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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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In this century, Linguistics, the scientific study of language, has seen a quite extraordinary expansion. The study of language has held a tremendous fascination for some of the greatest thinkers of the century, notably Ludwig Wittgenstein and Noam Chomsky, whose influence has been felt far beyond linguistics.
Much of the impetus for this interest in linguistics originated with the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, from whose work (Course in General Linguistics, his lectures published in 1915 after his death by two of his students) French theorists developed 'structuralism', out of which (in part against which) grew 'post-structuralism', both of which have placed enormous influence on language and both of which have had a formative influence on cultural studies. This emphasis on language is often referred to as 'the linguistic turn' in philosophy.
As this section deals with semiology (also known as semiotics, especially in the USA) rather than linguistics, we shall not dwell on linguistics here, but we need to look at Saussure's ideas as it was he who laid the foundation stone of semiology. It was he in fact who coined the term (which he developed from the Greek word for 'sign'). He used the word to describe a new science which he saw as 'a science which studies the life of signs at the heart of social life'. (Saussure (1971(p.33))). This new science, he said, would teach us 'what signs consist of, what laws govern them'. As he saw it, linguistics would be but a part of the overarching science of semiology, which would not limit itself to verbal signs only.
If you'd like to see how the British linguist David Crystal
conceptualizes some of the possible subdivisions of semiology, please
click here: 
(Crystal (1987))
Many semiologists (or semioticians) when commenting on the media have used vocabulary which might strike you as more appropriate to the study of literature. Thus, for semioticians, a TV documentary, a radio play, a Madonna song, a poster at a bus stop are all texts. We users of these texts are referred to as readers. Thus you will find Fiske and Hartley titling their book Reading Television and Monaco calling his How To Read a Film. Similarly, some semioticians will tend to talk about the vocabulary of film, the grammar of TV documentaries and so on, following through the analogy with language, though some commentators would argue that it is fundamentally impossible to draw glib analogies between language and cinema or photography.
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
signification
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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If you haven't looked through the section on meaning, you may not be familiar with the idea of denotation. You can take a look at it now, if you wish, but briefly the idea is that a sign 'denotes' or 'refers to' something 'out there in the real world'. It supposes that words (let's stick with words for the time being) are labels attached to things much as labels might be stuck to artefacts in a museum. That seems a pretty sensible idea at first, perhaps - we can readily see how 'London', 'Margaret Thatcher', 'Michael Portillo' denote things 'out there'. But as soon as we get on to 'city', 'woman', 'man', things start to get a bit wonky. Which city, woman, man? And when we get on to words like 'ask' or 'tradition', this simple sign-----> thing relationship starts to fall apart. As Wittgenstein puts it '[the idea that the individual words in language name objects] surrounds the workings of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible.' (Wittgenstein (1958) p. 4)
Saussure
tried to get around this problem by saying that 'the linguistic sign
does not unite a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound image'
(see graphic). (Saussure (1971)
p. 98). If we consider printed language, then we could say that a sign
consists of the printed form of a word and a concept; if we consider a
black and white photograph, then the sign consists of a particular set
of shapes/shades and a concept. Structuralism (i.e. the philosophy
which derived later from Saussurean linguistics), then, 'brackets the
referent', in the current jargon. In other words, the thing referred to
(the referent) is taken out of the sign-----> thing(referent)
relationship and is replaced by 'concept'. Clearly, the 'linguistic
turn' is strengthened by this, since any notion of a reality external
to language and concepts is de-emphasized.
introduction to semiotics
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
signification
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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Some words do have meanings which are relatively easy to conceptualise, but we certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say. Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might bring to mind.
While that's quite correct, the fact remains that it also explains why Saussure's ideas took things forward. His notion of the sign places the emphasis on our individual 'concepts' corresponding to the sound images. Your mental picture of a car (indeed, for all I know, not only a mental picture, but also a mental smell, mental noise or whatever) will not be the same as mine, for a variety of reasons. (For a discussion of some of those reasons, see the section on Meaning).
