Ruta Jakstoniene Visual Semiotics

Home , Computational semiotics, Semiotics of photography, Vladimir Toporov

SCIENCE ECONOMY COHESION EUROPEAN UNION RUta JakStonienE Creating the Future of Lithuania UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES ISBN 978-9955-648-36-9

Ruta Jakstoniene

VISUAL SEMIOTICS Course Handbook with Exercises

Creating the Future of Lithuania UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES

SMK University of Applied Social Sciences

Ruta Jakstoniene

VISUAL SEMIOTICS

Course Handbook with Exercises

Klaipeda, 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...... 4

Chapter 1. The Definition of Semiotics. The Object, Aim, and Objectives of Semiotics. The History of Semiotics. The Pioneers and Contemporary Researchers of Semiotics. Contemporary Semiotics Branches, Fields of Research. The Relationship between Semiotics and Other Sciences...... 7

Chapter 2. The Concept of Sign. The Symbol, Index, and Icon Triad. Codes. The Signification and Meaning of Signs, The Information that Signs Provide. Denotation and Connotation. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Synecdoche. Sign Functions...... 14

Chapter 3. The Visual Semiotics Field of Research. The Concept of Text in Semiotics. Visuals as Semiotics Texts. The Plastic Dimensions of Visual Semiotics. The Figurative Level of Visual Semiotics. …...... 31

Chapter 4. Social Semiotics. The Study Object of Visual Social Semiotics. Visual Signs in the Sociocultural Environment. The Development of and Changes in the Relationship between the Sign and the Referent...... 38

Chapter 5. Semiotics of Culture. Visual Messages in Photography, Film, and Television. Aspects of Visual Communication in Advertising, Design, and Architecture...... 46

Some Important Semioticians ...... 82

Basic Semiotics Concepts, Their Explanations ...... 85

A Guide to a Semiological Analysis ...... 89

Bibliography ...... 90

I keep six honest serving–men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

Radyard Kipling INTRODUCTION

The world as we know it today is changing at a rapid pace. Along the way, it is also gradually changing the conditions, under which the formation of a social and cultural environment occurs and the reference points from which to view and comprehend this environment. Individuality, the freedoms to choose and to shape one’s own material and spiritual lives, freedoms to speech and personal orientation, the availability of various cultural life forms, and the development of inter–cultural relations as well as their versatility are especially high- lighted in the background of the present contradictory and volatile sociocultural situation. In this context, the process, whereby societies become global communities, is lead with active discussions on various topics and analyses of the meaning behind both, high and popular art and culture as well as of their position on the new value scale of the information society.

Educational art and culture enables the students to get acquainted with various cultural phenomena, the different historical and cultural ages, movements in the world of art, styles of creativity, artists and their works. However, the traditional view of the role of educational art and culture only paves the way towards formal knowledge of artistic and cultural values. According to Anelė Vosyliūtė, a social sciences doctor, the everyday culture that surrounds us is especially felt in the context of globalisation and in a society that is marked with massive consumerism. The messages that this culture transmits are becoming very important. In order to create, read, comprehend, analyse, and apply such visual messages, an understanding of art and of the history of culture will not suffice. In this case, one will need to know the basics of semiotics.

Semiotics, as an entirely separate discipline, began its formation in the 17th century. John Locke, an English philosopher, described the nature and essence of semiotics (Locke used this specific term). According to him, the task of semiotics is to examine signs that the human consciousness uses to understand things or to pass its knowledge, origins, and nature on to others. This definition of semiotics is currently considered adequate from the scientific point of view.

Semiotics, the science of sign systems present in the environment and in society, enables individuals to interpret visual signs not as mere illustrations in written sources, but as specific texts that require deciphering within a specific context, which they were formed and function in. In this case, the text is understood as a code for different cultures, as a means of communication, and as a generalised model of the world that surrounds us. It is the centre, where the philosophy, aesthetic beliefs, as well as moral, religious, and political views of the author reside and where they are expressed with the help of various symbols, codes, motives and

6 mythological images. The central research object of semiotics is text as a system of signs.

The Visual Semiotics Course Handbook aims to explain the visual sign systems that surround humanity and the essence of design, comprehension, and production of the meanings of signs. It may prove to be difficult for some students to understand the ideas and their significance for the communicational relation that we as humans possess with our surroundings and with other people, if the students do not possess basic historical knowledge of culture and art, if they were never acquainted with semiotics discourse and terminology, or if they have never had the chance to study semiotics, which is the methodological framework of all humanitarian sciences.

The present course handbook consist of five chapters, which will help to understand the aims and objectives as well as the areas of research of semiotics, will describe the scope and problems of visual semiotics research, will explain meanings of signs in visual texts, will clarify what visual, social and cultural semiotics aims to explore and what are the relevant aspects of communications in advertising, design, and architecture.

Questions for revision are provided at the end of each chapter. The provided theoretical questions aim to help the students to solidify their newly acquired knowledge. The handbook also provides practical questions, which aim to help the students to develop analysis skills, enabling them to analyse visual messages from the perspective of semiotics.

It is advised to organise seminars in conjunction with the provided revision questions for the purpose of discussing exercise results as a group. This would allow the students to better acquire the information presented in this handbook. Seminars would also serve an additional function: students would be provided with an opportunity to participate in discussions and to improve their individual work skills, skills for individual collection and analysis of semiotics information as well as teamwork skills.

Lastly, bibliographies follow the exercises in each chapter. The sources presented in the bibliography are crucial for the understanding of concepts that are discussed in the chapters. Students are also presented with a glossary of the basic concepts of semiotics and a list of recommended further readings at the end of this handbook.

“The relationship between semiotics (as theory for general signification and meaning) and various texts, or, in more general terms, cultural phenomena, is not as homogeneous as the implementation of specific measures to concrete texts.”1 In other words, semiotics is not as much a method for the interpretation of certain different visual and / or verbal texts as it is an aim to understand how works of art, design or architecture, various cultural phenomena, their meanings and signification are understood by those who see, analyse, and use them, regardless of whether they are used by erudite researchers or common consumers.

1Javsas P. Donelaičio semiotika su prieskoniu estetikos, p.2 [retrieved January 10th, 2013] from http://www.academia.edu/6100195/Donelai- cio_semiotika_su_prieskoniu_estetikos.

7 8 Chapter 1

The Definition of Semiotics. The Object, Aim, and Objectives of Semiotics. The History of Semiotics. The Pioneers and Contemporary Researchers of Semiotics. Contemporary Semiot- ics Branches, Fields of Research. The Relationship Between Semiotics and Other Sciences.

This chapter will present information on the development of semiotics as a scholarly discipline, will introduce the students to the premises and the main principles of its formation. This chapter aims to foster skills for the understanding and application of basic semiotics concepts, to explain the objectives and aims of semiotics, and to present the position of semiotics in the context of humanitarian studies.

The Definition of Semiotics

The term semiotics comes from the Greek words sēmeiōtike < sēmeíon , meaning sign or attribute. In 1764, Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728– 1777), a German mathematician and the creator of the idea of universal sign language, called semiotics the science of marking ideas and objects2. The Swiss linguist and the pioneer of semiotics, Ferdinando de Saussure (1857–1913), has defined semiotics as the science that studies the existence of signs in the society. Ameri- can philosophers and semiotics pioneers Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) and Charles Wil- liams Morris (1901–1979) have defined this discipline as the study of “signs in communication, in the exchange of information among and in individuals and other biological organisms”3.

In the Dictionary of Philosophy, semiotics is described as the discipline that studies the systems of signs by means of comparison, starting with simple systems of signalling and working up to natural language and formalised scientific language.

The Lithuanian Dictionary of International Words provides the following explanation: “semiotics (Fr. semiotique) 1. the science that studies signs and sign systems, i.e. natural and artificial languages as sign systems, from the point of view of semantics, syntax, and pragmatics; 2. in medicine symptomatology.”4

Moreover, here are some classic definitions of semiotics:

·· Semiotics is the study of studies; ·· Semiotics is the study of signs and sign systems; ·· Semiotics is the study of sign systems in the environment and in society; ·· Semiotics is the science that studies signs and their interpretive processes;

2Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 10. 3Ibid., p. 8. 4Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas / Sud. V. Vaitkevičiūtė.Vilnius: Žodynas, 2000, p. 462.

9 ·· Semiotics is a scientific discipline that studies sign systems, which preserve and transmit information, structure, and functionality. In addition to these canonical definitions, there are also several specific descriptions of semiotics:

·· Semiotics is the application of linguistic methods in the analysis of non–verbal objects (e.g. a semiotic analysis of a film); ·· Semiotics is the study of medical symptoms and their specific implications. The aforementioned definitions essentially build up on each other, leading to a laconic definition of the study of signs and sign systems, which is considered adequate, if defined in just that way – laconically.

“The Webster’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary defines semiotics as a philosophical theory that examines the functions of signs and symbols. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes semiotics as the study of signs and sign behaviour.”5

Algirdas Julius Greimas (1917–1992) is a Lithuanian semiotician, one of the main creators of semiotics theory, the founder of the Paris School of Semiotics, and considered one of the most popular contemporary semioticians. He has explained that semiotics studies that, which exists on both sides of signs and, by doing so, notes even more that semiotics studies signification specifically. According to N. Keršytė, Greimas constructed semiotics as a theory of signification, which aims to cover objects of signification that possess verbal and non–verbal expression.

“Sometimes, semiotics may be referred to as semiology, semeiotics, semantics, and signif- ics. The term glossematics (a name for linguistic theory and Deridian grammatology), coined by Hjelmslev, is closely related to semiotics.”6

“It is also important to mention that semiotics is not a branch of advertising and marketing. It is an independent science, which studies semiosis, the ability to create and to comprehend signs, and representation, the use of signs in the creation of messages and meaning.

Umberto Eco (1976) considers semiotics a science in the traditional sense. He bases this definition on the following five arguments:

1. it is an independent discipline;

2. it has a set of standardised methodological tools;

3. it is possible to form hypotheses in semiotics;

4. it is possible to generate forecasts in semiotics;

5Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 8. 6Ibid., p. 8.

10 5. semiotics conclusions can be used to change the present situation of the objective world.”7

The most revered researcher of the Lithuanian semiotic school of though, Kęstutis Nas- topka, defines semiotics “not as the canon, but rather as the organon, not as a list of end–results, but rather a continuous search.”8

The Object, Aim, and Objectives of Semiotics

Semiotics studies signs, various sign systems, which preserve and transmit information, structure, and functionality in the society, in the individual, and in their surroundings. All that is expressed among individuals either verbally or visually is called information. Information is always of symbolic nature and is expressed using signs.

The semiotic object is a sign and its function impacts aspects within all types of communication. Semiotics studies the expression of linguistic relations in various sign systems. Semi- otics aims:

·· to examine the premises for the creation and comprehension of signification; ·· to analyse the structural composition and transformation of meanings; ·· to identify the similarities of semiotic informational processes. ·· to understand and to analyse the specifics and change in the different branches of semiotics; ·· to improve the thinking of individuals, to broaden their perspective.

The objectives of semiotics are:

·· to compare, contrast, and summarise semiotics research results; ·· to analyse the expression of linguistic relations among different sign systems; ·· to search for opportunities for semiotics and contextual analyses to cooperate;

“Semiotics deals with the conditions and premises for the creation of meaning rather than the meaning of the linguistic text itself, or, in other words, with the process of semiosis, which covers both verbal and non–verbal structures. Semioticians do not analyse social, economic structural correlations with, for instance, cultural (including literary) or scholarly [correlations], but rather examines the dimension of meaning, with the help of which a certain kind of society exists.”9 All in all, one may conclude that the main objective of semiotics is the analysis of the meaning that the signs create.

Meaning is “the content or communication of words, sentences, or parts of text […], mean-

7Nevinskaitė L. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas, p.26, 29 [retrieved January 19th, 2014] from: http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Rekla- ma_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_galutinis.pdf. 8Nastopka K. Literatūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2010, p. 8. 9Šatkauskytė D. Tekstas, kontekstas ir istorija Algirdo Juliaus Greimo veikaluose, p. 11, 13 [retrieved January 19th, 2014] from: http://www. llti.lt/failai/Nr16_02_Satkauskyte.pdf.

11 ing appears from the signified and the signifier, as well as from the difference among signs, and not from what object the signs (also, word) indicate.”10 The story of meaning is the speaker’s visual (or, nowadays, the story of the creator of visuals), “the story of a relation between the language and the universe, the logos and the cosmos, of human and world.“11

The History of Semiotics

Semiotics, or a slight variation of the same term semeiotics, was “a branch of medicine that focused on symptoms and signs of illness” in Ancient Greece12. This definition still exists today: the description of symptoms in medicine is referred to as semiotics. One may find a hint of semiotics in the Middle Ages as well. Grammar, rhetoric, and logic of that time corresponds to what we now call syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

At the end of the 17th century and in the beginning of the 18th century, semiotics was being discussed in the works of two famous philosophers: John Locke (1632–1704), and G. W. von Lei- bniz (1646 –1716). “John Locke, an English philosopher, was the first person after the Greeks to begin using the term semiotics. […] It was defined as a doctrine of signs, a branch of science that studies the signs that the human brain uses to understand and to transmit information.”13

“European semiotics stems from the linguistics of F. de Saussure, [who explained semiotics as] the understanding of language (langue) as a conventional system of signs, while Amer- ican semiotics stems from C. S. Peirce’s logical and philosophical research, [which explained it as] the interrelation of the sign, its object and its interpretant.”14

Peirce was the first to develop a comprehensive set of theories for signs and their systems, which he called semiotics. He was also the first to widely use this term and to popularise it as well as to suggest other terms for this discipline. American semioticians (among them, C. S Pierce) chose various non–verbal sign systems (e.g. gestures, animal language) to serve as the research objects.

The Pioneers and Contemporary Researchers of Semiotics

Contemporary semiotics is relatively young as a discipline as its development was started in the beginning of the 20th century. The ground work for contemporary semiotics was established by the representative of European structuralism, Ferdinand de Saussure, American C. S. Peirce, Danish linguist L. T. Hjelmslev (1899–1965), linguist R. O. Jakobson (b. 1896), C. W. Morris, U. Eco, and, of course, Lithuanian semiotician and linguist A. J. Greimas. The most known semioticians and theorists of the 20th (2nd half) and 21st centuries are: Roland Barthes

10Prototipų teorija ir semantika [retrieved January 24th, 2014] from: http://www.kalbos.lt/zurnalai/17_numeris/02.pdf. 11Kalbos problema šiuolaikiniame teatre. Referento kazusas, p. 36 [retrieved January 25th, 2014] from: http://www.elibrary.lt/resursai/LMA/ Menotyra/M–35–3.pdf. 12Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 9. 13Ibid., p. 10. 14Nastopka K. Semiotika [retrieved January 17th, 2013] from: http://studijos.info/biblioteka/ziureti/semiotika–52606.html.

12 (1915–1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917–1992), Yuri Lotman (1922–1993), Christian Metz (1931– 1993), Umberto Eco, (b. 1932), and Julia Kristeva (b. 1941).

“In 1992, the A. J. Greimas Semiotics Studies and Research Centre was established in Vil- nius University. The centre hosts various conferences and seminars on semiotics and philosophy. The predominant theme in this centre is the culturological approach to semiotics. The format of the centre is reminiscent of the Paris School of Semiotics, to which A. J. Greimas belonged.”15

Contemporary Semiotics Branches, Fields of Research

There are two approaches to contemporary semiotics:

1. semiology or linguistic structuralism (this is the more prevalent perspective in Lithua- nia);

2. general semiotics or general theory of signs, to which visual semiotics is ascribed.

Other notable semiotics approaches are: functional semiotics and phenomenological semiotics. Moreover, there are several approaches that are currently undergoing development: biosemiotics (the study of the sign systems of living organisms), ethnosemiotics (semiotic analysis methods used in the areas of ethnography, ethnology, social psychology), figurative semiotics (the study of the representations of natural world shapes and figures found in texts), and computational semiotics (the study of signs in computer science). The methods of semiotics are also applied in musicology.

“Morris indicates three branches of semiotics: anthroposemiotics, zoosemiotics, and endo- semiotics. They study the signs that are used among human beings, among animals, and in organisms of technical systems respectively”16.

Furthermore, there is also a newly formed branch of semiotics called plastic semiotics, which analyses visual texts, i.e. interprets the personal language of the artists in photographs, paintings, fashion shows, architecture, and other works of art. It “enables individuals to thor- oughly discuss the different principles for expression (visual, verbal, aural), to determine their specific attributes, and to determine the correspondence. Moreover, the comparison of plastic and of other meaning level compositions reveals the specifics of the artistic language used and establishes objective criteria for the assessment of the status of an artistic piece.”17

As K. Nastopka points out, among the many texts that are analysed using the semiotics principles of A. J. Greimas, there are also the writings of authors from various nations, Evangelical parables, philosophical concepts, fairy tales, a poem by Marcelijus Martinaitis,

15Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 12. 16Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 8. 17Lidžiuvienė G. Apie vizualinę semiotiką // Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2006, p. 68.

13 visual works of art, and even culinary recipes. “Semiotics, as a way of thinking, covers all of the significant worlds18 and utilises language analysis instruments to describe any significant entirety.

The Relationship Between Semiotics and Other Sciences

Semiotics is the science that covers all of the aspects of the human world. By attempting to determine the process by which meaning is created, semiotics focuses on simple (among other types of) objects, such as street signs or interior design. These areas of research in semiotics are very diverse, covering communications, linguistics, art (i.e. film and photography, painting, music, architecture, among many others), mythology, advertising, and even mathematics. The relations between semiotics and various other disciples and branches of science indicate that signs are used by all scientists and academics. Linguistics, the study of natural languages, is by far the most closely related discipline to semiotics. However, semiotics is still considered the more general discipline than linguistics because it also focuses on artificial languages as well as on other sign systems (e.g. street signs, postage stamps, gestures, etc.).

Additionally, semiotics is closely related to philosophy (via cognitive problems), logic (via usage and meaning of signs), informatics and anthropology. The main tasks of semiotics are to determine invariants, the basic structures of complex phenomena, “to reveal the functional meaning and interrelationship of system elements”19, and to analyse verbal and visual structures based on the binary opposition principle.

