Semiotic theory focuses on the social and cultural meaning of signs and codes (Scholes, 1982; 1985). Signs consist of an image, a word, an object or even a certain type of practice. The meaning of signs depends on the relationships between the signifier (the image, word, object, or practice), the signified (the implied meaning), and the referent (what the image, word, object, or practice refers to) (Scholes, 1982). A yellow yield sign is a signifier that conveys the meaning — the signified, to yield to other cars. The referent is the actions referred to, in this case, yielding to other cars. People learn that the colors red and green as signifiers have certain signified meanings — stop and go, with the referent being stopping and starting a car on the street based on a set of cultural codes and conventions (Peim, 1993).

Roland Barthes, a key figure in semiotic theory, argues that the meaning of images are cultural and ideological. In his book, Elements of Semiology (the first half of this book is available on-line), Barthes describes the ways in which the sign assumed cultural meanings:

The semiological sign is also, like its model, compounded of a signifier and a signified (the colour of a light, for instance, is an order to move on, in the Highway Code), but it differs from it at the level of its substances. Many semiological systems (objects, gestures, pictorial images) have a substance of expression whose essence is not to signify; often, they are objects of everyday use, used by society in a derivative way, to signify something: clothes are used for protection and food for nourishment even if they are also used as signs. We propose to call these semiological signs, whose origin is utilitarian and functional, sign-functions. The sign-function bears witness to a double movement, which must be taken apart. In a first stage (this analysis is purely operative and does not imply real temporality) the function becomes pervaded with meaning. This semantisation is inevitable: as soon as there is a society, every usage is converted into a sign of itself; the use of a raincoat is to give protection from the rain, but this use cannot be dissociated from the very signs of an atmospheric situation. Since our society produces only standardised, normalised objects, these objects are unavoidably realisations of a model, the speech of a language, the substances of a significant form.

In summarizing the work of Barthes, Ron Burnett (1991) describes the ways in which images take on ideological meanings by citing the example of the image of a gun in the film Dirty Harry:

Images are seen as carriers of meaning and as such there is an assumption of fixity which is often equated to a powerful effect. Effectivity is then used as an argument to explain the referential power of the image. For without reference the image would not mean, yet clearly, the object named "gun" is dramatically different from the image named gun. The naming, the classification, is not the same in both instances. For example, the state-ment that the image of a magnum dominates the film Dirty Harry, by Don Segal, creates more than a simple equation between reference and the language of interpretation. The gun, its use, its context, the function which it has in the film, have all been raised and this rather complex discursive field exceeds, transforms, even re-names the object. It is this discursive field which makes the connections between object and image arbitrary. There is no pure moment of the gun as image which escapes its placement and the use to which it has been put.

Definitions of key terms used in semiotics

A chart illustrating the different concepts of semiotic analysis

An introduction to semiotics

For introductions to semiotics as applied to media studies:
Semiotics, Structuralism and Television
Sites of Significance for Semiotics
Semiotics, An Introduction

Semiotic theorists: Pierce, Eco, Barthes, Lacan, Sebeok

A semiotic analysis of magazine ads for men’s fragrances, Alexander Clare

In his book, Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Out Lives, Todd Gitlin (2001) posits that the media provides a constant torrent of images that wash over audiences at a high speed pace:

On MSNBC an interview is in progress. An expert is discoursing on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. At the lower right is the network logo, to its left, the current Dow Jonesindustrial average, next to the current temperature and a cloud graphic. Later three bongs will sound, signaling NBC, and the interview image will shrink, while headlines burst out below . . . But to two thirty-second commercials as images flicker by at the average of more than one edit per second (pp. 71–72)

And, audiences themselves are moving from channel to channel—between 36 to 107 per hour (p. 72). While all of these images purport to portray “reality,” ironically, audiences experiences these images as not “real,” but only virtual:

Images . . . depict or re-present realities but are not themselves realities. We usually know the difference. If an image depicts a place we have visited or reminds us of something that once happened to us, or something we could imagine happening, we call it realistic. But that is still not “real” (p. 22).

Despite the fact that audiences know these images are “almost real,” they: Expect them to heighten life, to intensify and focus it by being better than the real, more vivid, more stark, more something. We want a burst of feeling, a frisson or commisertation, a flash of delight, a moment of recognition . . . . (p. 23)

To study the meaning of signs or media images, you can download some images from the following image data banks:

mediabuilder.com

altavista.com image search

free-clip-images.com

pdimages.com

google.com image search

As you look at some of these images, describe your reactions to these images and the meanings you attribute to these images. Then, consider some of the different ways you could examine two or more of these images employing different inquiry strategies suggested by Alan Gartenhaus (2001) in Questioning Art, An Inquiry Approach to Teaching Art Appreciation:

• Comparing: In what ways are image A and image B alike; in what ways are they different?