Saussure shifted the emphasis from the notion that there is some kind of 'real world' out there to which we all refer in words which mean the same to all of us. Fairly obviously, we in our language community have much of this real world in common, otherwise we couldn't communicate, but, for various reasons, the 'real world' which we articulate through our signs will be different for every one of us. (It is for this reason that Saussure saw semiology as a branch of social psychology.)
sign
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
signification
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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Semiotics - Arbitrariness of the signSaussure stressed the arbitrariness of the sign as the first principle of semiology.
Saussure saw language as being an ordered system of signs whose meanings are arrived at arbitrarily by a cultural convention. There is no necessary reason why a pig should be called a pig. It doesn't look sound or smell any more like the sequence of sounds 'p-i-g' than a banana looks, smells, tastes or feels like the sequence of sounds 'banana'. It is only because we in our language group agree that it is called a 'pig' that that sequence of sounds refers to the animal in the real world. You and your circle of friends could agree always to refer to pigs as 'squerdlishes' if you want. As long as there is general agreement, that's no problem - until you start talking about squerdlishes to people who don't share the same convention.
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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Since it is the case that the codes (see Code) we use are the result of conventions arrived at by the users of those codes, then it is reasonable to suppose that the values of the users will in some way be incorporated into those codes. They will, for example, have developed signs for those things they agree to be important, they will probably have developed a whole array of signs to draw the distinctions between those things which are of particular significance in their culture.
In other words, you might reasonably expect that the ideologies prevalent in those cultures will have been incorporated into the codes used:
...'reality' is always encoded, or rather the only way we can perceive and make sense of reality is by the codes of our culture. There may be an objective, empiricist reality out there, but there is no universal, objective way of perceiving and making sense of it. What passes for reality in any culture is the product of the culture's codes, so 'reality' is always already encoded, it is never 'raw'.
Fiske (1987 pp 4-5)
Semiologists generally prefer the term 'reader' to 'receiver' (even of a painting, photograph or film) and often use the term 'text' to 'message'. This implies that receiving a message (i.e. 'reading a text') is an active process of decoding and that that process is socially and culturally conditioned.
introduction to semiotics
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
signification
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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IRA terrorists overran an army post in Londonderry in Northern Ireland
she chooses each sign from a range of alternatives. She could say:
'IRA scum', 'IRA active units', 'IRA paramilitaries', 'IRA freedom fighters', 'IRA lunatics'
The signs signify because of their valeur, which derives from the relationship between them. How can you say that repeated occurrences of the same word are in fact the same word? Saussure gives the example of calling a meeting to order by shouting 'Gentlemen!' several times: there may be significant variations between each of the pronunciations, at least as significant as the differences used to distinguish between two entirely different words and yet we perceive it as being the same word. How come? The answer is that it is a relational identity which is at stake here. As an example of the sort of relationship we are talking about, Sausssure gives the example of two 8.45pm expresses from Geneva to Paris, leaving at 24 hour intervals. For us, they are the same express we are talking about the same entity when we refer to it, even though its carriages, locomotive and personnel are probably quite different on the two occasions. But it is not such material identities we refer to when we refer to the '8.45 Geneva-Paris express'; rather it is the relational identity given in the timetable - this is the 8.45 Geneva-Paris express because it is not the 7.45 Geneva-Heidleberg express, the 8.45 Geneva-Turin etc. (Sausssure (1971) pp.151-2)
We can examine the syntagms and paradigms in any medium. In Advertising as Communication Gillian Dyer takes the example of a photographic sign, namely the use of a stallion in a Marlboro ad. The paradigm from which the stallion is drawn includes ponies, donkeys, dray horses, mules, mares. The connotations of stallion rely, as Dyer puts it, on the reader's cultural knowledge of a system which can relate stallion to feelings of freedom, wide open prairies, masculinity, virility, wildness, individuality, etc.. Why were these choices made? What is communicated by them?
One way to examine the ideological closure suggested by the signs in the message is to see how the message would differ if another were chosen from the relevant paradigm. I would have to say, however, that it is not clear to me exactly how you determine what signs belong within the paradigm. If mare, stallion, donkey, mule form part of the paradigm, does fairground horse also belong to it? Ostrich? Llama? For that matter, do chair and sofa also belong within the same paradigm?
introduction to semiotics
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
signification
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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If you have been through the unit on meaning, you'll be aware that what we are concerned with here is the difference between what we referred to in that unit as denotation and connotation. The phrases 'IRA terrorists' and 'IRA freedom fighters' denote the same people, but they connote something quite different. (In fact, Saussure used the term 'associative relationship' rather more than 'paradigmatic relationship' - and that clearly suggests associations or connotations.) The sign we choose to use gains much of its meaning, not so much from what it is, but what it isn't. Its meaning is determined by the rejection of all the other signs we have chosen not to use.