Questions

1. What does semiotics study?

2. What are the aims and objectives of semiotics?

3. What are the main terms used in semiotics?

4. Who are the pioneers of semiotics? What contemporary semiotics researchers (semioticians) do you know?

5. What contemporary semiotics branches do you know? Which branch is visual semiotics ascribed to?

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Interdisciplinary Semiotics Format (Na- ture). It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

18Nastopka K. Literatūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2010, p. 20. 19Nastopka K. Semiotika [retrieved January 17th, 2013] from: http://studijos.info/biblioteka/ziureti/semiotika–52606.html.

14 Bibliography

1. Semiotics Encyclopaedia Online. http://www.semioticon.com/seo/index.html 2. Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Semiotics / T. Sebeok, ed. T.1–3. 1986 3. Joseph Ransdell. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds.htm 4. Chandler D. Semiotics for Beginners. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html 5. Michelucci P. Sites of Significance for Semiotics http://french.chass.utoronto.ca/as–sa/ EngSem3.html

15 16 Chapter 2

The Concept of Sign. The Symbol, Index, and Icon Triad. Codes. The Signification and Meaning of Signs, The Information that Signs Provide. The Motivation for Signs. Denota- tion and Connotation. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Synecdoche. The Functions of Signs.

This chapter will introduce definitions (formed by various experts) for signs (one of the main concepts in semiotics), will explain sign systems (as a set of signs that differ in one way or another), and will teach sign classification and will explain the stages for forming said categories. This chapter aims to foster skills for understanding semiotics as an instrument for acquiring knowledge, for reading signs for the proper use of said signs for the purpose of transferring information.

The Concept of Sign

Every individual lives in a world of signs, uses signs on a daily basis, and even becomes a set of signs themselves, which form certain meanings. Visual signs have become a pivotal part in the representational world to the modern day human being. To understand this representational world means to devote a lot of emotional energy towards it.

The sign is the main term used in semiotics. A sign can be any object, subject, or phenomenon that creates meaning. For instance, it can be a word, an image, a sound, a gesture, or anything of a similar nature. “Poinsot (St. John), a Portuguese thinker and philosopher, has examined the concept of sign, specifically its being, back in the 16th century. In his Tractatus de Signis, he stated that a sign is a relative being (my being expressed as matter and form). A sign depends on something else, i.e. on that, which it signifies. In other words, a sign is an intentional being.”120

F. de Saussure stated that a sign’s meaning is essentially dependent on its relation to other signs.”21 Between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, John Locke, a philosopher, and, more specifically, a rationalist, has begun to use the term sign to define the main unit of language – theword .

C. S. Peirce defines the term sign in the following way: “a sign, or a representamen, is that, which resembles something to someone in some way. It attracts the attention of the individual by creating an equivalent sign, or even a more elaborate sign, in the consciousness of the individual. I call this created sign the interpretante of the first sign. This sign represents its corresponding object. It does not represent its corresponding object in every way possible,

20Budrevičius A. Ar galima semiotiką pradėti nuo Aristotelio? Ženklo aiškinimas, grįstas hilomorfine esaties teorija // Logos. 2013. No. 74, p. 19 [retrieved January 18th, 2014]. from: http://www.litlogos.eu/L74/Logos_74_017_035_Budrevicius.pdf. 21Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 76.

17 but just in relation to a certain idea, which I sometimes refer to as the representamen base.”22

This seemingly long definition can be shortened and simplified, defining the concept of sign more specifically: a sign is that, which resembles something to someone in some way. Ac- cording to John Fiske, a scholar in visual culture, “a sign is something physical, understandable through our senses, it indicates something other than itself, and it depends on the user’s acknowledgement that it is a sign.”23

F. de Saussure and C. S. Peirce had different opinions about the concept of sign. “Peirce associated signs with logical thinking processes rather than with language expression. In his theory, the sign […] indicates other signs, while latter signs indicate other signs, and so on. In Peirce’s semiotics theory, the creator of signs itself belongs to the system of semiotics. There is no subject that would look at signs from the outside and would link them: the subject itself is a part of the chain of signs.”24

The expert “has [further] explained the idea of the sign based on […] the three universal category”25 system. According to this system of categories, all existing things are grouped into three categories: firstness or quality, secondness or reaction, and thirdness or representation. “According to Peirce, that, […] which needs no relation to anything else, is considered firstness. Secondness is that, which exists from the perspective of another thing. […] Third- ness is that, which establishes the relation between the firstness and the secondness. […] A sign is also the thirdness category”26 and it establishes the thirdness relation, which is called semiotic triangle (C. S. Peirce).

The Interpretant (sign meaning)

The Representamen The Object (sign medium) (a thing or the referent)

Illustration 1. Semiotics triangle.

Object (Referent) – the thing that is signified (that, which the sign signifies).

Interpretant – the signification of the sign (it was created by the sign, it may change de-

22Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 15. 23Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 59. 24Nastopka K. Literatūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2010, p. 63.64. 25Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 16. 26Ibid., p. 16.

18 pending on the user’s experience).

Representamen (Representation) – the medium for the sign (representation, measure, form, not necessarily material).

“According to Peirce, signs, what they indicate, and their users are the corners of the triangle [(Illustration 1)]. Each corner is closely related with the other two and can be understood as considering the other two only.”27 Despite the fact that Saussure’s and Peirce’s semiotics focused on different aspects (Saussure – linguistics, Peirce – philosophy), “they still agreed that the sign is most important when attempting to understand semiotics.”28

“Let us consider an example of a traffic light as a sign, based on S. Peirce’s sign structure model. The concept of stop the vehicle is comprised of a red light at the crossroad (the representamen), the stopping of the vehicle or the stopping vehicle (the object), and the idea that a red light indicates that the vehicle must stop (the interpretant).”29

A sign system is a set of various signs that are different in their attributes or rules on how to use said signs when transmitting information. The signification of the transmitted message, either textual or visual, does not alone depend on how the signs exist in it. It also depends on what combinations do these signs create.

Sign combinations are also considered signs and they are called composite signs. For instance, in natural languages, letters are considered signs, with the help of which speakers create composite signs, i.e. words and sentences. Any text that is written in a natural language, which is being used by individuals, is a composite sign. Visual messages are created in a similar respect.

27Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 59. 28Ibid., p. 59. 29Grinevičius Andrejus. Dailės tyrimo metodai kaip X–XII klasių mokinių meno istorijos pažinimą skatinantis veiksnys. Dailės istorijos edukologijos magistro darbas. VPU. Vilnius, 2007, p. 25 [retrieved March 27th, 2014]. from: http://vddb.library.lt/fedora/get/LT–eLABa–0001:E. 02~2007~D_20070816_175920–00754/DS.005.0.01.ETD.

19 Sign Systems

Natural Signs Visual Signs Conventional Signs Natural Signs

Visual art, dances, music, A stary sky, minerals, gestures animal footprints

Natural Languages Formal Languages Arbitrary Signs

Speaking, writing Algorythmic, informational, Notes, stave, formulae, special (e.g. mathematics, chess board numbering logic, chemistry), artificial (e.g. Esperanto) signs

Illustration 2. Sign systems.

Another example would be of simple objects – a comb and a pair of scissors, depicted on a signboard, attached to the side of a building. All of this expresses a composite message, which clearly indicates the function of this establishment for any individual, regardless of what languages the reader speaks.

The table (Illustration 2) indicates the main types of signs and the relations of sign systems (used in human interaction). Signs are categorised into visual, conventional, and natural in the presented table.

Visual Signs. Visual signs are the opposite of conventional signs: it is not, what it represents, although the external look of the sign is similar. For example: paintings or gestures.

Conventional Signs. Conventional signs are completely arbitrary signs, the expression (either verbal or visual) of which is different in every nation. These signs serve as a basis in the creation of natural and artificial languages as well as of arbitrary signing systems. For instance: colour codes, musical notes, staves, chess board numbering, among others.

In order to properly read and understand the signs, either verbal or visual, especially if the signs are not really motivated, i.e. if the object is signified symbolically only, it is important to know the conventions that are agreed upon by the users. Without these conventions or in the absence of an agreement among the users, signs are rendered senseless and there is risk that

20 said signs may be understood or decoded incorrectly.

Natural Signs. Natural signs signify natural and environmental phenomena, such as light- ning, thunder, extraterrestrial objects, among other things, which are known to humankind ever since the dawn of time.

The Symbol, Index, and Icon Triad. Codes

“Each sign depends on their respective object. First, if the sign reflects the attributes and characteristics of their respective object, the sign is called an icon. Second, if the sign is actually linked with the their respective object, then the sign is called an index. Third, and lastly, if the sign more or less guarantees the fact that it will be interpreted out of habit as denoting their respective object, then it will be called a symbol.”30

From a historical perspective, there are several ways to classify signs. Scholars suggested a sign classification method based on the use and on the semantics of a given sign, as shown in Illustration 3. Other suggested to classify signs into natural and artificial signs (campfire smoke – natural sign, letters or numbers – artificial signs). The most natural and most popular (in general sign theory) way to classify signs is the icon, index, and symbol triad.

Relation

Category Sign (in relation to Relation to the Relation to the itself, object interpretant as a representamen) 1. Firstness Quality sign Icon (picture) Rhema (word, term) Separate sign, mark, 2. Secondness Index (indicator) Dicent (sentence) attribute Argument 3. Thirdness General sign, type Symbol (e.g. logical conclusion)

Illustration 3. Peirce’s sign categories.

An icon is a direct sign or image that is characterised by the most possible similarity to the object that is being depicted (that, which is signified). Some examples of this would be a photograph, a picture, a sculpture, or a map.

An index is a sign (an indicator) that functions as an intermediary between the icon and the symbol. It indicates the relation with the object. Some examples of this would be smoke, the indicator of fire, gloves and hat, the indicator of coldness, a basketball, the ball, the indicator basketball, the game, or footprints in the sand, the index of a passer–by.

30Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 66.

21 A symbol is an arbitrary sign, which bears no resemblance to the actual object, but is agreed upon or determined in the rules to signify it. Some examples of this would be traffic light colours and their meaning, determined by agreement, as well as colours, letters, words, numbers, musical notes, street signs, and many more.

Illustration 4. Examples of indices, symbols, and icons.

J. Lotman explains symbols as not just signs in a specialised artificial language, used in disciplines like mathematics, chemistry, or physics. Symbols, such as wheels, triangles, cross- es, pentagrams and others, have come to us from Antiquity. Such symbols bear with them a relatively large cultural and historical potential, deep and sacred meanings, and are primarily concentrated on their expression.

Lotman continues to explain that symbols are sociocultural signs with ideas and the aforementioned deep meanings that can only be approached through intuition. Symbols hardly have adequate visual or verbal expression. A distinct attribute of any symbol is that it elicits a reaction not to the object that it symbolises, but to the meanings that are based on certain conventions.

“Symbols are considered polysemic and open to various interpretations. For instance, individuals only read the parts of the a message that they like. Thus, the meaning depends on

22 the interests of the individual.”31

Icons are based on the principles that constitutes a metaphor, while the index is based on metonymy. Icons and indices are often used in caricatures and in contemporary or pop–culture works of art. A sign can be constructed from several types. Most signs are combination of all three. A good example of this can be a traffic sign, like the one depicted in illustration 5.

Illustration 5. A traffic sign, indicating a crossroad.

“The red triangle in the sign is a symbol, which signifies a warning, according to the traffic rules.” The cross in the middle of the sign is a a combination of an icon and a symbol. It is iconic because its form is partially determined by how the actual object looks, but it is also a symbol, because we still need to know the traffic rules in order to recognise it as a crossroad, and not as a church or a hospital.

Professor Terence Hawkes explains that “the icon, index, and symbol are not three types of signs, but rather three forms of relation between the sign and the object. In any case, one of these relations dominates. Therefore, all signs have characteristics of icons, indices, and symbols. This kind of sign typology applies to analysis, e.g. visual strategies used in advertising.”32 It can be a very simple combination of icon, index, and symbol, or it can also be a complex combination, requiring a thorough analysis.

Codes

Code in semiotics is a rather broad concept. Codes, as an organised sign system, are used to explain phenomena in the sociocultural realm. “A set of signs that functions in a certain society is called a code. P. Ricoeur explains that ‘code is collective. […] Code exists in time as

31Černevičiūtė J. Kultūros transformacijos kūrybinėse industrijose: kaip veikia medijų kultūra // Santalka. Filosofija, komunikacija. T.19. 2011, p. 76. 32Dailėtyra: teorijos, metodai, praktikos: vadovėlis / Sud. G. Mickūnaitė. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2012, p. 318 [retrieved January 26th, 2014] from: http://issuu.com/mariusdirgela/docs/dailetyra/325.

23 a set of simultaneous elements. […] Code is anonymous and unintentional. […] Code is systematised and compulsory to certain language communities.’ This means that the creation and interpretation of signs depends on the traditions for interaction or on the codes. The meaning of the sign depends on the code, in which it is present as codes provide structure in which signs acquire meaning. To semiotically interpret an image or a piece of text means to link them to their corresponding code.”33

When conducting a semiotic analysis of verbal and visual texts, “code is used as a tool to link signs into systems of meaning, all according to the established rules.”34 Codes are understood by the community that uses them. Therefore, social communication measures (factors) are an important element to consider when researching codes.

Codes can be grouped into analogue and digital, presentational (presentable, through which non–verbal communication takes place, e.g. gestures, movements, etc.) and representational (representing), limited (simpler forms of art, e.g. disco dances, they do not require a lot of learning) and extensive (complex art forms, e.g. ballet) codes, broadcast and narrowcast codes, aesthetic and logical codes. Codes can also be categorised into natural and artificial. Natural codes include language, genetic and neurophysiological codes, while artificial codes include Morse code, Braille, digital codes, and more.

Sign systems form meaningful code. “This type of code has several common attributes: [First,] they are comprised of certain elements (sometimes just one), which an individual can choose. It is the paradigmatic dimension. These elements […] can be reconciled in accordance with an agreement or a set of rules. It is the syntagmatic dimension. [Second,] all codes express a meaning, whereby their elements are signs, which indicate something other than itself in various ways. [Third,] all codes depend on the agreement among the users and the common cultural framework. Codes and culture interact dynamically. [Four,] all codes serve a certain social or communicational function. [Lastly,] all codes can be transferred using appro- priate communications tools and / or channels.”35

By forming the nucleus, i.e. the essence, of each cultural experience, codes enable the individuals within a given society to understand their own social existence and to determine their place within the culture. “It is only through common codes that we feel and express belongingness to a culture. By using codes as an audience or as a source, we grow roots into our culture, support its vitality and existence. A culture is an active, dynamic, living organism only because its components – the members – are actively using its communicative codes.”36

33Grinevičius A. Dailės tyrimo metodai kaip X–XII klasių mokinių meno istorijos pažinimą skatinantis veiksnys. Dailės istorijos edukologijos magistro darbas. VPU. Vilnius, 2007, p. 26 [retrieved March 27th, 2014]. from: http://vddb.library.lt/fedora/get/LT–eLABa–0001:E.02~2007 ~D_20070816_175920–00754/DS.005.0.01.ETD. 34Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas.Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 30. 35Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 81–82. 36Ibid., p. 101.

24 The Signification and Meaning of Signs, The Information that Signs Provide

Signs unify the material form, content, signification, and meaning. Signs are also important because they are the direct link to the object as well as the coder of information about said object. Signs are significant (i.e. possessing signification) in a certain system only (e.g. to an English speaker, the Lithuanian word saulėlydis (tr. sunset) does not really mean anything) and only as much as they differ from other sign systems.

C. S. Peirce’s sign model has three parts to it: representamen, interpretant, and object. “Sign comprehension and recognition can sometimes be considered separate processes that follow each other: first, a sign is understood, and then it is recognised.”37 In other words, individuals first understand the meaning of a sign, then they recognise and assign them to a certain category.

This process can also go the other way around: first we recognise the sign, i.e. we understand where the sign is on the map, and then we understand it – get the meaning within its context. This kind of order “is based on the idea that all things concerning signification are usually simpler than the elements that concern knowledge. Signification and knowledge are considered the two sides of same coin – of the interpretation of signs.”38

Eric Landowski, a French semiotician, stated that “signification is never the result of a direct confrontation between an idea and reality. It always depends on the negotiations among several subjects. The most convenient way to understand signification is between subject practices, which we are dragged into on a daily basis. The research object is a practical semiotic situation indicating signification, which we assign to the existence of another, either present in front of us, perhaps next to us, or maybe even inside of us, and on which our own identity depends. [...] Signification is never immediately granted – it requires construction.”39 We ourselves determine the measures and the languages (visual or verbal) that we will use for the implementation of the idea to construct some signification.

The Meaning of Signs

By using signs, an individual first shows interest for their meaning and signification, rather than focusing on the sign as an object. “From morning till night and ever since the beginning of our lives, we are followed and surrounded by various meanings, as if they require our presence.”40

The role of meaning is especially discussed in humanitarian and social sciences as they

37Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 20. 38Ibid., p. 20, 22. 39Nastopka K. Literatūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2010, p. 72. 40Greimas, A. J. Struktūrinė semantika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2005, p. 35.

