with which we are familiar (intertextuality) ➢ Without relevant literacies we won’t be able to read a text as effectively ➢ “text is a tissue (or fabric) of quotations,” drawn from “innumerable centres of culture,” rather than from one, individual experience (Barthes) ➢ Intertextuality is normally used to refer to the ways in which texts refer to each other: “the absorption on the transformation of another [text]” (Kristeva)

➢ All texts are always already intertexts. That is, texts are interdependent; all texts are always in conversation with other texts, whether they employ explicit quotation, references, or allusions or not. In this way, intertextuality reminds us that texts are socially constructed within history, they are not produced in isolation, nor are they “closed systems”....