You may find it a little difficult to remember the difference between syntagm and paradigm. Students sometimes find it a bit easier if they remember that:
As
you can see from the example on the right, a paradigm is a set of
associated signs which are all members of the same category. In
language, the idea is fairly obvious, but don't forget that
semioticians see other sign systems as having the same features as
language. Thus, in TV the range of transitions between shots, cut,
fade, dissolve, wipe, fancy computer effects and so on constitute a
paradigm. The transition effect which is chosen signifies through its
opposition to the other signs in the paradigm. Imagine, for example,
those slow-motion, backlit, soft-focus shampoo ads which have dissolves
from one shot to another. What difference would it make if they had
straight jump-cuts instead. The meaning of the sign would also be
changed by the genre. Imagine the same slow dissolves in a pacey Coke
ad.
The paradigmatic analysis of a media text involves looking at the
opposition between the choices which are actually made and those which
could have been made. This structuralist analysis of texts tends to
focus on binary oppositions. If you would like to see some fruitful ones suggested by Chandler (1996), click here: or, better still, check out Daniel Chandler's 
excellent website.
The syntagmatic analysis of a media text means studying its narrative structure. There is a separate section available on narrative
introduction to semiotics
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
icon, index, symbol
signification
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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At about the same time as Saussure was developing semiology, the American philosopher C. S. Peirce was developing semiotics (as it tended to be known in the US and is now generally known across the world).
Following Peirce, semiologists (or semioticians) often draw a distinction between icons, indexes and symbols.
Icons are signs whose signifier bears a close resemblance to the thing they refer to. Thus a photograph of me can be said to be highly iconic because it looks like me. A road sign showing the silhouette of a car and a motorbike is highly iconic because the silhouettes look like a motorbike and a car. A very few words (so-called onomatopoeic words) are iconic, too, such as whisper, cuckoo, splash, crash.
Most words, though, are symbolic signs. We have agreed that they shall mean what they mean and there is no natural relationship between them and their meanings, between the signifier and the signified.
In movies we would expect to find iconic signs - the signifiers looking like what they refer to. We find symbolic signs as well, though: for example when the picture goes wobbly before a flashback. Certainly the 'real world' doesn't go wobbly when we remember a scene from the past, so this device is an arbitrary device which means 'flashback' because we have agreed that that's what it means. The road sign with the motorbike and car has, as we have just seen, iconic elements, but it also has symbolic elements: a white background with a red circle around it. These signify 'something is forbidden' simply because we have agreed that that is what they mean.
In a sense, indexes lie between icons and symbols. An index is a sign whose signifier we have learnt to associate with a particular signified. For example, if we see someone walking down the street with a rolling gait, we may associate the rolling gate with the concept of 'sailor'. We may see smoke as an index of 'fire'. A thermometer is an index of 'temperature'. Peirce gives the examples of a weathercock, a barometer and a sundial.
In old movies, when they need to show the passing of time, they may typically show the sheets bearing the days of the month being torn off a calendar - that is iconic, because it looks like sheets being torn off a calendar; the numbers 1, 2, 3 etc., the names January, February etc. are symbols - they are purely arbitrary; the whole sequence is indexical of the passing of time - we associate the removal of the sheets with the passing of time.
Don't think, though, that these three categories are mutually exclusive. A sign could very well be all three at the same time. For example, TV uses all three at the same time - a shot of a man speaking (iconic), the words he uses (symbolic) and the effect of what is filmed (indexical).
Don't think either that because a sign is iconic then it is in some way more natural than any other sign. With any kind of sign, we always have to learn the cultural conventions involved:
Convention is necessary to the understanding of any sign, however iconic or indexical it is. We need to learn how to understand a photograph... Convention is the social dimension of signs...: it is the agreement amongst the users about the appropriate uses of and responses to a sign.