25 attempt to answer the question what do human behaviours and natural phenomena really mean? and how do cultural differences influence the understanding of said meanings? For instance, a single colour may have different meanings in different cultures. The colour white in Lithuania is a symbol of winter, while that same colour in China symbolises autumn. “Signs have multiple meanings and these meanings become known to us through context only. […] Despite all of this difference, signs share common ground: they constantly direct towards the aim (pragmatics), they are informative (semantics), and they are understandable due to their appearance (syntax).”41

A. J. Greimas, a Lithuanian semiotician, has devoted a lot of his attention to researching meanings. He wrote: “The human world can essentially be described as a world of meanings. The world can be called humanly as much as it actually means something.”42

Individuals who create or use already created signs and individuals who receive the message(s) that these signs carry have to understand their dual nature, their meaning, and their signification. Signification can be expressed in multiple realms: in the verbal (as a saying) of in the visual (as an image), either of which requires “comprehension (using the mind) through the use of the senses (feelings). All of this shapes our attitudes or an image of the world, which affects us and we feel, understand, consider, and speak, i.e. instil signification into various phenomena, as a result.”43

The meanings and signification of signs are interrelated and mutually important. In order to understand the signification of a sign, it is necessary to have knowledge that would enable individuals to understand the meaning of the sign. “Signification without knowledge can be considered an unconscious understanding (i.e. accepting information without awareness). The opportunities to compare this phenomenon has been recently justified by psychological research. This kind of understanding is sometimes the basis for how advertising works.”44

Greimas further notes that “one is naïvely surprised when they consider the situation of a human being, who is anywhere within the spectrum from not yet born to deceased, or whether it is day or night: these humans are living in the sea of meanings and messages that reach them at every blink of the eye and by various means.”45

Greimas does not seek to analyse the correlations between social or economic correlations with, for instance, cultural (including literary) or scholarly (correlations are included by Bourdieu’s suggested notion), but rather the “dimension of meaning, with the help of which one or another community exists.”46

41Duroy Rolf, Kerner Giinter. Menas kaip ženklas: semiotinis – sigmatinis metodas. In: Meno istorijos įvadas. Vilnius: Alma littera, 2002, p. 262. 42Greimas, A. J. Struktūrinė semantika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2005, p. 352. 43Kačerauskas T. Sensus hermeneutika: prasmė, jutimai, nuostata, protas, sakinys, supratimas // Logos. 2008. No. 57. p. 18 [retrieved Janu- ary 28th , 2014] from: http://litlogos.eu/L57/logos57_017_026_kacerauskas.pdf. 44Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 22. 45Greimas, A. J. Struktūrinė semantika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2005, p. 35. 46Šatkauskytė D. Tekstas, kontekstas ir istorija Algirdo Juliaus Greimo veikaluose, p. 13, 14 [retrieved January 19th, 2014] from: http://www.

26 The Motivation for Signs. Denotation and Connotation. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Synecdoche

Motivation is one of the most important attributes of any given sign. If signs are motivated, then their form of expression indicates a close relationship with the signified or the phenomenon – the denotatus. The most motivated signs are considered icons, the lesser motivated signs are indices, and the least motivated signs are arbitrary free signs such as signs in natural languages, symbols in mathematical logic, or a formed sign system among animals in captivity. There are also other signs that are more or less motivated within this spectrum, i.e. between signs with maximum motivation and zero motivation.

On the other hand, sign motivation can depend on elements other than its relation to the denotatus, for instance, on the system of signs that the sign belongs to. People’s names can also be considered signs that are free or not free. In the beginning, all names were locked in (not free), for instance, Aurora meant dawn or Victor meant victory. Various surnames are motivated signs. Warning signs, such as sirens, are examples of not free signs because they are motivated by a physical effect on an individual.

Denotation and Connotation

The meaning of a given sign is linked to the sign through denotation or connotation. “Whilst denotation could almost be described as obvious or common sense, as in ‘this is a photograph of two men talking and smiling’, connotation refers to the range of cultural, social or personal interpretations of a sign, image or word (two men in the photograph are brothers, in love, businessmen making a deal,etc.)”47

Denotation (Lat. denotatio – signification, marking) is the expression of the main meaning as an entirety of objects (denotati), which this word or phrase aims to name. In simpler terms, denotations indicate the obvious meaning of a sign. For instance, the denotation of the name Peter indicates all of the individuals, who are called Peter. Denotation is the first order signification.

Connotation – (Lat. notatio – marking) is the secondary meaning, for instance, the word storm refers to very strong winds, while the connotation of this may be to be enthusiastically received by an audience as in the phrase go down a storm. Connotation is the second order signification.

According to R. Barthes, connotation “describes an interaction that develops when a sign is mixed with the user’s feelings, emotion, and their cultural values.”48 Connotations are char- llti.lt/failai/Nr16_02_Satkauskyte.pdf. 47Noble Ian, Bestley Russel. Visual research. An introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. Switzerland: AVA publishing SA, 2005, p. 092. 48Fiske John. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 1998, p. 104 [retrieved February 24th, 2014] from: http://www.mediamen. lt/wp–content/uploads/JohnFiske_4–5sk_2.pdf.

27 acterised by a phenomena whereby the meaning of a certain sign does not stem from the sign itself, but from how it is used. “How the photograph is printed, in soft focus or grainy and black and white for example, will also generate interpretation and will influence how the reader understands the image. In the science or art of semiotics, denotation and connotation relate to the relationship between the signifier and the signified. […] The understanding that visual messages can be treated as open texts and that their connotation is based upon the interpretation of the reader on the basis of their class, gender and education is known as polysemi.”49 The images that one may see below are a range of signs that we recognise as denoting birds, but they also have individual connotations.

Illustration 6. Silhouettes that signify various shapes of birds.

“Barthes states that the difference between denotation and connotation is at least clear in photographs. Denotation is the mechanical reproduction of the object, at which a camera is directed. The connotation in this situation would be the investment that the individual has put into this entire process, the choices of what to include into the shot, how to focus the camera, lighting, angle, film, and many other factors. In other words, denotation would be that which is photographed, while the connotation is how it is photographed.”50

49Noble Ian, Bestley Russel. Visual research. An introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. Switzerland: AVA publishing SA, 2005, p. 092. 50Fiske John. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 1998, p. 104 [retrieved February 24th, 2014] from: http://www.mediamen. lt/wp–content/uploads/JohnFiske_4–5sk_2.pdf.

28 Metaphor, Metonymy, and Synecdoche

The terms metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche are important concepts in semiotics:

A metaphor (Gr. metaphora – transfer) is a figure of speech, a subtle comparison that resembles a comparison of actual objects or phenomena that are different elements, but have similar characteristics. Metaphors use a known and clear meaning to explain that, which is not known. Usually, these two meanings are not related at all, but in order to understand a hidden meaning or comparison, i.e. a new metaphor, it is necessary to make leap in imagination. For instance, the work that our brains do is sometimes compared to what a computer does.

A metonymy (Gr. metonymia – name change) is the exchange of one concept with another, based on the fact that the objects that these concepts denote are essentially related as a part of of some composition or entirety, as a cause or consequence, as an agent, and a result of a certain activity, or other ways. Metonymies are used as a means to express a generalised meaning through these interrelated elements.

For instance, in order to explain monarchy in more general terms, one may say the crown. Metaphors and metonymies are often used by advertising companies. A single visual sign can be both a metaphor and a metonymy. For instance, a woman, who is tidying up her home is a metonymy indicating chores. It is also a metaphor for a family that cares about cleanliness or for the comfort that a clean home provides.

29 Illustration 7. An advertisement for a cleaning product.

A synecdoche (Gr. synekdochē), is a type of metonymy (but separate from the cases that metonymies deal with), whereby a certain entirety is expressed as a part, or a part of it is expressed as an entirety. In other words, the more general meaning is expressed through a part of that same object or vice versa – a part is expressed through the entire object. For instance, a barrel of a gun would signify an armed individual, wheels or tyres would signify a motor vehicle, a president would signify authority, gold would signify wealth, and so on.

The Functions of Signs

The term function is used in almost all sciences and, hence, may have different meanings. Function is one of the cornerstone concepts in semiotics. The most common functions used are structural and communications functions. The main function of signs and their systems is the transmission of information, i.e. interaction and communication. In semiotics, there are several sign functions: communicative, cognitive, expressive, meta–semiotic, and aesthetic. The main function of a semiotic system is the communicative function.

According to semiotician Karl Bühler, there are three main communications functions: expressive, conative, and representation. It is possible to implement these functions in visual semiotics, if adequately executed. All of these three functions work together (at the same time). However, one of these is typically the dominant function. If “the expressive function

30 dominates, emotions are more emphasised. If the conative function dominates, the receiver of information is impacted more. If the representation function dominates, the thematic scope is more emphasised.”51

Linguist R. Jakobson has systematised sign functions through the use of a communications model.

Context (Referent) Message Sender Receiver (Addresser) (Addressee) Contact (Channel) Code

Illustration 8. Sign locations and communications functions, according to the R. Jakobson’s model.

By using the six communications factors, indicated in the illustration 8, R. Jakobson defines the six functions of verbal communication, which can also be incorporated into visual semiotics analysis. These functions are: emotive (expressive), conative (Lat. conatus – to attract), referential (cognitive), phatic (channel, it may be present in social networks, e.g the greeting how are you?), meta–lingual (referred to the actual language), and poetic (the message itself is the focus). The aforementioned functions as well as Karl Bühler’s three main communications functions are usually grouped together, but one of them is dominant. Others, as a result, become secondary. Communications functions indicate the ways in which signs are used.

Questions

1. Define the termsign .

2. Explain C. Peirce’s sign classification system.

3. Explain the terms sign meaning and signification.

4. Explain sign communications functions, based on R. Jakobson’s idea.

Exercise

Come up with examples for an icon, an index, and a symbol. Based on the definitions of an icon, an index, and a symbol, as established in the course handbook, explain why did you choose to attribute each sign to their corresponding sign groups.

51Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla. 1998, p. 37.

31 Exercise

In the table below, list examples of icons, which would, in your opinion, signify Lithuania’s identity.

Icons, which signify Lithuania’s identity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Exercise

Indicate the direct meanings, i.e. denotations, and the secondary meanings, i.e. connotations, of the three words listen below.

ROSE

HOUSE

32 HORSE

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Peirce’s Classification of Signs, Icons, Indices, and Symbols. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics. London and New York: Routledge, 2004, p. 105.

2. Chandler D. Semiotics for Beginners: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/ semiotic.html

3. Ponzio A. The Dialogic Nature of Signs. Part 1: http://semioticon.com/sio/files/ponzio/ ponzio3. Part 2: http://semioticon.com/sio/files/ponzio/ponzio4.pdf

4. Fiske J. Introduction to communication studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 41–56, 85–95. http://ymerleksi.wikispaces.com/file/view/Introduction_to_Com- munication_Studies.pdf

5. Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998.

33 34 Chapter 3

The Visual Semiotics Field of Research. The Concept of Text in Semiotics. Visuals as Se- miotics Texts. The Plastic Dimensions of Visual Semiotics. The Figurative Level of Visual Se- miotics.

This chapter will present information on visual semiotics, as theory for the identification and comprehension of visual signs, will introduce the students to text, as a semiotics concept denoting a set of signs. This chapter aims to foster skills for understanding the plastic dimensions and figurative levels within a visual text, as well as individual abilities concerning the analysis of visual messages from the perspective of semiotics.

The Visual Semiotics Field of Research

Visual semiotics or visual semiology are basic and general branches of semiotics. An art history teacher, who went by the name Felix Thürlemann (b. 1946), has once noted that “semiotics, though aims at comprehensiveness, branches out into smaller fields of semiotics, specifically visual, literary, and musical.”52

The essence of visual semiotics is the identification and comprehension of signification within visual signs and it focuses on the use of this theory in the implementation within specific sociocultural analyses as well as in analyses of the language of art. In other words, visual semiotics is not interested in the external information, which would concern the origins of an object or a phenomenon, and it does not consider the conditions or premises, which would be related to the author, their intentions, presented information or the relations between this situation and real situations, or similar aspects, that serve as a basis for the creation of a certain text (sculpture, dance, musical composition, poems, or similar). That is, by analysing meaning constructs, semiotics limits itself by “determining the internal meaning forms of the text.”53

Jurij Lotman (1922– 1993), a cultural historian and semiotician, also included non–verbal expressions (rituals, traditions, music) as well as symbolical (architecture, lyrics, abstract art) and iconic (figurative art, mimetic literature) systems into communications structures.

The main sources of semiotics theory are encapsulated in the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Williams Morris, and Ferdinando de Saussure. In their works, Peirce and Morris explained that “the output point is considered the concept of sign as the primary element of any semiotics system.”54 In this case, the basis of semiotic analysis is the isolated sign. Sau-

52Thürlemann F. Nuo vaizdo į erdvę. Apie semiotinę dailėtyrą. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1994, p. 11. 53Lidžiuvienė G. Apie vizualinę semiotiką // Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2006, p. 67. 54Lotman J. Kultūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2004, p. 3.

35 ssure, on the other hand, believes that the basis for semiotics is the “language and speech (text) paradox.”55 To put it in other words, it is the processes of communication (the exchange of messages between the sender (addresser) and the receiver (addressee) that are under analysis.

“There was an attempt to explain semiotics as the extension of linguistic methods to include elements, which were not covered by traditional linguistics. This view [...] was very clearly expressed by I. Revzin, [...] by suggesting the following definition: ‘the object of semiotics is any object, which can be described linguistically’.”56 Hence, the modern day science of signs is on the lookout for objects that are not necessarily within the scope of linguistics.

“Semiotics has been undergoing development for a couple of decades now and continues to do so, especially in locations such as France and Italy, and visual semiotics, as a result, has long become a very convenient tool for the analysis of art (of any period), design, advertising, architecture, theatre, and other artworks. In Lithuania, this kind of semiotics [...] is still making its first steps.”57

The Concept of Text in Semiotics

Semiotics has begun to gain popularity with the increased interest in text, which would enable individuals to interpret it as a code for different cultures or to use it as a communicative means for individual, interpersonal, and group interaction. The central research object of semiotics is text as a system of signs. A text can function in various material forms, it can be any object, e.g. a musical composition, a flag, a coat of arms, a painting, language, film, etc. The main elements of these material forms are signs, which are incorporated (arbitrarily and because of the way individuals think) into their corresponding cultural codes, where they function.

Texts, or sets of signs, are interpreted as a certain construct and its main function is to transmit information. Lotman called this construct the mechanism that forms signification. This construct has three functions:

1. communicative (text as a result, i.e. the addresser’s package to the addressee);

2. creative (information is not only transferred, but it is also the generator of new messages);

3. conservative (the text generates signification and condenses cultural identity).

According to Saussure, a semiotic text as a sign, which functions in three ways, thus determining three types of binary relation:

55Ibid., p. 3. 56Ibid., p. 3. 57Lidžiuvienė G. Apie vizualinę semiotiką // Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2006, p. 66.

36 1. semantics. It studies the meanings and signification of signs as well as the marking of objects and symbols. The type of relationship is sign–object.

2. syntax. It examines sign interrelations. This type of relationship is sign–sign.

3. pragmatics. It analyses human relations with the sign systems that they use. This type of relationship is sign–interpretor.

Nowadays, any chosen analysis object, phenomenon, or event can be considered text in semiotics. It can be “any significant ensemble, regardless of how it was created: a poem or a set of poems, sculptures, dances, symphonies, film, theatre plays, rituals, holidays, and even legal documents, everyday walks in the park, shopping, and recipes. In other words, it can be any constructive form containing meaning, either conscious or not. […] In semiotics, text is defined based on two principles: the principle of text immanence and the principle of text structure.”58

The principle of immanence means that the analysis is limited to immanent text only. The study of internal closed text meaning forms. Extratextual elements, such as biographical information about the author or historical information about the creation of the text, are not considered in this case.

The principle of structure means that the analysis concerns the meaning of a message and the way by which its existence is revealed. “The principle [itself] is tied in with the attitude towards and view of the meaning because structure is a way for meaning to exist in semiotics – understood signification is the result of the effect that is caused by difference” or, in other words, meaning is acquired from the difference that exists among elements. For example,variety gains meaning through singularity, clarity – through uncertainty, or flatness – through depth.

In semiotics, text “is understood as the entirety of meaning, which is comprised of the signified, the content–plan (comprehensible structures, via world–view), and the signifier, the expression–plan (structures known through the senses). The expression–plan (sensed structure) conveys the content–plan (the comprehensible structure).”59

According to Lotman, rules for text structure are essentially rules for cultural (as an entirety) structure. It is closely tied with the fact that the culture itself can be considered a set of messages, being constantly exchanged among the various participants, and also as a single message, which the collective I sends to itself. This kind of view draws up a picture of the human culture as a large example of auto–communication.

A complex semiotic visual and verbal text analysis of today’s information society allows one to understand the sociocultural system, its components, and the principles of interaction and functionality that govern said components.

58Ibid., p. 67. 59Ibid., p. 67.

37 Visuals as Semiotics Texts

Due to rapid technological advances, we, as a society, currently find ourselves in an era that is dominated by visual expression codes. Up until the mid–20th century, the main role was assumed by language because language was considered the basis for attaining knowledge, and that there were no ideas, nor reality, beyond language. It was held that language was the only and irreplaceable medium for ideas to be mediated, and that any reality could have only been understood or explained through language and though nothing else.

Today, this role is being taken over by visuals, thus becoming the primary model for understanding in the world. Of course, this turn to visualisation and focus on communication through visual language does not mean that verbal expression will be eliminated completely. Often times, visuals and words collaborate and interact in various messages, which result in certain forms of visual logs that have already become the norm and which characterise the media, advertising, and similar sectors as we know them today. A semiotic analysis of the visuals that bombard us via film, television, and publications can help us “to reveal and to compare the significations that are being formed through various languages and to determine a comprehensive interpretation.”60

The human civilisation (as we know it) would not exist without signs or their functioning systems. Humans are curious creatures: they always wanted to understand the world that they live in. They wanted to know the universe, nature, and culture. So, the 20th century raised the question: is language, being the most important and meaningful tool for communication, capable of expressing new and dynamic human experiences, which are moreover impacted by rapid technological advancements. Is it not true that visuals have become the real and main conveyors of experience? Perhaps it is exactly this, which pushes language away and takes its place – the visual culture, the basis of which is comprised of images, first recorded by the human eye, then with the help of technology. When looking for answers to these questions, it is important to analyse and to identify the micro–universe of both verbal and visual sign meanings.

“Humans are grounded to and, thus, always present on Earth. One of the most important expressions of this presence is language.”61 Semiotics studies language as one of the most important systems of linguistic signs, aims to scientifically explain the meanings of signs, the origins of signification, as well as the processes for understanding it. In other words, semiotics provides a theoretical basis for language.

“According to A. J. Greimas, language is a system of meanings, while meaning can be expressed in more than just words. It is possible to do so with movements, sounds, visuals, among many other things, all of which can be described semiotically. In the case of artwork

60Ibid., p. 67. 61Tučkutė D. Kino meno interpretavimo filosofinės prielaidos: socialinių mokslų magistro darbas. VU. Vilnius, 2011 [retrieved January th27 , 2014] from: http://vddb.laba.lt/fedora/get/LT–eLABa–0001:E.02~2011~D_20110627_143502–63490/DS.005.0.01.ETD.