• Observing: What words would you use to describe image A? What is going on in this event, text, picture?

• Classifying: What is a theme or group heading that A, B, and C would all fall under? Divide your data into two groups, sorting them based on what they share in common. What two categories did you create?

• Summarizing: What title would you give to A; why did you choose this title? How would you summarize what you learned about A?

• Interpreting: What do you believe is happening in A; what specific things in A suggest this? What is the larger meaning or idea of A?

• Hypothesizing: Why did certain things happen in A? What are some possible reasons for what happened in A?

Codes

Codes define the conventions that define meaning of signs. A sign can have multiple meanings depending upon the different codes used to interpret the sign. In responding to images, audiences apply their knowledge of cultural codes that define the meaning of images. The meaning of images of beauty as portrayed in romance novels, soap operas, romantic comedies, or song lyrics are constituted by what Linda Christian-Smith (1990) describes as “codes of beautification” — that a woman’s physical attractiveness contributes to building relationships. In the novel, The Outsiders, “the word Cool, the cars that the Socs drive, the imagery of sunsets, and the way that Ponyboy Curtis slouches, his body language, are signs with which these two gangs socially construct themselves” (Moore, 1998, p. 212)

Social codes serve to define the meaning of signs and various social practices operating in a specific context. Audiences draw on their knowledge of these codes to interpret the meaning of signs and practices.

Dan Chandler: semiotic codes

Dan Chandler: essay assignment on codes and viewing:

Illustrate and discuss the contention that we learn to 'read' television and film, including the associated notion that televisual and filmic codes constitute a kind of 'language'.

Guidance for this assignment

You might consider a 'for and against' structure for this title, outlining and evaluating the arguments and evidence both for and against the idea that film and television are like a language which we read. You are expected to demonstrate your understanding of any relevant semiotic concepts. To what extent is it useful to discuss the codes of the medium as a 'language'? It's useful to be aware of Christian Metz's reflections on the extent to which it is and is not useful to think of cinema as a language. Some semioticians compare film to verbal language, often in response to the claim that verbal language is inherently more powerful than any other medium. Verbal language is based on 'double articulation' - it builds on basic non-meaningful units (phonemes) which can be combined in multiple ways to create a higher level of meaningful units (morphemes or words). Most semioticians argue that film and photography lack a lower structural level. Is the idea of film (and television) as a language just a metaphor (it's common to talk about editing in terms of punctuation) or is a strictly linguistic model applicable to film? The linguistic model often leads semioticians to a search for units of analysis in audio-visual media which are analogous to those used in linguistics. In the semiotics of film, rough equivalents with written language are sometimes postulated: such as the frame as morpheme (or word), the shot as sentence, the scene as paragraph, and the sequence as chapter (suggested equivalences vary amongst commentators). For members of the Glasgow University Media Group the basic unit of analysis was the shot, delimited by cuts and with allowance made for camera movement within the shot and for the accompanying soundtrack. Shots can be broken into smaller meaningful units (above the level of the frame), but theorists disagree about what these might be. Above the level of the sequence, other narrative units can also be posited.

Sample student essays:

Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Do we learn to 'read' television and film and do televisual and filmic codes constitute a 'language'?

Stefan Herrmann, Do we learn to ‘read’ television like a kind of ‘language’?

Charles Slaney, Do we learn to read television and film and do televisual and filmic codes constitute a kind of language?

There are a number of different types of codes constituting the meaning of signs (Rayner, Wlla, & Kruger, 2001)

• dress codes: serve to define meanings related to status, class, age, gender, rank, role, glamour, sophistication, “style,” sex appeal, etc.
  

• color codes: In many cultures, red means glamour/excitement or danger; black means death or destruction; blue means openness; pink means femininity
  

• non-verbal codes defining meaning of gestures or body language: the meaning of handshakes, kisses, winks, staring, proximity, signals, etc.
  

• class codes: define the meaning of language, behavior, dress, demeanor, etc., related to class markers, for example, blue blazers for upper-middle class
  

• racial codes: define the meaning of language, behavior, dress, demeanor, etc., related to race or ethnicity, for example, markers associated with white privilege.
  