Fiske (1982)
introduction to semiotics
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
signification
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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If you have looked at the section on Semiology and Culture, then you will be aware that a question fundamental to semiotics is the way that the values of our culture (or sub-culture) are incorporated into the sign-systems we use. This is a theme which recurs again and again in communication studies, as you can see from the section on codes and ideology.
All such claims relate to the concept of ideology, which you will find particularly important in your study of the mass media.
If you've read through the previous sections on semiotics, you may recall Gillian Dyer's reference to the 'reader's cultural knowledge of a system', which allows the reader to see the stallion in the Marlboro ad as signifying freedom.
Semiologists have emphasised that language exists as a structured system of symbolic representations. We do not live among and relate to physical objects and events. We live among and relate to systems of signs with meaning. We don't sit on a complex structure of wood, we sit on a stool. The fact that we refer to it as a STOOL means that it is to be sat on, is not a coffee table. In our interactions with others we don't use random gestures, we gesture our courtesy, our pleasure, our incomprehension, our disgust. The objects in our environment, the gestures and words we use derive their meanings from the sign systems to which they belong.
The sign systems we use are not somehow given or natural. They are a development of our culture and therefore carry cultural meanings and values, cultural 'baggage'. They shape the consciousness of individuals, forming us into social beings.
The French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva expressed it this way:
What semiotics has discovered ... is that the law governing ... any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies; i.e. it is articulated like a language.
quoted in Billington et al.(1991))
The important idea in what Kristeva says is that any social practice is 'articulated like a language'. Any social practice has meanings which arise from the code it uses. Everything in our social life has the potential to mean. Not everything does mean. Wearing clothes in our society doesn't signify much in itself - though not wearing them certainly does! But what clothes we wear - that's a choice that signifies something. In the college where I work, senior managers are immediately recognised by their expensive pin-stripe suits, Communication Studies, Photography and Art & Design lecturers are recognised by their lack of ties, departmental secretaries by their stiletto heels - and so on. In Algeria recently a young woman was shot by so-called Islamic fundamentalists - her failure to wear the veil signified her refusal to accept Islamic law and Algerian men who do not wish to risk being seen as having espoused European values would be well advised to wear an Islamic beard.
Since the codes we use are located within specific cultures, it should not be surprising that those codes express and support the social organization of those cultures. From this point of view there is no such thing as meaning which is independent of the ideological and political positions within which language is used. Many analysts have drawn attention to the way that codes express and maintain existing power relationships. The French sociologist, Bourdieu, for example, considers that 'every linguistic exchange has the potential to be an act of power' (1992). He highlights the way that the close correspondence between social structures and mental structures fulfils a political function. For him systems of symbols are not merely systems of understanding, they are systems of domination.
Thus, signification is not neutral, value-free. Therefore, Marxist
critics of literature and the media have placed so much emphasis on the
'politics of signification'. If discourse is not merely a reflection of
reality, but actively constitutive of it, then those who control the
discourse control the reality. Therefore we have seen underprivileged
groups (women, blacks, workers (or their supposed champions, the
Marxist intellectuals engaged in an assault on the dominant signifying
practices. For example, Eagleton describes Julia Kristeva's language as
opposed to all fixed, transcendental significations; and since the
ideologies of modern male-
dominated class-society rely on such fixed signs for their power (God, father, state, order, property and so on), such literature becomes a kind of equivalent in the realm of language to revolution in the sphere of politics
Eagleton (1983: 188)
One of the most expert and elegant practitioners of semiology was the French philosopher, Roland Barthes, whose style is immensely witty and incisive. His masterly works cover the semiotics of subjects as diverse as the classics of French Literature, pasta adverts, magazine photos, Citroën cars and wrestling. During the course of the development of structuralism, the 'linguistic turn' in philosophy, anthropology, sociology and so on became so dominant that Barthes was prepared to consider the reversal of Saussure's classification and consider that semiology is a part of linguistics. Though Barthes did not take this as far as later post-structuralists were to develop the primacy of language, his underlying idea is that semiology itself is implicated within the significances with which language is laden. Thus, there cannot be 'method' (semiological, scientific, sociological, linguistic, whatever), which can claim to be outside of the values, ironies and aporias of language.