38 that is capable of artistic expression, the artistic articulation and the principles of composition involved in the works of art are the most important conveyors of meaning within the entire process.”62 Literary, musical, and visual works of art are read, analysed, and expressed depending on the skills that we possess.

The Plastic Dimensions of Visual Semiotics

Denis Diderot, a French philosopher and art critic of the Enlightenment era, at one moment began to visit the art workshops of that time and “has found another way of talking about painting. The aim was not to identify the depicted object and to interpret (or to figure out) what the artist wanted to say, but rather what the artist wanted to do and how he said (as in, expressed) it, judging by the marks that the brushes have left.”63 Therefore, it can be stated that the task of visual semiotics is to analyse figurative (recognisable objects from the world around us) and plastic (tools for plastic expression: lines, planes, volumes, colours, lighting, shadows) language models, or, “in other words, to create a set of instruments which would enable individuals to express how plasticity and figurativeness would participate in the overall process of meaning creation.”64

Visual plastic semiotics principles were first formulated by A. J. Greimas in 1978, in his article Figuratyvinė semiotika ir plastinė semiotika (tr. Figurative semiotics and plastic semiotics). Jean– Marie Floch’s Petites mythologies de l’oeil et de l’esprit (1985) discusses plastic semiotics: “Plastic semiotics analyses that, which the artists and art historians consider having sensual attributes. […] Thus, plastic semiotics is the search for sensual logic, found in photographs, paintings, post- ers, or even clothing. It is a specific kind of search, which refuses to see works of art simply being reduced to their meaning until something is identified or given a name in them.”65 By defining a plastic dimension, the focus is primarily directed at the plastic aspects of the analysed text: topology, chromatic and eidetic components, rhythms, contrasts and factures.

·· Topology (compositional placement of elements in space) serves a double function: it distributes the entirety of the text into discretionary parts and indicates the directions in which the text was distributed (up, down, left, right, etc.). ·· Chromatic (colour relations, their contrasts, tones) and eidetic components. The function of eidetic components (lines and contours) are to isolate and to divide, while chromatic components (filled in spaces) individualise and integrate. Chromatic and eidetic components form contrasts and create rhythm. Contrast and rhythm are important plastic articulation aspects and they highlight the relations among elements of meaning in different text plans. These relations are based on common

62Lidžiuvienė G. Apie vizualinę semiotiką // Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2006, p. 65, 66. 63Ibid., p. 67. 64Ibid., p. 68. 65Žemaitytė G. Plastinės semiotikos etiudas: statiško vaizdo dinamizmas Vytauto Mačernio vizijose // Colloquia. 2011. No. 27, p. 15 [retrieved January 27th, 2014] from: http://www.llti.lt/failai/str_G_Zemaityte(14–26).pdf.

39 and specific distinctive attributes, this way directing the interpretation of the text. Factures (materiality). On the one hand, facture contrasts create particular meaningful effects within the text. On the other hand, the nature of a facture can be directly related to speaker’s situation and to show their footprints.

The aforementioned plastic aspects enable semiotic analyses of various artistic texts, or, simply put, to speak of works of art in the other way that Denis Diderot has noted: to try to determine that, which the artist intended to do and how the artist said it. Plastic level analysis aims to answer the question of how is it visualised? All visual texts have a plastic dimension.

The Figurative Level of Visual Semiotics

The idea of figurative dialogue about art is to reveal the processes of meaning that take place in art and to show that the thing, which is depicted in a certain work of art, conveys a specific meaning, “and no other meaning because it is expressed specifically this way and not the other way around. To put it in simpler terms, the aim is to show that the meaning within the analysed work of art is directly dependant on how it was composed.”66

Unlike with plastic dimensions, visual texts may not necessarily have a figurative level. The figurative level is a part of the signified (content–plan) because the content of the text is manifested in the arrangement of certain figures (shapes). Figure semiotics is the representation of the objects that surround us. These representations are sensual equivalents (sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste), understandable within the empirical reality, and are not dependent on any tools that are used for expression.

Figures do not have to be visual. They can also be verbal, aural, and tactile. “Sensually understandable object attributes may lead to aesthesis, which is the direct comprehension of signification or even a certain moment of completeness.”67 Visual text figures are particular in their nature from the point of view of verbal texts because visual text figures directly relate to the expression–plan. For example, the verbal text figure dog is comprised of the pronoun it, the determiner that, nouns animal, fur–ball, adjectives furry, loyal, and so on.

This is not possible in visual texts because they depict specific figures, which are in the state of synthesis with their formal expression. Figures may be of varying density, depending on their composition, Normal density figures have relatively recognisable attributes, which allow said figures to be interpreted as a representation of objects that surround us. “The denser the figure is, the more realistic the representation will be, and vice–versa: the smaller the number of recognisable elements constituting a single figure, the more abstract it becomes.”68

66Lidžiuvienė G. Apie vizualinę semiotiką // Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla. 2006, p. 69. 67Žemaitytė G. Plastinės semiotikos etiudas: statiško vaizdo dinamizmas Vytauto Mačernio vizijose. Colloquia. 2011. No. 27, p. 18 [retrieved January 27th, 2014] from: http://www.llti.lt/failai/str_G_Zemaityte(14–26).pdf. 68Lidžiuvienė G. Apie vizualinę semiotiką // Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla. 2006, p. 69.

40 The purpose of a figurative visual text analysis is to describe the visual signs that make up the text, i.e. to identify the depicted figures, to discuss the relationships among them (their differences and similarities) and the specific arrangement that determines the specificity of a certain text or work of art. A figurative analysis aims to answer the questionwhat is depicted? It is important to note that the scope of figurative analysis only includes the information that is implied by the figures of the text and the information that is considered relevant in it, all due to the semiotics principle of immanence.

By implementing different art analysis methods, we are presented with the opportunity to understand the dimensions of the meanings within a multi–layered work of art.

Questions

1. What essential question does visual semiotics seek to answer?

2. What non–verbal expressions as well as symbolic and iconic systems were attributed to communications structures by J. Lotman?

3. How do you understand text in semiotics and what are its main functions, according to J. Lotman?

Exercises

Describe and compare the immanent and structure principles of analysis. Explain what concepts plastic dimensions and figurative levels. Describe the implementation of semiotic ideas in visual text analyses.

Recommended topic for individual practical work: the Aspects of Figurative and Plastic Visual Text. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Crow D. Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts. UK: Ava Pub Sa , 2010 2. Gorny E. Three approaches. In: What is semiotics http://www.zhurnal.ru/staff/gorny/english/semiotic.htm 3. Gillian R. Semiology: Laying Bare the Prejudices beneath the Smooth Surface of the Beautiful. In: Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materi- als. London: SAGE, 2007, p. 74–106. 4. Greimas A. J. Figurative semiotics and the semiotics of the plastic arts. New Literary His- tory 20(3). 1989. p. 627–649.

41 42 Chapter 4

Social Semiotics. The Study Object of Visual Social Semiotics. Visual Signs in the Socio- cultural Environment. The Development of and Changes in the Relationship between the Sign and the Referent.

In this chapter, the reader will be introduced to the main objectives of social semiotics, will focus on the domination of visual signs and texts within the sociocultural realm. This chapter aims to foster skills for understanding how human beings use signs within the context of interpersonal and institutional power relations for the purpose of achieving objectives. Moreover, this chapter aims to foster the skills for the analysis of the development and changes occurring in the relationship between visual signs and referents.

Social Semiotics

Social semiotics (also, sociosemiotics) is a new and modern branch of semiotics. It is an interdisciplinary field of scientific study that aims to explain how individuals use signs for interpersonal communication and for communication within their community as well as how the signs are used and how the meaning systems, formed by said signs, bear impact on social processes. Visible social facts, e.g. actions that we can see, events, which we can remember, and information that we gather, are all signs.

According to Theo van Leeuwen, a social sciences professor, the essential question that sociosemiotics aims to answer is how “humans use semiotic resources for the creation and interpretation (in specific social situations and practices) of communications artefacts and events.”69 The author of this handbook explains that semiotic resources, actions and artefacts refer to that, which individuals use in communication, e.g. architecture, advertising objects, computer software, visual arts, verbal texts, events that we remember, information that we gather, among other things.

This branch of traditional semiotics (kin to sciences such as cultural anthropology, sociology, and psychology) aims to determine not what signs and their systems mean (that is the aim of formal semiotics), but rather how and for what purpose are aims used within our im- mediate context, and how the use of semiotic resources changes over time. Social semiotics is the structural analysis of everyday life.

The main experts in the field of social semiotics are M. A. K. Halliday, R. Hasan, J. R. Martin, J. L. Lemke, G. Kress, R. Hodge, T. van Leeuwen, P. Thibault, T. Threadgold, L. M. O’ Toole.

69Dailėtyra: teorijos, metodai, praktikos / Sud. G. Mickūnaitė. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2012, p. 324 [retrieved February 4th, 2014] from: http:// issuu.com/mariusdirgela/docs/dailetyra/325.

43 Three important principles have formed within semiotics systems (e.g. linguistic or visual analysis):

1. Individuals understand the world through signs. A sign as such represents a certain object, when the latter is absent. Signs link to a concept that further links to the reality of the world and allows it to be understood in simpler terms, i.e. opposite the chaos, fragility, and instability of the world.

According to Daniel Chandler, a British semiotician, the existence of the objects and / or events that surround us is understood as the intercommunication of signs. We see only that, which sign systems allow us to see. According to semioticians, signs and their signifieds are closely tied due to arbitrary agreements. Humans, with the help of various media and by communicating through signs that are generally accepted within a given society and time– proven, do not usually think about the naturalness of such interaction. It would most probably be impossible to imagine, let alone use, any other method for interaction.

2. Sign meanings are created by humans and they do not exist without humans or without their sociocultural environment. Signs have different meanings in different social and cultural contexts. Meanings may vary significantly (e.g. as in different languages), but they may also be very similar (e.g. different accents of the same language, like English in the United Kingdom and English in Spain). Differences in semiotic systems bear significant -im pact in situations where individuals are transferring information to a large audience (e.g. as lecturers do during lectures or as authors do in book presentations).

3. The choice to use one specific sign always forms the opportunities for other variants of the sign to be formed. According to J. L. Lemke, the question what if? is quite relevant in the field of linguistics (for instance, how is it possible to use different words to create meanings, but for the sentence to remain the same?) and the field of visual arts (for example, what other colours can one use for a detail within a painting, so that it would denote a different meaning but would remain the same detail?) The possibility for members of communications processes (i.e. us) to choose semiotic resources stimulates curiosity and encourages the search for unconventional ways of using signs and, thus, influencing the change in meaning.

Sociosemiotics is interested in how human beings use signs within the context of interpersonal and institutional power relations for the purpose of achieving objectives. This is the essential objective of social semiotics because semiotic systems are able to form social relations and even society itself. As Theo van Leeuwen once stated, “from the point of view of social semiotics, rules exist, but humans are the ones creating and changing them. Hence, advocates of this theory are also interested in how humans regulate the use of semiotic resources: create, apply, and rethink rules.”70 Semiotic resources are used in the social context, so they are governed by law, tradition, and by arbitrary norms. “As an example, through the

70Ibid., p. 325.

44 ages, copying the works of true masters has been a method for beginning artists to learn how to use certain visual resources.”71

Sociosemiotics is applied in the analysis of socially–engaged modern works of art and of systems of meaning in various social and cultural practices.

The Study Object of Visual Social Semiotics

Visual social semiotics is a relatively new field of study, as it appeared in 1990. It is being developed as a result of influence coming from the intersection of various research, including the fields of study such as social philosophy, visual sociology, media culture and some other. “Visual semiotics artificially constructs language for these two types of macro–semiotics, which serves as an opposite to natural languages and worlds, in which our humanly existence has placed us, regardless of our will.”72 This type of semiotics analyses the constructive aspects of social images, studies the current visual communications media (television, internet, etc.), various visual practices in the sociocultural realm, examines static and dynamic images, gesticulation, body language, facial expressions, and some other elements as signs that generate meanings and which are a part of the communications processes. Images in visual social semiotics become the essential measure for producing signification, while the research object of this signification is the production, spreading, and usage of said images. Roman Jakobson has noted that spacial dimensions are more important for visual signs, while time is a significant element with verbal signs.

Visual social semiotics, as a discipline that studies visual signs and communication through said signs, is very closely related to social human behaviours. In principle, “all sight [as an action] is a social action.”73 As G. Kress and T. van Leeuwen point out, social semiotics aims to analyse and to identify how human beings create signs and how information is exchanged with the help of these signs within a concrete social environment. This environment may be close friends or family, or a micro–institution, where the signification of ideas and objects (using signs) is based on arbitrary principles. It may also be an environment, where sign systems are created and function in accordance with the established conventions, common societal agreement, or certain rules of the institution.

According to F. Thürlemann, the processes for creating meaning for signs are common to all human beings and occur through the same elementary mechanism. Visual social semiotics is the creation and use of visual signs for communications purposes within a given society. It is a multi–modal process that undergoes perpetual change. Therefore, it is rather difficult to record this process by implementing historically formed and proven formal (i.e. linguistic) semiotics approaches.

71Ibid., p. 325. 72Greimas A. J. Figuratyvinė semiotika ir plastinė semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2006. No. 23, p. 73. 73Kačerauskas T. Mąstymas, žiūra, vaizdijimas: egzistencinės sąveikos. FilosoFija. Sociologija. T. 21. No. 1, 2010, p. 17 [retrieved February 4th, 2014] from: http://www.lmaleidykla.lt/publ/0235–7186/2010/1/11–19.pdf.

45 Visual Signs in the Sociocultural Environment

Back in the 5th century B.C., Aristotle has mentioned that human beings use the senses to understand their environment. According to him, the most informative of all of the senses is sight. Nowadays, concepts such as to look or to see are synonyms to the concepts to study and to analyse. According to E. J. T. Mitchell, one of the most significant theoreticians of visual culture, during the last decades within the 20th century, the foci within humanitarian studies, art practices, or the sociocultural realm in general, have shifted towards visuality. Visuals and images, often the ones that were generated using technologies, have become one of the most prime ways to comprehension and expression in modern life. Richard Howell, a researcher of visual culture, states that new media in the realm of art and culture are working the same way and create the same semantic significations, as do traditional visual art. How- ever, the difference is the methods of execution and presentation.

According to Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), a Canadian scholar, communications technologies theoretician, and by some considered the prophet of electronic communications, the alphabet has signified the visual component as the main one in the world, by bringing together other aural parts of the word into this form. These forms express special gestures and articulate poses that are inevitably no longer considered a part of the written realm. Visual culture (photography, film, and other similar mediums) has become the basic mode for the existence of the contemporary social environment. “Effectiveness–wise, visual signs and symbols greatly surpass sign types and systems. […] Visualisation seeks generalisation and symbolism, which eliminates any signification of individuality.”74

Why have visuals, the purposeful representation of humans, objects, or phenomena, become the inexhaustible source for semiotic research? This question may perhaps be answered by a social–informational development analysis of an advertisement because advertisements are an influential factor in the formation of a contemporary global society. “Viewers cannot directly respond to the news messages that are broadcast over television. […] Text is a reference, just like visual signs (such as those that can be found in a train station), and they do not tolerate individual responses or ideas, but only obedience.”75

Advertising, either visual or verbal, is understood as a message – a reference. These references petition to purchase or to continue purchasing, to consume, to use, etc. An advertisement is a language that can be understood by everyone. Thus, there should be no surprise about the statement that advertisements are the medium that attempts to reflect the spirit of the present time, aggressively taking over the most popular means of communication.

As mass media communications technologies are becoming more widespread, individuals more often run into semiotic representations of goods rather than the actual goods them-

74Meškys K. Kultūra kaip žinia. Nuo ženklo iki teksto. Vilnius: Ciklonas, 2007, p. 274. 75Ibid., p. 274.

46 selves. J. Fiske explains that popular visual culture functions on the level of the everyday reality. It is a culture that is aimed at the masses. Visual media, such as photography, film, and television, allures us to run away from personal opinions and the individual perspective into a complicated and integral, commonly understood and unconditionally accepted world of icons. All of this is creating a continuous system of social behaviour, even to the level of en- compassing our own personal attitudes about ourselves, without us even noticing this.

The post–industrial consumer society, overwhelmed with information, is currently communicating within the symbolical realm, where visual signs play the most important role. This shift towards visuality was influenced by the discovery of photography in 1893. A photograph can be called an object that is made up of layers. Such a photographic characteristic, multi- layeredness, provides the basis for individuals to consider it a tool for analysis, with the help of which it is possible to answer questions concerning history, identity, memory, and many others. Because of photography, it is now possible to conduct a comprehensive analysis of anthropological events and phenomena.

In the 1930s, the appearance of a new visual language – the film – has lead the people to consider it a language of forms that were put into visuals. The current reality renders the screen culture an important factor, which is capable of shaping the way societies think and see the world. Screen magic is creating a new kind of mythology – one that verifies and takes takes on the role of personal human behaviour and life stereotypes. Television can be interpreted as the turn of visual signs towards a rather liberal way of communication. The images that individuals see on their television screens most often do not require as much brain power as regular text would. To understand an image on the screen, one does not even have to pay a lot of attention to details, without looking into the deeper encoded meanings. Individuals, depending on their level of understanding, may come their own conclusions regarding the presented visuals. “From the view of visual culture, each image is interesting, informative, and possesses multiple meanings. This includes anything from local communities [and] [...] subcultural groups to the best of my works. From this perspective, i.e. from the perspective of post–modernism, every visual sign becomes important […] and all of them can be objects of research.”76

Each culture determines its boundaries for sight and visual presentation and its own di- alectics for social perspective, which is also somewhat governed by the principle of visibili- ty / invisibility. Established using different conventions, this principle differentiates between that, which is presented and visible in the public realm from that, which is not provided with this opportunity.

The invisible zones in today’s visual culture are rather vast because everything that does not conform to the established standards of the society is automatically eliminated from pres-

76Musneckienė E. Vizualinės kultūros diskursas rengiant dailės pedagogus postmodernios edukacinės paradigmos kontekste: social.m.dr. disertacija. ŠU. Šiauliai, 2007.