• cultural codes: define the meaning of social practices in certain places, events, sites, institutions related to formality/informality, significance, appropriateness, etc.
  

• cinematic/technical codes: define the meaning of uses of close-up, long, medium shots, angles (high/low), framing, cropping, etc.

As we will study in Module 6 (genres), these codes are often associated with a specific television or film genre or type. The codes of the traditional western genre constituted the meaning of “good” (heroes dressed in white) vs. “evil” (the “bad man” dress in black) or the open vistas as defining the West as reflecting the American dream of an “open,” endless development. Students most readily understand this sign/code relationship by constructing collages of images from magazine ads and then inferring the code system constituting the meaning of the images. For examples, the image of the Subaru L. L. Bean Outback placed in remote, open spaces are based on a code system of “nature” linked with “freedom” from constraints associated with Outback sign.

In his analysis of television news, John Harley (1993) described the various codes that constituted the typical news broadcast newsreader/anchor person who dominate the screen, frames topic, and define links between different parts of the program, as well as the usine of correspondents/reports who frame and report on specific topic; the use of video to portray events, the use of graphics to display bullet points, captions, or further information; and the use of voice-overs and shots of interviewees. These codes include (Genova, 2001, p. 64):

• visual codes of composition (framing pictures), movement (pan shots, zooms, close-ups), and sequence (editing/juxtaposing of images)
  

• verbal codes defining uses of speech and stories
  

• absent codes defining uses of music, debate, and reconstruction of events

Narrative/structualist theory: How signs/images mean in stories

One set of codes constituting the meaning of signs and images are narratives or story structures. Structuralist theorists focus on the grammar or structure of different units in a typical storylines of the mystery/detective, comedy, quest/journey, or action/adventure. These different units function in relationship to each other. For example, narratives often revolve around binary oppositions between good versus evil, in which evil seems to be triumphing over good, only to have good win out in the end. The specific events or episodes in stories are defined in terms of how they function to develop the story structure. Understanding these oppositions helps audiences define the meaning of signs and images in texts. For example, the meaning of the “road” imagery in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring reflects the code of the open-ended journey in which the hero(es) confront multiple challenges within what archetypal critics define as the “Romance” quest narrative.

Narrative theory defines how certain kinds of stories reflect certain kinds of cultural meanings related to oppositions or conflicts between characters, or the sequential relationships between different events. For example, in the typical, traditional romance novel, Janice Radway (1984) noted that typically the cold, impersonal male hero initially rejects or is rejected by the female protagonist. However, over time, the female protagonist brings out the more subjective, nurturing, romantic side of the male, transforming him by the end of the story into a more caring partner, resulting in a love relationship often leading to marriage (feminists ask why it is that the female is responsible for doing all of the work to change the male).

One of the most important formalist theorists is David Bordwell, whose book, Narration in the Fiction Film (1985), focused on not only narrative structures, but also how audiences apply cognitive schema for interpreting films. (The film textbook Film Art: An Introduction (McGraw Hill, 7th ed., 2004), by Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (author of Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton University Press, 1988), is one of the most widely used introductory college film textbooks; see also his 1991 book, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema, Harvard University Press and his co-edited book. Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.

Bordwell argues that learning to interpret film involves audiences’ application of learned prototypical schema that organize actions and situations around certain narrative patterns. He traces the historical development of certain genres such as the Hollywood Film Noir to particular ways in which the narrative structures invited audiences to apply certain schema to engage in gap-filling in the narratives.

Bordwell explains his approach on his website:

Analysis is a matter of breaking up whole phenomena into relevant parts and showing how they work together. Thus a film historian interested in how a particular studio worked in 1930 will distinguish among the studio's operations (studio departments, say, or phases of the moviemaking process). An academic film critic will divide a film into parts (scenes, sequences, "acts") to see how the overall architecture works. Explaining something also involves describing it. A film historian trying to explain how a studio functioned in 1930 will describe the work routines; that's a necessary part of the explanation. An academic film critic will describe a scene in detail, for that's necessary to understanding why it carries a particular meaning or achieves a particular effect. Analysis and description are rare in ordinary conversation and in film reviewing because of limits of time and space, but also because the film scholar is interested in something that isn't so pressing for other parties: explanations.