Barthes draws an important distinction between what he refers to as different orders of signification. The first order is, for example, the iconic sign where the photograph of the car means the car. In the second order of signification there is a whole range of connotations. Barthes, in the 'Rhetoric of the Image' (1977) argues that in photography the denoted (first-order) meaning is conveyed through the mechanical process of reproduction. Connotative (second-order) meanings are introduced by human intervention - lighting, pose, camera angle etc.
We immediately know that these fonts are 'wrong':
But in what sense are they 'wrong'? They are wrong because in our culture those fonts are not used in that way. When we look at connotations we are looking at the activation of meanings deeply rooted in our culture.
The connotations of signs become particularly important when we look at the use of signs in advertising. A photograph of a car certainly refers to the signified car in the real world, but it can also connote virility, freedom, wealth etc. An advert for an expensive whisky shows the bottle together with crystal glasses on a table in front of an open fire. At the back of the room, the shelves are full of leather-bound books. These books do not simply signify books, they also connote a high level of education and wealth. They are therefore signifiers of membership of a certain social class. This is what is referred to as second-order signification.
Second-order signification, then, is what we have elsewhere referred to as connotation. But it is also what Barthes refers to as myth. Barthes quotes in Mythologies (1957) the example of a photograph on the cover of the magazine Paris Match. It is of a black soldier wearing a French uniform. He is giving a military salute and his eyes are gazing intently upward, no doubt at the French tricolore flag. That, as Barthes says, is the meaning of the photo. That is the meaning in terms of the first order of signification, that is what the photo denotes.
But Barthes goes on to explain the further meaning of the photo. The further meaning, the second order signification (connotation) must arise from the experiences we have had and the associations (connotations) we have learnt to couple with signs.
However, such connotations cannot be independent of the culture we live in and within which our sign-systems operate. The sign of this particular soldier becomes the signifier of the cultural values that he represents in the photograph. That takes us into what Barthes refers to as myth. Under the operation of this myth, the sign becomes a second-order signifier. The signified is: 'France has a great empire; all her sons, without distinction of colour, serve faithfully under the French flag and that there is no better answer to the critics of colonialism than this black's zeal in serving his supposed oppressors.'
Third-order signification is a matter of the cultural meanings of signs. These cultural meanings derive not from the sign itself, but from the way that society uses and values the signifier and the signified.
We draw meanings from the stock of images, notions, concepts and myths which are already available in the culture in a particular context and at a particular time: that
Clearly, Barthes sees the photo as being much more than a signifier signifying merely its signified, the black soldier saluting. He is concerned here with the ideological import of the photograph. By ideology we mean more or less what Barthes himself prefers to refer to as a mythology: the sets of myths which operate as organising structures within a culture, organising the meanings which we attach to the signs. (1957)
In Barthes's view the function of myth is to legitimise bourgeois ideology. Its function is to present to us a 'reality' which serves the interests of the bourgeoisie in such a way that the values incorporated in that 'reality' appear to be quite natural, taken for granted, common sense (allant de soi).
In your practical work, semiotics should play a major rôle, particularly at the stage where you are analysing existing artefacts. Don't simply take them at face value; try to use semiotic analysis to delve below the surface of the signs.
Say many members of your audience regularly read a particular magazine: take what appears to be a typical double page spread - what are the signs in it? linguistic, photographic, layout - look at them in terms of 'signifiers' and 'signifieds'. What is denoted, what connoted? What myths are activated - myths of the subject under discussion, myths of this readership?
introduction to semiotics
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
criticism of semiotics
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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[describe] the internal structure of systems of meaning, and in answer to a rather new kind of question, not 'Why did she say that?', 'Why are BMWs a status symbol?', 'Why in our society does technology connote masculinity?', but rather 'How does the structure of a sign system make possible, offer certain resources for, certain statements, meanings and associations, and in reliable ways?', 'How is orderly and intelligible meaning sustained?'
As Slater points out, however interesting such a project may be, it is not a project of social explanation. Referring to an analysis by Judith Williamson (1970) of a perfume advert, he points out that although the connexion between a certain kind of femininity represented by Catherine Deneuve and Chanel No 5 may be ontologically arbitrary (i.e. there is no necessary or natural connexion between them), the connexion is certainly not socially arbitrary and we cannot discern the 'complex history of social actions and motivations through which they have been connected (patriarchy, commerce etc.)' simply by examining the connexions of the formal elements within a text. As a result of semioticians' attempts to do just that, 'the structure is [...] treated as a cause, an answer to a social why question rather than a structural how question.'