47 entation within the public realm. Everything that is ugly, old, shabby, provincial, or anything similar, is rejected and ignored. In the same way, invisible is that, which causes significant or serious social, political, economic, spiritual life problems – that, which humans consider the actual reality of humanity and society.

The Development of and Changes in the Relationship between the Sign and the Referent

The present sociocultural situation is undergoing intensive change, which has an impact on the rules for scientific, technical, and cultural activity. In this context, the process whereby societies become global communities is lead with active discussions on various topics and analyses of the meaning behind visual culture as well as of its position on the new value scale of the information society.

“The contemporary visual culture, stimulated by the rapid advancement and development of technologies, is comprised of various visual expressions: signs, logotypes, architecture, design, advertising, film, television programmes, news media, video and digital imaging, as well as various forms of art. Visual culture is forming a style, aesthetic. and moral values that unify the current society and model the way it views the world. In a world that is taken over by global processes, visual culture seeks to reveal cultural values and norms that dominate the visual society.”77

The spread of the visual culture as we understand it today is very closely related to societal integration into the interactive network, whereby the written, the verbal, the aural, and the visual forms of human interaction all come into a single system. Visuals, visual signs, and the understanding of their essential meanings and signification codes play the essential role in this process. Visuals in popular culture have a special attribute. Nowadays, creators and consumers are, more or less, concerned with the outside rather than the contents, concerned with the imaginative function, dynamic or intensive experience rather than the search for contemplative meanings or the fostering of competencies that enable individuals to understand the meanings that signs create.

“Consumer and popular culture, post–modernism and the market are closely related phenomena. The successful development of television (as a fundamental form of business) has shown that the essential activity of the consumer culture, i.e. visual advertising, is already in front of them. Television is becoming the most important producer of visual advertising by focusing on how visuals are used in the production of trademarks or marked trade (i.e. goods as signs). Commercial manipulation using imagery is done through advertising, the news media and various galleries, everyday urban life plays and shows.”78

77Žukauskienė O. Žiūros antropologija: apie kasdienybę ir ekranų kultūrą // Logos. 2010. No. 63, p. 166 [retrieved February 7th, 2014] from: http://litlogos.eu/L63/Logos_63_165_173_Zukauskiene.pdf. 78Černevičiūtė J. Kūnas vartojimo kultūroje: postmodernizmas, vartojimas, kūnas, kaip prekė // www.marksistai.lt [retrieved February 7th, 2014] from: http://www.marksistai.lt/skaityti/jurate–cerneviciute–kunas–vartojimo–kulturoje–postmodernizmas–vartojimas–kunas–kaip– preke.

48 Sociocultural and economical changes as well as technological advancement also require change from humanity. A necessity arises for us to change lifestyles, the way we think, and the way we sensually understand objects and phenomena. Nowadays, visuality is not understood as a secondary dimension in cultural practices, nor is it understood as a special good or occurrence, exclusive to art academies, galleries, or art studios, specifically given to the most elite. It is quite the opposite, actually. Interaction that is based in the synthesis of various media creates the consumer or popular culture, which would be understood and accepted by the vast majority of a given society.

Visual signs are used to understand very different aspects of the visible world. Our surroundings, the entire external world, is taken in, reviewed, converted, and often retransmit- ted using symbolic imaging mechanism.

According to Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007), all that we currently see around us, specifically an excess of visuals, is not an imitation, not the multiplication of images, and not a parody of the currently existing world, but rather a creation and presentation of certain visual signs in place of reality. “Baudrillard’s critique, first of all, shifts the focus onto the problem of the reality of a given image. His discussions on the media’s relationship with the society indicate a crisis in reality, which is caused by the domination of chronological signs, especially visual ones. The reign of signs and images kills reality – the traditional representation whereby the referent, existing in reality, becomes impossible. This entire system of reality becomes a ‘sim- ulacrum, an element that never turns back into something real, but rather into itself only, as if acting in an endless circle that bears no reference or circumference.’ The act of simulation is opposite to representation and it flips the relation between the sign and reality upside down. Thus, when in the modern society, a sign was equated to reality, now it is becoming the primary source / referent.”79

A hyper–reality is being formed, which is isolated from human imagination. It seeks to make the surrounding reality and its image the same thing. This is exactly what hyper–reality seeks to do: to destroy the line that separates reality and its mirroring image, consequently leaving a space for multiple copies of the same object or phenomenon to exist. This way, the primary world for society becomes not the world that we live in or the world that the media is presenting, but rather a simulated, media–constructed reality, where images usurp the imagination and the understanding of the viewer in a direct and quick manner. If a sign loses its value, a portion of its meaning is lost as well. It is further diminished, if there is a lack of a referent. By eliminating the deeper meaning of a sign, it is only possible to examine the surface layers of an image.

79Michelkevičius V. Po fotografijos // www.photography.lt [retrieved February 10th, 2014]. from: http://www.photography.lt/lt.php/Metras- tis?met=17&page=79.

49 Questions

1. What does social semiotics seek to unravel?

2. What are the tree principles of semiotic analysis systems?

3. What is the research object of visual social semiotics? Provide examples.

4. Why did visuals become the inexhaustible source for semiotic research?

5. How do you understand the boundaries of sight and visual presentation in today’s sociocultural environment? Provide examples.

6. Describe the position of the individual, as a creator and interpreter of media–text signs in today’s sociocultural situation.

Exercise

Select an object (a work of architecture, an object of advertisement, a piece of computer software, a visual work of art, etc.) and briefly present it (a concise characterisation of the selected object). Describe the social context of the chosen object and explain the changes in the sociocultural situation as well as the interpreter. Analyse the conditions that determined certain changes. Justify your statements with examples.

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Sociosemiotics – the Paradigm of the Analysis of Visuality. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Van Leeuwen T. Introducing Social Semiotics. Psychology Press, 2005. 2. Handbook of Visual Analysis. Leeuwen T., Jewitt C. London: SAGE, 2006, p. 134–156. 3. Harrison C. Understanding how still images make meaning. Technical COMMUNICATION 59 Volume 50, Number 1, February 2003, p. 46–60. 4. Howard R. Relational Art as Social Semiotic. In: Academia.edu [retrieved January 17th, 2014]. from: http://swanseametro.academia.edu/HowardRiley/Papers/1107254/Relation- al_Art_as_Social_Semiotic.

50 Culture as an anti-individual unit is different from the lower level of anti-individual units (the ant colony type) in that if it becomes a part of an entirety, this separate individuality does not cease to be an entirety itself

J. Lotman

51 Chapter 5

Semiotics of Culture. Visual Messages in Photography, Film, and Television. Aspects of Visual Communication in Advertising, Design, and Architecture

This chapter will present information on culture as a coded system, which organises our understanding based on semantic models, and will introduce the students to the semiotics of culture, which is becoming a qualitative dimension in the societal life of an individual.

This chapter aims to foster skills, which would enable students to critically rethink visual messages, their components, and functionality principles. Moreover, students will be taught to individually analyse visual messages in photography, film, and television, as well as to identify the aspects of visual communication in advertising, design, and architecture.

Semiotics of Culture

Culture is a system for creating and transferring ideas and values from one generation to another, which only applies to human societies, which is distinctive and extraordinary, which is constantly changing over the course of its dynamic history, and which is a fundamental signifier of human existence.

Culture may also be defines as “a system of values that covers all that is created by the human mind, either in the material or the spiritual realm, including faith, mythology, traditions, knowledge, science, arts, morality, ethics norms, various forms of education, law, human habits, behaviours, relationships, and the material world, created through human action. […] Culture is a the field that defines and formulates the lifestyles of individuals within a given society. It is a qualitative dimension that transcends everyday life, artistic expression, self–actualisation in activities, politics, and economy, education, and all of the different fields of human activity.”80

The Dictionary of Semiotics explains the concept of culture in the following way: “Gener- ally, the term culture designates the sum total of knowledge, attitudes, and values, which inform a society or characterize an individual. In this sense, culture is the product of human achievements and directly related to the human power of transformation. The arts belong to culture, as do the products of thought in general or, for that matter, anything produced by human beings. Semiotic theory contrasts the concept of culture with that of nature. Thus when talking about eating habits in the sixteenth century, references to raw meat, fresh blood, or killing animals would fall in the category of nature, while allusions to cooking, recipes or ta-

80Bieliauskienė–Aleknaitė R. Sociologija ir socialinė politika // Socialinis darbas. 2008. No. 7(2), p. 6.

52 ble manners would be categorized as cultural behaviour. According to anthropologist Claude Levi–Strauss, semiotics posits that the opposing couple nature / culture, articulates the semantic category social life whereas the couple life / death characterizes the universe of the individual.”81

Culture can be described as a coded system, which organises our understanding based on semantic models (that study sign meanings and signification). Culture selectively picks out and systematises information about the outside world. In semiotics, culture is understood as a system of signs, which functions as an intermediary between individuals and their surroundings. As a science, culture is inherent in the concept of sign because the livelihood of civilisation and human mental and creative actions are impossible without signs and their systems.

As J. Lotman indicates, culture is collective memory and collective intellect, the mechanism for the preservation, transmission, and creation of group messages (texts). Signs and sign systems are the components of this mechanism. The entirety of mechanisms forms the anti–individual (connecting different languages and individualities into a single cognitive unit) intellect – the culture. “Culture as an anti–individual unit is different from the lower level of anti–individual units (the ant colony type) in that, if it becomes a part of an entirety, this separate individuality does not cease to be an entirety itself. Therefore, these parts are not autonomous and they are not tied in such relations. These parts may even acquire some dramatic aspects every time said relations presuppose tension and collision. As a culture develops, it becomes possible for the human consciousness to develop separate psychological identities (or personalities), including all of the same difficulties in communicational relations. On the other hand, separate identities can integrate themselves into very strongly–bound semiotic units.”82

Different traditional cultural research projects share a common objective, which isto identify the cultural processes and mechanisms that ensure the proper functionality of said processes. Semiotic cultural research concentrates on verbal and visual cultural texts and incorporates cultural language analyses. To discuss the semiotics of culture means to analyse cultural signs, their meaning systems, to explain different cultural texts that have certain information encoded into them and that aim to transmit certain information. Semiotics also provides opportunities for individuals to evaluate the role of a given culture by determining its significance in the development of a specific society. Regardless of which type of semiotics is used as the sign analysis method, it will always be “an attempt to understand and to objec- tively explain what the world means to the individual.”83

Lastly, in a book by Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, entitled Culture: A Critical Re- view of Concepts and Definitions, there are 164 definitions for the concept ofculture . However,

81Bronwen Martin, Ringham Felizitas. Dictionary of Semiotics. London: Cassell, 2000, p. 46. [retrieved March 20th, 2014] from: http://www. mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_10478.pdf. 82Lotman J. Kultūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2004, p. 37.38. 83Nastopka K. Reikšmių poetika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2002, p. 51.

53 no matter how different the definitions of culture are, they always state that the content of the message is expressed and understood through language. In this case, language is understood in its broader sense: not just as the spoken every–day language, but also as a system of visual and verbal signs, which is used within a given society to inform and to communicate.

“Two processes, both turned to different directions, are seen in the depths of culture. […] Any language that is inherent in culture is often split into two languages. Thus, the overall number of languages present in a culture increases quite rapidly. Every language that origi- nates this way is an individual, immanent, and closed unit.

Furthermore, an opposite process happens at the same time. Language pairs come together to form single continuous semiotic formations. Thus, a functioning language is both, an individually functioning language and a sub–language that is (as a whole and as a part of the whole) infused into the general context of a given culture.”84

Lotman analysed culture as a resource for social information, which is stored and pre- served because of the man–made sign systems. Hence, he suggests types of culture based on the ways that information is encoded and transferred. However, it is important to note that this does not refer to the tools for the storage and transmission of technical information, e.g. telephones, radio or television. The focus is on the semiotic structural systems, which help individuals to record and understand subjective notions of the world that surrounds them and, of course, which helps them to communicate amongst each other.

Lotman indicates two types of human communication: the I – HE and the I – I. The former explains communication as the transmission of a certain message that does not itself change, but changes message holders. The latter explains that “the subject transmits the message to him– or herself – to the individual that already knows the message.”85. In this case, the receiver is the same as the sender, e.g. a poet reading their own written lines or a person writing a diary, but the message is reformed and acquires new meanings because it changes.

“The I – HE communication system only ensures the transmission of a certain constant amount of information, while the I – I communication system undergoes a qualitative transformation, whereby the I itself changes. In the former case, the sender transmits the message to the receiver and does not change because of the transmission, while in the latter case, the sender transmits a message to themselves, consequently transforming their entity. Since the entity can be considered a collection of meaningful codes (from a social perspective), it changes through communication.”86

Even though both types of interpersonal communication exist in any culture, some cultures are more oriented at the transmission of messages to outside entities, i.e. the I – HE

84Lotman J. Kultūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2004, p. 32. 85”Lotmanas J. Kultūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2004, p.40 86.Ibid., p. 41.

54 communication type, while other cultures are more auto–communicative, concentrating on I – I communication.

Semiotic message transmission systems have dominated the culture during the Classical period and during the New Age in Europe. This means that information was acquired from external sources, rendering the human being the receiver of such messages. “Cultures that focus on the message tend to be more flexible and dynamic. They are characterised by a tendency to increase the number of texts, so the amount of knowledge rapidly increases as a result.”87

Auto–communication is dominant in Eastern cultures. Such communication is characterised by the contemplation of an individual’s life and the attempt to observe and to know the self. “Cultures that are oriented at auto–communication are more spiritually active. On the other hand, they tend to be relatively static, not dynamic enough to live up to societal requirements.”88

Culture is one of the main objects of analysis for semiotics. Many other semiotics fields are closely related to the semiotics of culture and some are even dependent on its certain devel- opmental stages. The semiotics of culture studies all that is created by humankind, either in the material or spiritual realm, and is the qualitative dimension (or measurement) of personal life in society.

Questions

1. What does semiotics of culture aim to examine?

2. Why is culture understood as an encoded system of signs in semiotics?

Exercise

List the types of human communication, according to J. Lotman. Explain them.

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Culture – Collective Memory, the Mech- anism for Preservation, Transmission, and Creation of Group Messages (Texts). It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Handbook of Visual Analysis. Leeuwen T., Jewitt C. SAGE publications, 2006, p. 61–92. 2. D’Alleva A. “Semiotics”. In: Methods and Theories of Art History. London: Laurence King, 2005, p. 28–45. 3. Foucault M. This Is Not a Pipe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. 4. Fiske J. Introduction to communication studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 80–82. http://ymerleksi.wikispaces.com/file/view/Introduction_to_Communication_Studies.pdf

87Ibid., p. 56. 88Ibid., p. 56.

55 Visual Messages in Photography

Modern semiotic analysis includes many forms of verbal and non–verbal communication, for instance, film, photography, sculpturing, architecture, painting, dance, cooking, advertising design, among many more. It is quite unlikely that semiotics was ever such an intense focal point of many scientific disciplines, including logic studies, philosophy, psychology, biology, anthropology, aesthetics, sociology, and art studies.

“Such a theory forms the idea that human beings, the subjects, are essentially capable of comprehending different communications objects.”89 One of these meaning–rendering communications objects are visual texts and they have become the dominant means of communication within the contemporary society. Newspapers and magazines, books, advertisements, computers and television, and, sometimes, even the menus of various coffee shops and restaurants are packed with visuals. Means for mass communication have gradually pushed out the culture where verbal presentation dominated and substituted it with the audiovisual culture of communication. Reading was forced to step down and to allow visuals and sound to take over. As things developed, society sequentially began to match Guy Debord’s concept of Society of the Spectacle.

Humankind has been creating images long before writing was discovered. By producing various images, individuals allowed them to become stronger than themselves. Images are capable of affecting the deepest and most uncontrollable regions of the human psyche. This is evident in rituals, the visualisation of mythology, and visual quotations.

The technical civilisation has redefined sociocultural life, artistic activity, and the understanding of what contemporary culture is and ought to be. “Art nowadays is becoming a realistic phenomenon within the real social context and it must find a way to connect with the new television–internet–newspaper audience (no longer with the book–audience). This audience is the focal contemporary artistic context and it is exactly what art needs to establish a connection with. If art is not able to do so, the telematic industry will take its place.”90

Photography has had great impact on the turn to visuality in the sociocultural realm. Ever since the dawn of photography (in 1844), society had different opinions on this topic. Some viewed it as the possibility to generate a precise reflection of the world. If one pairs that with how photography enables accurate image duplication, the result is the impending death of painting.

Others thought that photography is considered a reflection of reality, a copy of what is real. It has become possible to look at objects separately from the emotions that arise from a mimetic painting. The 1980s marked a new outlook on the “undeniable relation between a

89Lidžiuvienė G. Apie vizualinę semiotiką // Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2006, p. 66. 90Kinčinaitis V. Interpretacijos. Postmodernizmas. Vizualinė kultūra. Dailė. Šiauliai: Saulės delta, 2001, p. 11.

56 photographic image and reality, whereby photography is not just a sign and / or index of reality, but of a single concrete footstep of reality. It is always single, special, and tied together with its own referent. The relation is purely physical and causal.”91 Despite the variety of opinions, photography has firmly established itself as a reliable documentary piece of text in the general cultural text system in the start of the 20th century.

What information does photography transmit? What is a photographic message comprised of. Semiotics of photography analyses the aforementioned causal image–reality and image–comprehender relations, the relation between verbal language and photographic language, and the capability of photography to create meaning. Barthes has noticed that, in order to transmit reality into photography, it is not necessary to convert reality into signs or secondary connotative significations that would create an equivalent or a more intricate sign in the consciousness of the individual. Moreover, he explained that no additional coding is necessary in photography and there is no unified system of signs (as it is in linguistics) that would would allow individuals to read any photographic message.

Photography does not present reality, but rather provides an analogous image of reality. It does not mean anything more than its recorded image. It is a key characteristic of the idea of photography. We can see a clear emerging status of a photograph, whereby the image is a message without code.