There are different types of explanation. Historians often look for causal explanations, the way that events or circumstances x and y shaped event z over time. Film analysts and theorists often seek functional explanations-how x and y work together, at any given moment, to create the whole z. Again, these are concerns that typically don't arise in ordinary conversation or film reviewing.

A summary of Chapter 2 on film form in Film Art: An Introduction

A summary of Bordwell’s cognitive theories by Kevin Sweeney, “Constructivism in Cognitive Film Theory”

The application of Bordwell in a film course taught by Henry Jenkins

Sarah Kozloff gives the example of the typical story structure of a James Bond movie in her site on application of narrative theory to media:

• M moves and gives a task to Bond.
  

• The villain moves and appears to Bond.
  

• Bond moves and gives a first check to the villain or the villain gives first check to Bond.
  

• Woman moves and shows herself to Bond.
  

• Bond consumes woman: possesses her or begins her seduction.

• The villain captures Bond.
  

• The villain tortures Bond.
  

• Bond conquers the villain.
  

• Bond convalescing enjoys woman, whom he then loses.

For each section of a James Bond movie, audiences note how the signs and images serve to predict and reaffirm their knowledge of Bond’s triumph over evil and the winning and losing of women.

Narrative theorists also focus on the discourse structures of news or documentary. For example, Allan Bell (1998) identifies the basic structure of the news event coverage as consisting of Attribution (the source, place, and time), Abstract (the headline and lead), and Story (with episodes containing events). Each event includes descriptions of attribution (sources), actors, action, setting, follow-up (consequences and reactions), commentary (context, evaluation, and expectation), and background (previous episodes and history) (p. 68). News stories consistently follow this structure, although TV news often deletes aspects of follow-up, commentary, and background.

Archetypal theory

Another set of codes has to do with mythic, cultural, or psychological meanings for signs and images. Archetypal theorists such as Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell note how certain images of water, color, the seasons, or the hero’s journey are related to themes of birth/death, male/female, or separation/attachment. For example, one of the first phases of the hero’s journey is the initiation of the hero in preparation for a long, perilous journey. That initiation — associated with initiation rites for adolescents in different cultures, is often associated with baptism or water, which, in turn, may be associated with sexuality.

Application: Go back to the meanings you attributed to the signs and images in the Secret ad and reflect on what codes you employed to infer these meanings. How did you apply these particular codes?

The archetypal hero in film

Archetypal analysis of Enchanted April

Northrop Frye’s narrative patterns applied to film

For further reading on archetypal criticism of film/media:

Hirschman, E. (2000). Heroes, monsters, and messiahs. New York: McMeel
Publishing.

Liebes, T., Curran, J., & Katz, E. (Eds.). (2002). Media, ritual and identity. New York: Routledge.

Rasmussen, R. (1998). Children of the night: The six archetypal characters of classic horror films. New York: MacFarland.

For further applications of semiotics to media texts:

Semiotic Analysis of Images
Semiotics of Advertising
Ad Bank Semiotic Analysis: Cosmopolitan and Maxim Magazines
Semiotics Articles

For further reading on semiotic theory:

Bell, A. (1998). The discourse structure of news stories. In A. Bell and P. Garrett (Eds.), Approaches to media discourse (pp. 64–104). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Chandler, D. (2001). Semiotics: The basics. New York: Routledge.

Cobley, P. (1999). Introducing semiotics. London: Icon Books.

Hodge, R. & Kress, G. Social semiotics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Kauffmann, S. (2001). Regarding film: Criticism and comment. Performing Arts Journal Books.

Kress, G., & Van Leenwen, T. (2001). Barthes and the empire of signs. New York: Routledge.

Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of looking. New York: Oxford University Press.

Thwaites, T., Davis, L., & Mules, W. (2002). Introducing cultural and media studies: A semiotic approach. New York: Palgrave.

Trifonas, P. (1996). Reading images. London: Icon Books.

Weber, S., & Mitchell, C. (1995). “That’s funny, you don’t look like a teacher:” Interrogating images and identity in popular culture. London: Falmer Press.

Application

Go back to the meanings you attributed to the signs and images in the Secret ad and reflect on what codes you employed to infer these meanings. How did you apply these particular codes?

Module 4: Word document

Applying Critical Perspectives to an Ad

Rhetorical/Audience Analysis

Semiotic Theory

Poststructuralist/ Deconstructivist Theory: Interrogating Language Codes/Categories

Critical Discourse Analysis

Psychoanalytic Theories

Feminist Criticism

Postmodern Theory

Postcolonial Theory

References