Out of such attempts grows what Slater terms 'theoretical arrogance', though it remains unclear, as Slater points out, why the semioticians' accounts of the deep structure of texts should be any better, more reliable, more accurate or more scientific than anyone else's. Indeed, I do not myself note in Barthes's readings of popular cultural forms or in his reading of the French novelist Balzac anything which strikes me as qualitatively different from, say, the conventional literary criticism I was familiarized with at school. We have dealt with this 'theoretical arrogance' elsewhere, for example in the criticisms of the Marxist approach to the media or in the sections on the New Audience Research and it strikes me as a serious and fundamental criticism.
More serious, though perhaps more academic, is the charge that semiotics was on a hiding to nothing in the first place, since structuralism and post-structuralism derive from a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the specialized study of linguistics and the more general philosophical conclusions which could (or could not) legitimately be drawn from it. In fact, if one accepts Chomsky's view of structuralist linguistics, then the insights which it provides are essentially very limited. According to Chomsky, Saussure's insistence that the only proper methods of linguistic analysis are segmentation and classification means that his method is inappropriate for discovering the deep structure of language. In Chomsky's view, 'the careful and serious attempt to construct "discovery procedures", those techniques of segmentation and classification to which Saussure referred .... was a failure - I think that is now generally understood.' (1968). Chomsky also challenges the assumption underlying semiotics that all social actions are 'structured like a language', as is so often claimed. Commenting on the work of Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist and major figure in the development of structuralism, he observes that in the study of kinship systems 'nothing has been discovered that is even roughly comparable to language in these domains'. Whilst recognizing the seriousness and thoughtfulness of Lévi-Strauss's endeavour, Chomsky does not 'see what conclusions can be reached from the study of his materials beyond the fact that the savage mind attempts to impose some organization on the physical world - that humans classify, if they perform any mental acts at all. Specifically, Lévi-Strauss's well-known critique of totemism seems to reduce to little more than this conclusion.'
For a thorough critique of structuralist thought, I refer the reader to Thomas Pavel's masterly The Feud of Language which analyzes the structuralist and post-structuralist enterprise in meticulous detail, though his contempt is often quite evident for a method that 'offered just that dash of formalism necessary to create the impression of scientific rigour; moreover its simplicity permitted easy universal application and freedom to modify the details at will' (1989 : 132). He criticizes Lévi-Strauss for the 'levity' with which he undertook to apply structural linguistics to the analysis of myth and Barthes for basing his narrative syntax on the work of Hjelmslev who had never developed a syntax in the first place.
According to Pavel the obscurity of much writing in structuralism and post-structuralism is simply due to the discomfort the authors felt at being so ill-prepared to confront the philosophical problems of language: 'stylistic obscurity became the mark of a scientific status that nobody had either the competence or the courage to doubt.'
Finally, there is the question of the underlying assumption of
linguistic determinism which underpins much cultural studies research
(see for example the quotations in the section on codes and ideology).
As we have seen above, it is argued (oversimplifying somewhat) that we
are prisoners of our language and other signifying systems. Whether
this argument can reasonably be sustained may be questionable. (See the
section on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.)
Steven Pinker, building on Noam Chomsky's idea of 'Cartesian
linguistics' (i.e. that the brain has a language acquisition device
with an understanding of 'universal grammar' built into it at birth)
proposes that the acquisition of language is an instinct. This has
far-reaching consequences:
Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use symbols: a three-year-old ... is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum.....
....Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not.
Pinker 1994: 18-19
If you would like to follow up the debate, check out the excellent
Unofficial Web Page about Steven Pinker -
About the Controversy over the Source of Language: Instinct or Culture?
Like Chomsky, Pinker argues that other, non-linguistic, signifying
practices cannot be considered to be 'structured like a language' and
he does indeed produce compelling evidence that some learning
mechanisms appear to be developed for language itself and not for the
more general manipulation of symbols. If we accept that, then the whole
semiotic project seems to be dead in the water. Further, if we accept
that language is an instinct, then, as Pinker argues, we must largely
reject the notion that language shapes our thought. Since much of
cultural studies depends on an acceptance of both of the propositions
which Pinker rejects, then much of cultural studies must surely be as
dead. As Pinker puts it:
Chomsky attacks what is still one of the foundations of twentieth-century intellectual life - the 'Standard Social Science Model', according to which the human psyche is moulded by the surrounding culture.