“Each photograph maintains a denotative message that is embedded using light and which encourages an understanding of it as a documentary image. It moreover allows photographers to easily assume an intermediary position. All at once, they become artists and ethnographers, who ‘study and analyse various phenomena present in the human reality’. This ambiguity (i.e. the duality of meaning) can be explained based on R. Barthes’ notion of Photographic Paradox, which he defines as ‘the coexistence of two messages, one of which has no code (a photographic analogue [of reality]), and the other one has it (art or [object] interpretation, or writing or the rhetoric of photography)’. However, the uniqueness of photography is not determined by the combination of these dual messages (which, in fact, is a common characteristic of many of the mass communication forms), but rather by the fact that ‘the connotative (or encoded) messages are developed on a basis of a message that bears no code’. This means that, regardless of the interpretation (connotative message) of the photograph, it always has a real basis (a denotative message) because the object of interpretation is the footstep (or footsteps) left in the photograph by reality itself. […] Because connotative messages take over the position of denotative messages, the photograph is understood as a message without code, and thus are considered reliable because of their objec- tivity and documentary characteristics.”92

91Grigoravičienė E. Vaizdinis posūkis: vaizdai–žodžiai–kūnai–žvilgsniai.Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas, 2011, p. 195. 92Pabedinskas T. Tautinės tapatybės ženklai šiuolaikinėje fotografijoje: Artūro Valiaugos fotografijų ciklas “Tylusis identitetas“ // www.fotoexpress.lt [retrieved February 15th, 2014] from: http://www.fotoexpress.lt/fotografija/fotografijos–straipsniai/do/straipsniai.php?id=40.

57 Flusser calls photographers players without competence, but who are able to affect the viewers (similarly to how reality does), their mood and behaviours through the photographs that appeared as a result of this game.

The comprehension of a photographic message and the deciphering of certain cultural artefacts depends on the reader’s (or, in our case, the viewer of the photograph) competence, just like the reading of a verbal text depends on the learnt linguistic signs. For instance, if we look at the architectural landscape recorded in the photographs, we will recognise it as the city of Venice.

Illustration 9. Venice (Italy).

58 A detailed and accurate reading of a work or art is determined by general education and knowledge of various fields of study. Popular media photography is understood in the same way: excessive illustrations from the perspective of the presented information. It is easy to read and to comprehend this type of messages. Human beings have a tendency towards easily and quickly understandable signs. According to Barthes, a signification that is determined based on the image–comprehender relationship, and not on image–reality, is “shocking and dumb, a personal signification and a code of the viewer alone.”93 This signification “can arise due to an unconventional, freely–chosen sign that has become a fetish to him or her.”94

Due to its documentary nature, photography is an especially suitable tool for various sociocultural research projects. However, Eric Landowski explains that, if we truly wish to describe what is Moroccan, Lithuanian, or French, we are only able to do so by describing the most basic principles, which are expressed through text, practice, state of being, etc. This means that we cannot limit ourselves to text. It is necessary to analyse visuals, although certain visual analyses are not all that different from text analyses, certain practices, states of being, or certain atmospheres.

“Despite post–modern doubt in the documentary value of photography, it is impossible to reject the fact that the reality, depicted in the picture, has really existed at one moment in time. Otherwise, it would be impossible to capture a picture, if it were non–existent. The light that reflected off of a certain object, leaving a footprint on the surface of a piece of photographic material, generates indisputable evidence, proving the existence of a material object. Barthes refers to this analogous reflection of reality via photography as thedenotative message. He believes that it is exactly this that distinguishes photography from other methods of visual representation.”95

Questions

1. What does semiotics of photography aim to examine?

2. Why is photography referred to as a message without code?

3. Why is photography very suitable for various analyses of sociocultural nature?

Exercise

Select a photograph and briefly describe it. Explain the connotations and denotations present in the photograph. Based on your chosen example, explain why R. Barthes’ denotative message distinguishes photography from other visual representation methods?

93Grigoravičienė E. Vaizdinis posūkis: vaizdai–žodžiai–kūnai–žvilgsniai.Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas, 2011, p. 200. 94Ibid., p. 200. 95Pabedinskas T. Tautinės tapatybės ženklai šiuolaikinėje fotografijoje: Artūro Valiaugos fotografijų ciklas “Tylusis identitetas“ // www.fotoexpress.lt [retrieved February 15th, 2014] from: http://www.fotoexpress.lt/fotografija/fotografijos–straipsniai/do/straipsniai.php?id=40.

59 Exercise

Pick a photograph. In the table below, list the denotative facts and connotative values of the chosen photograph.

Denotative facts Connotative values 1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 5. 6. 6. 7. 7.

Recommended topic for individual practical work: the Status of a Photographic Image as a Message without Code. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Chandler D. Semiotics for Beginners: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html 2. Swanson G. On Notions of Truth in Photography: Semiotics and the Stereograph. http:// www.gunnarswanson.com/writing/TruthInPhotography.pdf 3. Swanson G. Semiotics of Photography – On tracing the index, p. 7–39. 4. http://ultra.sdk.free.fr/misc/TechniquePhoto/Docs/Semiotics%20of%20Photography.pdf

60 Visual Messages in Film

In the beginning, film was not considered a form of art. In fact, it was quite the opposite. People viewed it as an entertainment event. The first films were like documentary photo–re- ports. The focus was not set on elaborately planned scenes or on the storyline, but rather on the motion–picture reality that was never before seen and, for that fact, it was even somewhat scary. The viewers saw these visuals as real life that was taking place right next to them. “With the appearance of photography and its successor, the film, visual language has significantly expanded its opportunities because the limited screen realm underwent the revival of a world.”96 Viewers fully understand that the images, which they see on the television screen, are a visual illustration of something that happened in the past, but the emotions claim that that, which is on happening on the screen, is happening here and now (e.g. A. and L. Lu- mière’s Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory and The Sprinkler Sprinkled).

Cinematography has surpassed the static photographic image with the help of the ability to record and to demonstrate movement. Soon, films were supplemented with plots and fixed–lens film cameras were recording that, which was quite similar to static placing on stage (Fr. mise en scène) found in theatres. Visual storylines are exactly what ties the art of film and semiotics together. Simple signs create more complex and elaborate signs that are interconnected by signification, and that are characterised by form and content coherency. “The understanding of each visual within a film is determined by the sequence of every previously shown image. This kind of information is more instilling than that, which is acquired in writing be the viewers are only asked to recognise.”97

David Wark Griffith, an American film director and pioneer of modern film–making and montage traditions, has helped to develop a structurally coherent, semantically linear, and easily comprehensible visual narrative. The endless makings of Griffith have essentially changed visual understanding, changed “the relation between the visible and the invisible, from a space that was permeated with consciousness into a space that is now permeated with the unconsciousness.”98

According to G. Deleuze, a montage “is able to establish an entirety and to provide an image of time. [...] It flows from montage, which connects one image and / or movement with another. Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian film director, poet, writer, and a member of the Italian intelligentsia, states that a montage is capable of creating the past of the present, it is able to transform our unstable and unsecured present into a clear, steady, and desired past.”99

Semiotic films analyses, which was formed under the impact of semiotic linguistics, were

96Andrijauskas A. Technologinė civilizacija, medijos ir kultūros globalizacija // Kultūrologija. T. 13. 2006, p. 88. 97Grigoravičienė E. Vaizdinis posūkis: vaizdai–žodžiai–kūnai–žvilgsniai.Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas, 2011, p. 162. 98Ibid., p. 162. 99Tučkutė D. Filosofinė vaizdinio refleksija kinematografijoje // www.aplinkeliai.lt [retrieved February 19th, 2014] from: http://aplinkkeliai.lt/ musu–tekstai/sekant–filosofijos–pedomis/filosofine–vaizdinio–refleksija–kinematografijoje–2.

61 begun to be used in the 1960s. To study the art of film from the semiotics point of view means to examine the sign–laden nature of film (as a visual text) and to analyse the film mechanisms of the effect on individuals. Everything is significant in this research process: what the individual notices when watching the film, what emotions .”100 Unlike book readers, film viewers experience and live through emotions. Everything in this process is significant and it provides information in any case. The effect that the art of film has is focused on the transmission of visual information, “authentic interaction with the speaker, the screen text partner, […] the opportunity to interact in a blink of an eye, without needing to imagine the text being read because the camera emerges the viewer into a sea of images. “Unlike traditional means, i.e. books, here we see emerging opportunities for multi–layered thinking and 3–dimensional visual reality modelling using visual arts. We are presented with a completely new text–comprehender relation. […] a new type of communication, with an entire informational space under it, is formed by the screened–computer culture.”101

J. Lotman defines film as the synthesis of visuals and words. This visual–verbal sign synthesis had an impact on the development of different semiotics systems in film. An example of this is the silent film, where words illustrate images, and “visual text specifies and corrects the signification of verbal text.”102

According to Lotman, film is a sequence of complex messages, which are transmitted to the viewers through the visuals that are seen on the screen. Lotman bases his theory on Jakobson’s communication model: the sender (addresser) transmits a message to the receiver (addressee), the message contains a code that structures the message, and then the receiver decodes it. Contact (channel) is a psychological relationship between the sender and receiver, while the context (referent) is the external environment.

A film analysis model can be formed based on Lotman’s definition of film (synthesis- be tween visuals and words):

1. Analysis of the semantic aspects (sign–object). Analysis of the characters in the film as sign meanings and signification (various elements are analysed: clothing, physical look, behaviour, etc.); the degree of meaning of the aforementioned elements; how iconic are the elements, i.e. how much does the connotative message match the primary sign?

2. Analysis of the syntactic dimension (sign–sign). The binary relations among film characters; the analysis of change in the binary relations among film characters (by comparison and contrast) throughout the film.

3. Analysis of the pragmatic aspects (sign–interpretor). Author’s semiotic analysis approach: meaning entropy, figurative and encoded signification. Viewer’s (interpreter’s) -se

100Andrijauskas A. Technologinė civilizacija, medijos ir kultūros globalizacija // Kultūrologija. T. 13. 2006, p. 91, 92. 101 Ibid., p. 93. 102 Thürlemann F. Nuo vaizdo į erdvę. Apie semiotinę dailėtyrą. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1994, p. 13.

62 miotic analysis approach: the search for sign meanings and the decoding of signification.

“According to Benjamin, film has strengthened the comprehension of the visible (and later, audible) world. By focusing the lens on banal environments, the researcher is studying and helping others to better understand the circumstances that determine existence and that provide a surprising freedom for action.”103

Any cultural text maintains meaning entropy, i.e. a specific dimension of uncertainty in meaning. A semiotic symbol and sign analysis is not enough to reveal the deeper significations within a film because each specific sign can always be specified. Therefore, semiotic analyses can always be supplemented because the nature of the images themselves is polysemic, meaning that they are multidimensional and possess multiple meanings. “It is possible to determine whether the artist’s set–up discourse from a certain perspective matches the actions and practices, but only by comparing texts in every individual case. In essence, the artist’s interpretation is not superior to the interpretations of others.”104

Throughout the course of human history, the dialogue between two independent but equally important signs has been observed – between words and visuals. Verbal and visual societal culture is has always been developing and continues to develop on the basis of these two signs.

Questions

1. In what aspects does semiotics study the art of film?

2. Explain J. Lotman’s film analysis diagram.

3. What signifies the links between semiotics and the art of film?

Exercise

Choose a dramatic or documentary film and briefly describe it. Analyse the aspects of visual and verbal communication of the selected film. Comment on the principles for the formation and for the interpretation of meanings, which have formed in the interaction between visual and verbal texts.

Recommended topic for individual practical work: a Semiotic Analysis of Symbols and Signs through the Revelation of the Deeper Significations in Film. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Bignel J. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. UK:Manchester University Press, 2002, 179–202.

103 Grigoravičienė E. Vaizdinis posūkis: vaizdai–žodžiai–kūnai–žvilgsniai. Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas, 2011, p. 162. 104 Thürlemann F. Nuo vaizdo į erdvę. Apie semiotinę dailėtyrą. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1994, p. 14.

63 Visual Messages in Television

Nowadays, television is the most popular and the most accessible medium through which the mass media reaches the public. Television is a form of leisure, it is a source of information on world events, it provides all kinds of entertainment, it sometimes serves educational purposes, and is capable of strongly influencing the formation of spiritual values, way of thinking, perspective, and lifestyle of a given society. Today’s cultural realm includes not only the cultural legacy from the entire human civilisation, but also the newly created cultural values. Mass communications tools evenly form it and television as well, which has very willingly taken on the role of the Demiurge.

“Television in today’s society is a haven for the gods, an anaesthetic, and visuals that fill up the world. Television is a gallery that exhibits society with all of its scandals, quarrels, personal lives, societal phenomena, events, and many other things. The term publicising is synonymous to the terms audiovisual cultural identity and portrayal. The television screen can depict anything. The environment is simply put on show in the visual culture.”105 According to M. McLuhan, in order to change the entire culture, one only needs to change the means that transmit information to the masses.

It is an indisputable fact that television is the first among all audiovisual information transmission media. Being an inherent part of our lives, our world, and, of course, our culture, television transforms the sociocultural realm into a massive world, populated by signs and images. Semiotics analyses television as a cultural phenomenon within a given society. This phenomenon uses signs (icons, indices, and symbols) to encode and to express modern mass culture ideologies and values. Various elements, such as colour, sound, storyline, characters, filmraccourcir (French word, meaning a filming technique whereby objects are depicted in an unusual way), and some others, create the meanings for the signs that are present in television.

The subjects and objects that are transmitted over television do not create meaning themselves. Meanings are assigned to them, based on certain socially–accepted conventions. From the perspective of semiotics, modern television is that, which, from a certain perspective and to a certain degree, represents something else to the viewer. It is something that creates an equivalent of reality in the consciousness of the individual. This is achieved through verbal and visual expression as well as technical measures: montage, framing, audio–visual effects, set decoration, actor make–up, and many more. All of this is used to pass on specific information that is encoded using signs to the target audience.

“With texts, it is self explanatory that it is necessary to analyse its information in order to understand the text at all. It is easy to understand technical images by simply looking at

105 Žukauskienė O. Žiūros antropologija: apie kasdienybę ir ekranų kultūrą // Logos. 2010. No.63, p. 167, 168 [retrieved February 7th, 2014] from: http://litlogos.eu/L63/Logos_63_165_173_Zukauskiene.pdf.

64 them, but, unfortunately, it may not be possible to completely grasp them for people who are new to this.”106 The aim of semiotic analyses is to decode the semantic television screen text structures and to analyse the cultural context of the overarching messages.

From the perspective of semiotics, the visual text that television presents to the viewer can be considered a communications process, while specific shows would be considered different messages. Televised text is analysed on the principle of structural semiotics. An emo- tionally–charged process moves from form to content through the use of the following semiotic methods:

·· the languages of different forms of art, enabling individuals to comprehend their different feelings; ·· signs, as an independent equivalent of form and content; ·· codes (conventional sign systems, allowing individuals to understand e.g. characters as signs), as a systematic equivalent of content within a specific message. The problem with understanding televised text is related to logical thinking as well as intu- itive understanding. Televised text can be read as an informational–semiotic message, which is based on both logical conclusions and a message context analysis.

There is essentially one question that individuals have to face when semiotically analysing television: how does television create meaning through the use of its available tools for expression? In his book Television Culture, John Fiske answers this question by using the three levels of conventional code systems (signs):

1. Level One: Reality. An event is transmitted using universally–accepted social codes, such as appearance, behaviour, language, gestures, or clothing.

2. Level Two: Representation. The encoded (using social codes) reality that one can see on television is recoded using television codes, such as lighting, montage, music, sound, or dialogue, among other things.

3. Level Three: Ideology. This includes certain national, classical, or gender relations issues, the problem with consumerism, and many more. These are ideological codes that are used to illustrate dramatic conflict situations.

U. Eco presents another televised message analysis plan, which considers three essential codes, all of which have their own sub–codes that supplement them:

1. Portrait code (iconological, aesthetic, erotic, montage sub–codes).

2. Linguistic code (jargon, stylistic syntagms).

3. Sound code (emotional sub–codes, stylistic syntagms, conventional syntagms).

106 Grigoravičienė E. Vaizdinis posūkis: vaizdai–žodžiai–kūnai–žvilgsniai. Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas, 2011, p. 170.

65 Portrait (iconic) code. This code (a motivated sign) maintains a natural relation between the signified (the marked / content) and the signifier (the marker / expression). For instance, a photograph is an iconic image because the signifier in it represents the signified. In the case of portrait code analysis, it is not necessary to know other conventions (other types of arbitrary agreements) so that it would be possible to understand what a certain sign means. In other words, a photograph of a car expresses just that – a car, and nothing else.

It also applies the other way around: in order to understand that small spheres connected together to make a chain is considered a molecule, we have to be aware of a certain convention – a universally–accepted agreement on the fact.

Iconological sub–code. A frequently occurring image is easily understandable and generally accepted because of the usual (traditional) way of depicting a certain situation. For example, a smiling elderly woman and a child, who is running towards her with his arms wide open, elicits associations to a grandmother–grandson situation. Another example could be a flag, being gently blown by the occasional gust of wind: it is an icon denoting a country or a national identity.

Aesthetic sub–code. It is determined by the already formed traditions. These include images that are aesthetically pleasing just because the age–old traditions within that community or nation say so.

Erotic sub–code. Actress Angelina Jolie is considered a very beautiful and attractive woman. An overweight man, on the other hand, is not as attractive, compared to a man, who is of an athletic physique. Both of these statements are conventional, i.e. based on relative and arbitrary agreement.

Montage sub–code. The code determines inter–compatibility, functioning under certain rules for film and television. An individual, who has absolutely no knowledge of the language of film, will surely not understand whether the same person, who is filmed facing the camera in all odd numbered frames and who is filmed with his back turned to the camera in all even numbered frames, is really the same person. It is no longer difficult to understand the coming together of an elderly lady and a young child with the montage sub–code, and it is not difficult to understand the grandmother–grandson relationship with the iconological sub–code.

Linguistic code. Stylistic syntagms. They are analogous to the aesthetic sub–code. They aim to indicate the social class, artistic or any other kind of identity, and much more.

Sound code. Emotional sub–codes. These sub–codes are, for instances, the music in action films (usually menacing and causing tension) or in dramatic productions (usually lyrical and sentimental).

Stylistic syntagms. This additional code helps to express emotional and ideological conno-

66 tations. For instance, the typology of music, whereby one melody would be considered country style of music, while another melody would be considered classical music. It is not consid- erably difficult to see a difference between the ideologies that are nested in the music that is typically played by a marching band plays and that which is usually played by a jazz band.

Eco’s classification cannot be considered comprehensive and complete because it suggests an analysis of televised messages using specific codes, regardless of their interaction within certain code combinations. On the other hand, semiotic research is only one of many research aspects within the communications process. Research can reveal the intentions and aims of the sender, but it cannot indicate the external factors that may possibly affect the message before it reaches the receiver and it cannot determine the receiver’s reaction to the received message. “Semiotics, even if attempting to be universal, still has to test itself as a an analysis instrument for different meaningful phenomena, whether it is a verbal text or a musical or visual art piece.”107

Nowadays, semiotics is implemented when researching popular culture, which includes film and television. This democratic type of semiotics does not grant priority to any one language and finds street style as relevant and as interesting as it would opera. Moreover, it has made an impact on the development of research conducted on academic film and television.

Questions

1. How are visual texts, broadcast through television, understood from the perspective of semiotic analysis?

2. How does television transmit sign–encoded information to its audience?

Exercise

Select a television programme and briefly describe it. Comment on how television, utilising its available means for transmission, creates meaning in your chosen television programme.

Exercise

Analyse a messages that is broadcast over the television based on U. Eco’s formed analysis plan. Briefly describe the codes and sub–codes that you have identified in the television message.

107 Thurlemann F.Nuo vaizdo į erdvę. Apie semiotinę dailėtyrą. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1994, p.14.

67 Portrait code Linguistic code Sound code

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Television Text as an Informational–Se- miotic Message. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Handbook of Visual Analysis. Leeuwen T., Jewitt C. SAGE publications, 2006, p. 183–207. 2. Chandler D. Semiotics for Beginners: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html 3. Clyde A. R., Hill A. The Television Studies Reader. Psychology Press, 2004. 4. Bignel J. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. UK:Manchester University Press, 2002, 131–148, 155–172.

68 Aspects of Visual Communication in Advertising

John Fiske states that communication is a crucial element that is necessary for the existence of culture. Without it, any culture would be subject to extinction. One of the forms of such communication is advertising. Even though communication and advertising “have many common concepts and share methodological similarities, communications researchers focus more on the research of technical advertisement broadcasting media (methods, such as voice, electronic tools, etc.), while semioticians concentrate on the questions: what certain attributes within the advertisements mean? and how is meaning created in the advertisement?”108

The existence of advertising (as a practice) is one of those rare things that is now measured in millennia. Traces of it can be found in the Babylonian writings from 6,000 years ago. One may also look at the ancient images left on the walls of Pompeii or in the Roman wax tablets from the 1st century B.C.

Advertising blew up at the end of the 19th century with the discovery of collotype. Col- lotype, as well as other discoveries in printing, have helped advertisement artists to create illustrations, which in turn had a huge impact on the newspaper and magazine print runs. It also increased the amount of advertising and its profits.

Advertising is a communicational act of manipulation that is based on mechanisms that create suggestion and persuasion. This effect is constructed using text visuality as well as its verbal aspects. Specific signs and codes are articulated within these two realms. The aims of these signs and codes should affect the receiver’s feelings, live up to their expectations, sat- isfy their needs, and encourage them to purchase the goods or services, which ought to alter the quality of the receiver’s life.”109

The English word advertising is derived from the Latin word advertere, which means “to attract one’s attention at something.”110 Etymologically, advertising can be described as a public proclamation of any kind, the purpose of which is to attract people’s attention on the presence of certain goods or services, their attributes, or even their price. In marketing, advertising is defined as “the dissemination of impersonal information, provided by the client, on the goods, services, or ideas to a target audience for the purpose of achieving the aims of the client.”111 The Dictionary of International Words indicates an essential characteristic of advertising – the dissemination of information: “advertising – the dissemination of information about goods […].”112

108 Nevinskaitė L. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas, p.20 [retrieved January 21st, 2014] from: webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=- cache:http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Reklama_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_ galutinis.pdf. 109 Braziulytė S. Intymumo dominantė populiariosios Lietuvių spaudos reklamoje nuo XX a. I pusės iki XXI a. literatūrologijos magistro darbas. ŠU. Šiauliai, 2006. 110 Nevinskaitė L. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas, p. 1 [retrieved January 21st, 2014] from: webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=- cache:http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Reklama_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_galutinis.pdf. 111 Pajuodis A., Pranulis V., Urbonavičius S., Virvilaitė R. Marketingas. Vilnius: The Baltic Press, 2000, p. 295. 112 Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas / Sud. V. Vaitkevičiūtė. Vilnius: Žodynas, 2000, p. 900.

69 The main intentions of an advertising slogan or video clip is to inform, to argue, to per- suade, and to advise. They may also serve to introduce, to help understand, and to teach. Roland Barthes was the first to tackle the issues of semiotic structures of advertisement messages, message persuasion and suggestion, and their effects on consumers. “After 1957, when his most significant book,Mythologies , was published , a new branch of semiotics has formed, which focuses on the question of how are meanings in advertising created? […] Barthes composed the first true semiotic works, which analysed implicit messages in advertisements.”113

The object of visual advertising can be defined as the result of four parallel processes, which are:

1. the object of advertising creates a new reality, which mirrors the objective reality;

2. the object of advertising expresses the subjective world of the author (the creator of the advertisement) and transmits the content of the advertisement (the message) to the receiver;

3. the receiver, having received the message, reads it and generates individual meaning;

4. the receiver reacts to the message in a certain way, which means that the sender of the message has achieved their goal – a dialogue between the sender and the receiver has been established.

According to Paul Messaris, a commercial and social advertising problem analyst and academic, visual advertisements serve three main functions:

1. to elicit emotions through the simulation of real people or objects;

2. to serve as photographically accurate evidence, which proves the reality of that, which is being shown;

3. to establish a relationship between the sold item and other image or images.

“To expand upon this idea, one may also say that advertising, by offering goods and by encouraging consumption, helps the consumer to form a shopping list and it essentially is a part of the industrial ideology. […] [C]onsumer freedom and sovereignty are mere mystifica- tion.”114

Consumer and popular culture, the market, advertising, and visual communication are closely related phenomena. The semiotic communication research method analyses “how messages or texts interact with individuals so that meaning would be formed.”115 Based on this method, any message is thus understood as a structure of certain signs and codes, which

113 Nevinskaitė L. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas, p. 1 [retrieved January 21st, 2014] from: webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=- cache:http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Reklama_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_galutinis.pdf. 114 Maskuliūnienė D. Kvapo vizualizavimas reklamos diskurse // Acta humanitarica universitatis Saulensis.T. 17. 2013, p. 152 [retrieved Feb- ruary 22nd, 2014] from: http://vddb.library.lt/fedora/get/LT–eLABa–0001:J.04~2013~ISSN_1822–7309.N_17.PG_152–164/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC 115 Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 16.

70 forms certain meanings through communication with the receiver.

“The ultimate aim for semiotics in advertisement analysis is to unravel the many hidden and deeper–level meanings, which constitute that, which is called a system of signification (marking). […] Any semiotician should ask the same questions concerning advertising in the press and television that a literary or art critic would ask concerning certain paintings or nov- els. An advertisement to a semiotician is the opportunity to analyse the ways in which aesthetic experiences, classic forms of expression, and methods for illustration are implemented in contemporary advertising tools.”116

All of the knowledge that individuals acquire through being born in an established order of signification are stored in code form. All generalised, laconic, associative, reduced to a symbol, understandable by all, and quickly memorable signs play a very significant role, whether it would be in the process of creating an advertising message or simple interpretation of said message. “Commercial artists have turned the advertisement into an icon, and icons […] are uniform, concentrated and complex images.”117

The surface structure elements of an advertisement, such as colour, expression, background, or the physical looks of the model, can be understood and analysed using concrete semiotic concepts like code, opposition, combination, iconism, indexicality, or symbolism. For instance, a code is a system of conventional rules, functioning as a basis for the communication of advertisements.

Codes are meta–information, which is a crucial part of the interpretation of external sig- nals. An important characteristic of codes is the ability to control the process, during which recipients receive information, to regulate the direction of this process, and even to establish specific boundaries for it. The idea behind semiotic research is loosely related to the analysis of codes within messages. The sender and the process of message encoding as well as the receiver and the process of message decoding are equally important when analysing advertising texts from a semiotic perspective. J. Fiske has illustrated these identical processes in the diagram.

116 Nevinskaitė L. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas, p. 1 [retrieved January 21st, 2014] from: webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=- cache:http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Reklama_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_galutinis.pdf. 117 McLuhanas M. Kaip suprasti medijas. Žmogaus tęsiniai. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2003, p. 221.

71 message text

meaning

creator reader referent

Illustration 10. J. Fiske’s diagram for communication.

As the illustration shows, the creation and reading of the text links the creator and the consumer into a single unit. It is a dynamic and modifying process. Therefore, it is important to comprehend the general conventions and the sociocultural context because “[…] readers, who belong to different cultures, may find different meanings in the same text.”118

Advertisements usually present connotative messages that are related to the emotional experience of the consumer. According to Barthes, the concept of connotation is significant in the analysis of advertisement texts because “it constitutes the cultural ‘knowledge base’ that is unlocked through signs.”119

The aforementioned “connotative meaning often appears through the use of poetics structures (e.g. metaphors, metonymies, and synecdoches). Metaphors are especially popular in advertising poetics. They allows advertisers to vary the meaning by repositioning it based on its various similarities. Meanings are encoded using specifically selected signs, taken from various paradigms (indices, icons, symbols, metaphors and metonymies), and their individual sign groups.”120

The elements that are taken out of said paradigms then undergo the process of matching and reconciling with other elements. This combination is called a syntagm. It is necessary to understand the process of creation of a syntagm and to ensure its originality (which attracts the attention of the consumer) when formulating the message of an advertisement. For example: “a word is a visual syntagm, composed of paradigmatic choices of letters from the alphabet. A sentence is a syntagm of words. Our clothing is a syntagm that is made up of […] paradigmatic choices […] of a hat, a scarf, a t–shirt, a jacket, a pair of trousers.”121 A video clip is comprised of tens of fragments (visual frames), which constitute a visual syntagm.

118 Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 16. 119 Nevinskaitė L. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas, p. 1 [retrieved January 21st, 2014] from: webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=- cache:http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Reklama_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_galutinis.pdf. 120 Braziulytė S. Intymumo dominantė populiariosios Lietuvių spaudos reklamoje nuo XX a. I pusės iki XXI a. literatūrologijos magistro darbas. ŠU. Šiauliai, 2006. 121 Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 77 [retrieved February 23rd, 2014] from: http://www.mediamen. lt/wp–content/uploads/JohnFiske_3sk_2.pdf.

72 Advertisements in the press are created by selecting signs from multiple paradigms. The example below indicates two graphic marks, also known as logotypes, of very well known products. The creators used various paradigms to create these logotypes (in this case, examples from history).

Illustration 11. The trade mark of the Swiss wristwatch manufacturer, Rolex.

Illustration 12. Fast–food franchise trademark.

73 “The two logotypes (signs) featured here employ the same associations but are at different ends of the value system in most western societies. Both of the corporations, Rolex, in a visual manner through the use of the crown, and Burger King, in its title (the signifier), make reference to royalty and monarchy. The signified at work here is the association we might make with luxury and status. Whilst one could argue in terms of what Rolex produces – that a watch is just a watch – a Rolex timepiece has become synonymous to luxury and is regarded by some as a status symbol because of the quality and the expensive price tag.

Burger King operates at a different level – no matter how tasty, nutritious and good value one might consider their food to be, it would be difficult to argue that owning a Burger King meal made an individual part of an elite or exclusive club. The reference to monarchy in the title (the sign) could be either aspirational or used to suggest that the company is the king of burger–makers and by extension its food is better than all other burger makers (the signified).”122

A good, effective, and motivating advertising message has to include all of the elements that constitute the aims of advertising pyramid:

Action Desire Interest Awareness Information

Illustration 13. Aims of Advertising Pyramid.

“The message of an advertisement is encoded with the help of mass consumption – based on the universally understandable codes that are common to all members within the target audience.”123 Advertising codes are only effective, if they achieve any of the main advertising aims from the pyramid: to understand (awareness) the concern of the society and to tend to their feelings.

When assessing the significance of visual signs in advertising communication, semioticians most often grant priority specifically to photographs rather than other kinds of visuals. Consumers understand photographic images as a realistic representation of their surround-

122 Noble Ian, Bestley Russel. Visual research. An introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. Switzerland: AVA publishing SA, 2005, p. 096. 123 Fiske J. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 91.

74 ings and as a sign, specifically, an icon, that does not have any connotations incorporated into it by the author. Other visuals, such as drawings, are understood more like an art piece, which quite often involve subjective interpretations, also known as connotative meanings, included by the author himself.

The sender of the visual advertisement message deliberately selects meaningful and non– meaningful representative elements in both cases (an image that is created from scratch or a photographic image) when creating and advertisement. However, photographic images, found in modern advertisements, are proven to be an especially persuasive force in advertising. It has a decisively stronger impact compared to other forms of visual sign presentation. The aforementioned effect is achieved through cleverly disguised connotative meanings in a photographic advertisement message. These meanings manipulate the consumer’s vision as well as forms and maintains the stereotypes that are established in the society. It is interesting to point out that photographs deceive the eye, but also remain an iconic sign at the same time.

It is generally difficult to determine thepure signs within a message because most of them are combinations of different types of signs (e.g. combinations of icons, indices, and symbols). Symbols are arbitrary signs, which dominate in advertisement messages. The use of symbols in advertising is determined by specific consumer or target audience expectations, i.e. their desire to consume the visual signs that are recognisable by the vast majority of people. Advertisements push individuals to look at simple objects in a specific way, encouraging them to do make the wise choice and to understand them in this specific way, despite the fact that this kind of wisdom only benefits the manufacturer and the seller. This message does not really provoke individuals to take certain action (e.g. to purchase) as much as it aims to create a system of meanings that is beneficial to the sender of this message. According to Jonathan Bignel, one of the aims of advertising is to include individuals into the structure of deciphering meanings, to encourage them to participate in the processes of decoding verbal and visual advertisements, and find pleasure in such actions.

Visual texts in advertisements are structured in a way that it becomes impossible to ignore them, essentially forcing people to read them. The messages of advertisements are composed to be expressive, attractive, understandable, and acceptable to the vast majority of consumers. “Advertising functions under progressive principles, meaning that, by repeating a miniature element or framework within an advertisement to an extent that it becomes over- whelmingly noisy, it will eventually reach certain results. Advertising extends this principle to unbelievable heights.”124

Persuasion, suggestion, and effect on individuals are the main attributes of any advertisement message, either verbal or visual. The main measures for achieving this is careful selec-

124 McLuhanas M. Kaip suprasti medijas. Žmogaus tęsiniai. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2003, p. 222.

75 tion of visual and verbal signs, pleasing colour combinations, the use of informal, everyday, or common language, humour, promises of riches, better looks, the offering of advice, among many more means.

“For example, the McDonald’s two golden arches. Nowadays, a relatively large amount of people go to fast–food restaurants to spend time with their family and friends, to have a quick meal, or to enjoy the pleasant atmosphere. Many people may also dare to say that the pric- es in McDonald’s restaurants are rather reasonable, while the service is quick and pleasant. Quite honestly speaking, there are more people, who feel more at home in a McDonald’s res- taurant, than they do at their actual homes. This is the semiotic explanation that defines the meaning behind the McDonald’s golden arches, and which the company aims to express.”125

In order to further explain how advertisement meaning is created, consider the brief semiotic analysis provided in Coca–Coca’s video advertisements126. In the Coca–Cola video advertisement, we see our first utilised symbol – Santa Claus, running somewhere. He represents the coming of the big holidays. Later on, we see how Christmas tree ornaments appear and all of the lights are lit up. These elements are denotati or direct, i.e. obvious, meanings that aim to convey a specific element of reality. The Christmas tree decorations also create an additional connotative meaning, which conveys the subjective consumer’s attitude towards a well–known thing. As connotati, they show that the Christmas holiday joy that is approach- ing.

Another clear sign is the row of lorries (denotative level), decorated with bright lights and portraits of Santa Claus, which indicate the holidays that have already begun (connotative level). This advertisement has a very clearly shown code (a conventional system of organised signs), whereby the aim is to form associations between the Coca–Cola brand and pleasant Christmas time emotions, warmth, and family values. This code was created using various symbols and signs that are interconnected with the display of the brand’s trade mark, the emphasised use of Coca–Cola bottles in the advertisement, simple tunes playing in the background, and the repetition of the name of the fizzy drink.

Together, all of this forms an effective code, which instils our waiting and anticipation of the coming holidays, our preparations for them, and the rituals, with, of course, the convic- tion that these holidays cannot be celebrated without a bottle of Coca–Cola.

“An advertisement is the art of combining signs. Its texts address the human identity (the self) at every possible moment of the day or night, and sometimes even in dreams. These texts suggest certain ideals for self–creation or lifestyles, they offer methods for achieving satisfaction, and propose a phantasmic relation (i.e. of identity) to a certain fashionable soci-

125 Nevinskaitė L. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas, p. 10, 11 [retrieved January 21st, 2014] from: webcache.googleusercontent.com/ search?q=cache:http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Reklama_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_galutinis.pdf. 126 The link to the advertisement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXxm9YVidXw

76 ocultural consumer group of a certain product.”127

To some extent, advertisements in the modern society execute spacial semiotisation, by which it imparts objects, phenomena, values, and relations with meaning. This process can be further activated by dynamic sociocultural life changes, which may influence changes in the value systems. Instead of offering an individual perspective and a personal opinion, advertisements “suggest a lifestyle for everybody or for nobody […] for the sake of the all–en- compassing and never–ending process”128 – product and service consumption. However, if we look critically at the images that bombard us and if we use semiotics as a filter, which holds back all of the hidden images and meanings, and which does not allows us to become passive victims of the situation, things will change and we will move from being passive consumers to active interpreters of the signs that surround us.