Pinker 1994: 23
It may be possible to extend the argument from Cartesian linguistics to other aspects of the human mind as well. As Chomsky points out, a moment's reflection suggests that it is rather curious that we don't suppose for a moment that the human organism learns, as a result of experience, to sprout arms rather than wings so it's not immediately evident why we should suppose that mental capacities are not also largely genetically determined. Although rejected by some, Chomsky's arguments in favour of an innate universal grammar are widely accepted. So why should we not suppose that the development of personality, behaviour patterns and cognitive structures are similarly genetically determined? Chomsky refers back to Plato's argument that we can't possibly know everything we know simply as the result of experience. We must have some innate knowledge.
To question that is about as sensible as to suppose that the growth of an embryo to a chicken rather than a giraffe is determined by nutritional inputs.
Chomsky (1996 : 10)
Plato's argument that much of what we know must be remembered from a 'prior existence' seems quaint (to most of us anyway), but, Chomsky suggests, replace 'prior existence' by 'genetic endowment' and you have an explanation of innate knowledge which is consonant with modern biology's explanations. For example, Pinker demonstrates convincingly that human beings are born with an instinct to interpret space and spatial relationships, including the notion of the self-identity of an object. That is not, of course, to suggest that the environment and our experience play no rôle. A child born with cataracts will remain blind if not operated on early in life, even though the physical equipment to see remains intact; a child deprived of language during her formative years will not acquire anything more communicative than a kind of pidgin; a child born with perfect limbs will develop rickets if malnourished. And there appears to be convincing evidence that a child who is abused stands a good chance of becoming an abuser when an adult, a child deprived of love will find it difficult to reciprocate affection etc. Nevertheless, if we accept the proposition that the Chomskyian view of language acquisition may be extended to other mental capacities such as personality and cognition, then the radically relativist rejection of any such notion as an essential human nature (a rejection generally associated with postmodernist claims about alterity and the Other), then much of postmodernism must also appear questionable. Referring to psycholinguist Jerry Fodor's attack on relativism, Pinker states:
For Fodor, a sentence perception module that delivers the speaker's message verbatim, undistorted by the listener's biases and expectations, is emblematic of a universally structured human mind, the same in all places and times, that would allow people to agree on what is just and true as a matter of objective reality rather than of taste, custom and self-interest.
Pinker 1994: 405
As Pinker readily confesses, it's 'a bit of a stretch' to proceed from the identification of a language acquisition device and a universal grammar to such a far-reaching proposition, but it looks to me as if cognitive and evolutionary psychology and linguistics are heading in that direction, at worst no more speculatively than the cultural theorists and at best a great deal more comprehensibly.
Pinker's evaluation of the seriousness of the challenge posed to the
'Standard Social Science Model' is strongly conveyed in the following
passage on essentialism:
... in modern academic life 'essentialist' is just about the worst thing you can call someone. In the sciences, essentialism is tantamount to creationism. In the humanities, the label implies that the person subscribes to insane beliefs such as that the sexes are not socially constructed, there are universal emotions, a real world exists, and so on. And in the social sciences, 'essentialism' has joined 'redutionism', 'determinism' and 'reification' as a term of abuse hurled at anyone who tries to explain human thought and behaviour rather than redescribe it.
Pinker 1998: 325-6
introduction to semiotics
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
signification
structuralism and post-structuralism
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Introductory models & basic concepts: semiotics
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Semiotics or semiology is an example of the school of social philosophy known as structuralism. Indeed, semiology may be seen as the paradigmatic form of structuralism. The basic premise of structuralism is that societies and sociological or cultural practices can be analysed, along the lines of a language, as signifying systems. Thus we find structuralist methods applied not only in Sausssure's linguistics, but also in Barthes' broader cultural critique, the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan. In structuralism, the subject is decentred, in other words the central focus on the individual in much social analysis is replaced by focus on the structures, of which the individual is just another element (see the section on the decentred self).
In post-structuralism, of which the later works of Barthes are already a harbinger, the decentring of the subject is taken further, to such an extent that post-structuralism may be seen as anti-humanist, and thus - at least potentially - opposed to the great metanarratives of modernity. Ultimately, since in structuralism subject and structure are closely intertwined, an attack on structure must also entail an attack on the notion of the subject.
I have written above that you should, in your practical work, 'try to delve beneath the surface of the signs'. That is in fact a modernist position, a belief that there is something behind signs and that if the media production of signs was used responsibly and 'truhtfully', then it could be used for the benefit of society. The Marxist critique of the media, for example, in analysing the ideological framework within which media messages are situated, presupposes that it is somehow possible to see through distorted representation to a reality beyond representation. The Glasgow Media Group's work, for example, in comparing TV representations of industrial disputes with other, supposedly more objective, reports, assumes that it is possible to go beyond the televisual representation to some sort of truth about the reality of those industrial disputes. Jürgen Habermas, in his theory of communicative action, or in his presentation of his understanding of the public sphere, presumes the possibility of undistorted communication. Barthes, however, in his later, postructuralist phase, argued that language is not transparent. We can't look through it to a reality behind the language. Though post-structuralism is, as the term implies, in many ways a rejection of structuralism, it may also be seen as the logical development of it. Remember that Saussure insisted that meaning resides, not in a relationship between a signifier and its referent in the sense of some 'thing out there', but between the signifier and its signified in the sense of a metal concept and also through the relationship of arbitrary signs to one another. Thus, the Saussurean system already has within it a view of codes as self-referential systems.
Where the notion of the sign is concerned, the significant difference between structuralism and post-structuralism is the privileging of the signifier in post-structuralism. There is no simple correspondence between signifier and signified (or referent). Lacan speaks of signifiers slipping and sliding and Derrida coined the term 'floating signifiers' to refer to signifiers which have a no better than uncertain, indeterminate relation to any possible extra-linguistic reality. Oversimplifying, structuralism tends to assume a 'depth model' - in other words we can probe behind a text to find the truth and in doing so somehow stand outside language, for example using the 'metalanguages' of linguistic, sociological or philosophical analysis. In contrast, post-structuralism tends to place the emphasis on the activity of the reader in a productive process of engaging with texts and the subject him/herself who does this engaging does not have any kind of stable identity and unified consciousness, but is him/herself structured by language (see the section on decentred self). We can't stand outside language, there can be no metalanguage, or, in Derrida's terms, 'there is no outside of the text'. No signifier is ever free of any other signifier, all linked together in infinite semiosis. Thus no signification is ever closed. (In this connexion, see also the section on postmodernism)
introduction to semiotics
sign
signifier/signified
arbitrariness of the sign
semiotics and culture
paradigm and syntagm
denotation and connotation
icon, index, symbol
signification
criticism of semiotics
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Saussure
actually saw the division of the sign into sound image and concept as a
bit ambiguous. So he refined the idea by saying it might make things
clearer if we referred to the concept as the signified
(signifié) and the sound image as the signifier (signifiant) - this idea is shown in the graphic, which attempts to show how the signifier and signified coalesce into what we call a sign.
You
might think that the distinction between sound image (signifier) and
concept (signified) doesn't get us very far forward in trying to figure
out what we mean by 'meaning'. You're probably right. After all, it's
no easier to say what the concept of 'the' or 'of' is than to say what
thing those words correspond to. And, of course, I don't know if the
concepts 'city', 'woman', 'man' in your head are the same as those in
mine. As the British linguist, David Crystal, puts it: 
When
we say something is 'arbitrary', we mean that there's no good reason
for it. If you make an 'arbitrary choice' between two things, then you
choose for no good reason; you probably don't care which one you
choose. By saying that signs are arbitrary, Saussure was saying that
there is no good reason why we use the sequence of sounds 'sister' to
mean a female sibling. We could just as well use 'soeur', 'Schwester',
'ukht'. For that matter, we could just as well use the sequence of
sounds: 'brother'. Of course, as he pointed out, we don't have any
choice in the matter. If we want to talk about female siblings in the
English language, we can talk about 'female siblings' or 'sisters' -
and that's all; there are no more options. You can't do a Humpty
Dumpty.