Questions

1. How would you define the object of a visual advertisement using the four parallel processes?

2. What three essential functions do visual advertisements serve, according to Paul Mes- saris?

3. What does the semiotic advertising communication research method analyse?

4. Why do advertisements usually present connotative messages?

Exercise

Choose an advertisement. Conduct a semiotic analysis of the advertisement based on the theory presented in this course handbook as well as theory from other sources.

Hints for analysis:

·· decide what the signs in the advertisement are; ·· decide what they signify just by themselves; ·· think about how they relate to other signs by themselves then explore their connections (and the connections of the connections) to wider systems of meaning; ·· return to the signs to explore the precise articulation of ideology.

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Text in Advertisements – the Result of Parallel Processes. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

127 Rubavičius V. Populiarioji kultūra ir reklama: subjekto fragmentacija vartojimo kapitalizmo sąlygomis // Kultūrologija. T.11. 2004, p. 30. 128 McLuhanas M. Kaip suprasti medijas. Žmogaus tęsiniai. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2003, p. 225.

77 Bibliography

1. Barthes R. The Rhetoric of the Image. In: Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 2. http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Barthes–Rhetoric–of–the–image–ex- .pdf 3. Bignel J. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. UK:Manchester University Press, 2002, 28–50. 4. Fiske J. Introduction to communication studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 103–104. 5. http://ymerleksi.wikispaces.com/file/view/Introduction_to_Communication_Studies.pdf 6. http://www.pearltrees.com/normacenva/semiology/id8482281#item82404136

78 79 Aspects of Visual Communication in Design

Nowadays, design is considered more of a sociocultural phenomenon that incorporates all of the areas of life and which has an impact on all of them, rather than the act of creating artistic things. Design does not only express or mirror, but it also forms the aesthetic perception of society as well as its perspective of the its surroundings, and it also improves people on an individual level. Easily comprehensible semiotic design mechanisms enable designers to organise their own activities in a way that would allow the world that they create to have an impact on the development of the individual and of the society. According to Susann Vihma, a professor in semiotics, semiotics in design is an instrument that is used to study the semantic (sign relations with the objects that they signify, the meanings that these signs create, their relations and changes) aspects of design.

There are at least several types of design that can be mentioned here: landscape design, fashion design, exhibit design, industrial design, interior design, website design, and many more. Regardless of the variety, the essential principle for artistic construct is the following: beautiful is that, which is functional. The structure of design as a sign is illustrated by Gottlob Frege (1848– 1925), a German philosopher and mathematician. He proposed the semiotic triangle, which indicates that every sign is related through semantics, syntax, and pragmatics.

Semantics (Content)

Syntax (Form) Pragmatics (Result)

Illustration 14. Gottlob Frege’s semiotic triangle.

1. semantics studies the meanings and signification of signs as well as the marking of objects and symbols. The type of relation is the sign–object relationship.

2. syntax examines sign interrelations. This type of relation is the sign–sign relationship.

3. pragmatics analyses human relations with the signs systems that they use. This type of relation is the sign–interpretor relation.

80 When analysing design, these concepts can be interchanged with the concepts of form, content, and result.

Individuals understand their environment as a collection of various forms that are organised within that space under a certain principle. In design, form is understood as a model or an example that is created by man, who is in a closely–knit relationship with nature. The design process depends on existing forms, regardless of their shapes and sizes, and on the rules that govern reconciliation and conformity among these forms. One may say that design is the creation of forms that enrich the human being.

“The act of design can never be an entirely neutral process because the designer always brings something extra to the project.”129 According to Susann Vihma, any product of design can be interpreted as the construction and signification of meaning (the presentation of objects as signs). The creation of meaning in design is a process that is open for analysis and which can be examined using semiotics. This process is based on two interacting aspects:

1. on the overall understanding of artistic creation, and;

2. on the articulation of the semiotic analysis method.

It is necessary to possess knowledge of the materials used, the principles for construction and creation, and the opportunities for implementation within the process of object creation and production when analysing and identifying a work of art in design. “A design cannot fail to be made comprehensive, in some measure, with personal taste, cultural understanding, social and political beliefs, and deeply held aesthetic preferences.”130

Moreover, it is also necessary to consider the dimensions for semantic comprehension of the object being designed, which tie in with the meanings that the object creates and the coding that is used for its generated messages. Meaning, or “signification and knowledge are considered two sides of interpretation of the same sign or phenomenon.”131 This way of understanding the designed product determines that the product and its sign is always a portion of communication, a social process, whereby meanings are exchanged and new concepts are being created.

129 Noble Ian, Bestley Russel. Visual research. An introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. Switzerland: AVA publishing SA, 2005, p. 054. 130 Ibid., p. 054. 131 Budrevičius A. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998, p. 22.

81 Creation and technologies

Message, Implementation representation, opportunities exchanging objects with signs

Materials

Illustration 15. Product vs. Design – a portion of certain communication.

The creation of design always puts meanings into itself. These meanings are encoded and interpreted within a certain object and context that it is integrated and functions in. Such a perspective is, on one side, an essential view to assume when trying to understand the products of design and their interaction with the present context. On the other hand, it is a significant step within the creation process. Thus, it is important to consider meaning in design from an analytical stance as well as in a way that would consider the implications on the practical processes of design.

Susann Vihma mentions that there are 3 factors that are important in the process of artistic construction in semiotics:

·· the impact that the form of an object has on the creation of meaning; ·· the expression and communications methods that the form of an object utilises; ·· the contents of the object’s generated message. The communicative and representative artwork functions allow to think of them as being specific signs of art or aesthetic signs. However, it is not enough to view works of art as individual signs in order to understand their internal structures. Works of design that have been transformed into a sign, icon, index or symbol cannot explain how these images were created and how they differ from each other. The deeper significations are revealed by considering the works of art as a composite text that was constructed on the basis of multiple languages.

82 This is, however, impossible, if it is perceived as an autonomous sign. In this case, the language of design is interpreted as a specific semiotic system.

Questions

1. What concepts are used in design to describe semantics, syntax, and pragmatics?

2. What interacting components serve as a basis for the process of design meaning creation?

3. In what cases is the language of design understood and interpreted as a specific semiotic system?

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Clearly Understandable Semiotic Design Mechanisms – the Key to Stable Individual and Societal Development. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Hjelm S. I. Semiotics in Product Design. http://cid.nada.kth.se/pdf/CID–175.pdf 2. Kress G., van Leeuwen T. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Rout- ledge, 1996. 3. Folkmann M. N. Design is Always a Message! http://www.dcdr.dk/uk/menu/update/web- zine/articles/design–is–always–a–message 4. Vihma S. Design semantics and aesthetics: http://home.snafu.de/jonasw/PARADOXVih- maE.html 5. Cian L. A comparative analysis of print advertising applying the two main plastic semiotics schools: Barthes’ and Greimas’. 6. http://www.muses.us/papers%20Luca%20Cian/Luca%20Cian%20A%20comparative%20 analysis%20of%20print%20advertising%20applying%20the%20two%20main%20plas- tic%20semiotics%20schools%20Barthes%E2%80%99%20and%20Greimas%E2%80%99. pdf 7. Noble Ian, Bestley Russel. Visual research. An introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. Switzerland: AVA publishing SA, 2005.

83 Aspects of Visual Communication in Architecture

Architecture is the mirror of many nations and of the ages in history. It reflects the sociocultural existence of humanity through the information that is encoded in the shapes and forms of these structures. Architectural objects, by linking “various national, social, stylistic codes and texts together, perform all kinds of hybridisations, recoding, and semiotic trans- formations, which enable these object to be powerful generators of new information. The source of these semiotic collisions is not just, simply put, the parallel presence of semiotic combinations. It is also a diachronic: architectural structures, city traditions and ceremonies, city planning, names of streets and thousands of other relics from previous eras are like coded programmes, which generate historical texts about the past on a constant basis.”132 Various buildings, whole cities and countries are like the chronicles to the vigilant viewers that enable them to be read as a multi–layered history of the present society. It allows the individuals to become acquainted with the society’s social structures and the characteristics of the classes and layers that are present in this society.

“Architecture is a semiotic–symbolic system. Architectural semiotics can be considered one of the many branches of spatial semiotics.”133 First of all, architecture is considered a purposeful organising of the material space in real time. Space is a significantly broad concept. It can be a building, a city, a forest, a map, the cosmos, the space within a work of art, or many other things. The term space can also be used figuratively, in a philosophically, or even in a psychological sense.

Spacial and architectural semiotics are the instruments for the analysis of meanings that are created by architecture. “Through semiotics, it is possible to determine whether the expression of architectural objects matches the content–form,”134 how the expression and / or content–forms impact the sociocultural context, how it acts upon the human habits, etc.

Semiotic architectural research mechanisms aim to determine how individuals understand architecture in general, how individuals understand and take in spaces and how they orien- tate themselves in them, and how communication among buildings, streets, city spaces, and individuals is carried out. These are mechanisms for introducing and exchanging information, with the help of which societies preserve, use, and interpret information that is acquired from the architectural environment. Furthermore, these are mechanisms for the creation of meanings and signification.

“Just like in spacial semiotics, the subject in architectural semiotics participates in the creation of meaning and assigns it to a building. All subjects (which are assigned to the role of designer or builder, or that which shall be called users in this handbook) play an essential

132 Lotman J. Kultūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 2004, p. 337. 133 Kuznetsova–Juodinytė K. Architektūrinė erdvė ir Greimo semiotika // Socialinių mokslų studijos. 2011. No. 3(4), p. 1280. 134 Ibid., p. 1280.

84 role in the process of giving meaning to buildings. Buildings acquire initial meaning through the participation of the builder, while all other meanings are acquired when any detail of the building, even the smallest one, is modified or changed. Yet another meaning is created with the introduction of an entity that comprehends the structure – a subject, who assesses the builder’s and the user’s discovered meanings Therefore, architectural semiotics is related with both, the builder’s creation and with the users, who are considered the co–authors and com- prehendors.”135

In order to understand architecture from the point of view of semiotics, i.e. to be able to read the messages that architectural objects transmit, it is necessary to conduct an architectural sign analysis. Signs in architecture present information on the building’s spacial structures, functions, building technologies used, and the specifics of construction. One of such signs is the receptive sign.

In architecture, the receptive sign (e.g. a building or the tracery–style gateway or alleyways that lead up to it) creates a certain kind of mood, provides information on the functions of the building, the integrity (as in, wholeness) of architectural solutions, and provides a code to decipher the plastic (line, plane, volume, colour, lighting, shadow) language of architecture. It represents the building through its exterior using signs. For instance, the Children’s Innova- tion Centre in Valencia, Spain (architect A. Garcia Sala).

Illustration 16. The Children’s Innovation Centre in Valencia, Spain. Architect A. Garcia Sala. 20th century.

This architectural complex is comprised of five differently coloured buildings. Their exteri- or very appropriately hints at the purpose and interior of the building.

There are also signs that indicate the function (functional purpose). These signs represent the shapes and functions of the building. For instance, plasticity elements such as massive

135 Ibid., p. 1280.

85 planes and colossal columns indicate the idea of power, greatness, stability, and longevity. An example of this would be the Bank of Lithuania building in Kaunas (architect M. Songaila, 1920s).

Illustration 17. The Bank of Lithuania in Kaunas. Architect M. Songaila, 1920s.

Lastly, there are signs that reflect the national identity. Such signs provide information on belongingness of an architectural object to a certain culture. Architectural elements such as building decoration principles, the use of historical elements, the presentation of attributes that describe the nation indicate national architectural attributes. For instance, the residen- tial buildings in Nida, such as the home of Thomas Mann, are decorated with horses, roof edge ornaments, as shown in illustration 18.

Illustration 18. The home of Thomas Mann in Nida.

86 Illustration 19. Roof edge ornaments.

Only several architectural sign types are mentioned here, but it is possible to use other architectural elements to express meaning in order to better understand the relations between form and content as well as the communicative aspects of architectural works, and to analyse an object as an individual closed entirety of meaning or as an architectural text. Such elements can be ideological and stylistic motives or colour symbolism.

“It is not easy to analyse architectural space and to answer the question of what and how does architecture communicate? It is important to mention that the communicative aspects in architecture are not obvious and clear, and a functional aspect dominates here. It is quite possible to bring functionality closer to communication using semiotic measures. The aim is also to show that, using semiotics, it is possible to determine whether the expression–form matches the content–form of a given architectural object.”136

Because of semiotic research (always related to the spacial and chronological dimension and traditions), architecture is considered a system of signs and the message contains encoded invaluable human experience.

136 Ibid., p. 1280.

87 Questions

1. Why can architectural objects become coded programmes that constantly generate visual text?

2. Why can architectural semiotics be considered one of the branches of spacial semiotics?

3. What do semiotic architectural research mechanisms aim to reveal?

4. What are the types of signs that allow an analysis of architectural spaces? Comment on them.

Exercise

Choose an architectural object. Conduct a semiotic analysis of the chosen object based on the theory presented in this course handbook as well as theory from other sources.

Recommended topic for individual practical work: Aspects of Communication in Architec- ture. It is advised to discuss the results of the practical exercise during the seminar.

Bibliography

1. Genosko Gary. Umberto Eco’s Model of Communication 2. http://semioticon.com/sio/courses/communication–and–cultural–studies/umberto–ecos– model–of–communication/ 3. Function and sign: the semiotics of architecture: http://kotarox.com/547/Eco.pdf 4. Juodinytė–Kuznetsova K. Architectural space and Greimassian semiotics. In:Societal Studies. 2011. No. 3(4).

88 Some important semioticians

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), the founder of the philosophical doctrine known as pragmatism (which he later renamed to pragmaticism to distinguish it from the concept of pragmatism developed by others like William James), preferred the terms semiotic and se- meiotic. He defined semiosis as “[…] action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri–relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs.” (“Pragmatism”, Essential Peirce 2: 411; written 1907). His notion of semiosis evolved throughout his career, beginning with the triadic relation described previously, and ending with a system consisting of 59,049 (= 310, or 3 to the 10th power) possible elements and relations. One reason for this high number is that he allowed each interpretant to act as a sign, thereby creating a new signifying relation. Peirce was also a notable logician, and he considered semiotics and logic as facets of a wider theory. For a summary of Peirce’s contributions to semiotics, see Liszka (1996).

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), considered the father of modern linguistics, proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating the signifier as the form of the word or phrase ut- tered, to the signified as the mental concept. According to Saussure, it is important to note that the sign is completely arbitrary, i.e. there was no necessary connection between the sign and its meaning. This sets him apart from previous philosophers such as Plato or the Scholastics, who thought that there must be some connection between a signifier and the object it signifies. In hisCourse in General Linguistics, Saussure himself credits the American linguist William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) with insisting on the arbitrary nature of the sign. Saussure’s insistence on the arbitrariness of the sign has also greatly influenced later philosophers, especially post–modern theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term semiologie while teaching his landmark Course on General Linguistics at the University of Geneva from 1906 to 1911. Saussure posited that no word is inherently meaningful. Rather a word is only a signifier, i.e. the representation of something, and it must be combined in the brain with the signified or the thing itself, in order to form a sign that is imbued with meaning. Saussure believed that dismantling signs was a real science, for in doing so we come to an empirical understanding of how humans synthesize physical stimuli into words and other abstract concepts.

Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) studied sign processes in animals. He introduced the concept of Umwelt (subjective world or environment, lit. world around) and functional circle (Funktionskreis) as a general model of sign processes. In his Theory of Meaning (Bedeutung- slehre, 1940), he described the semiotic approach to biology, thus establishing the field that is now called biosemiotics.

Valentin Voloshinov (Russian: Валенти́н Никола́евич Воло́шинов) (1895 – June 13, 1936) was a Soviet/Russian linguist, whose work has been influential in the field of literary theory

89 and Marxist theory of ideology. Written in the late 1920s in the USSR, Voloshinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (tr. Marksizm i Filosofiya Yazyka) developed a counter–Saus- surean linguistics, which situated language use in social processes rather than in an entirely decontexualized Saussurean langue.

Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965) developed a formalist approach to Saussure’s structuralist theories. His best known work is Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, which was expanded in Résumé of the Theory of Language, a formal development of glossematics, his scientific cal- culus of language.

Charles W. Morris (1901–1979). In his 1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs, he defined semiotics as the grouping of the triad: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Syntax studies the interrelation of the signs, without regarding meaning. Semantics studies the relation between the signs and the objects to which they apply. Pragmatics studies the relation between the sign system and its human (or animal) user. Unlike his mentor, George Herbert Mead, Morris was a behaviourist and sympathetic to the Vienna Circle positivism of his colleague Rudolf Carnap. Morris has been accused of misreading Peirce.

Thure von Uexküll (1908–2004), considered the father of modern psychosomatic medicine, developed a diagnostic method based on semiotic and biosemiotic analyses.

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French literary theorist and semiotician. He would often interrogate pieces of cultural material to expose how bourgeois society used them to assert its values upon others. For instance, portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit would be a bourgeois ideal perception contradicted by certain realities (i.e. that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He found semiotics useful in these interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were second–order signs, or connotations. A picture of a full, dark bottle is a sign, a signifier relating to a signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage – wine. However, the bourgeois take this signified and apply their own emphasis to it, making ‘wine’ a new signifier, this time relating to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing wine. Motivations for such manipulations vary from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes very much in line with similar Marxist theory.

Algirdas Julian Greimas (1917–1992) developed a structural version of semiotics named generative semiotics, trying to shift the focus of discipline from signs to systems of signification. His theories develop the ideas of Saussure, Hjelmslev, Claude Lévi–Strauss, and Maurice Merleau–Ponty.

Thomas A. Sebeok (1920–2001), a student of Charles W. Morris, was a prolific and wide– ranging American semiotician. Though he insisted that animals are not capable of language, he expanded the purview of semiotics to include non–human signalling and communication

90 systems, thus raising some of the issues addressed by the philosophy of mind and coining the term zoosemiotics. Sebeok insisted that all communication was made possible by the relationship between an organism and the environment it lives in. He also posed the equa- tion between semiosis (the activity of interpreting signs) and life, which is the view that was further developed by Copenhagen–Tartu biosemiotic school.

Yuri Lotman (1922–1993) was the founding member of the Tartu (or Tartu–Moscow) Se- miotic School. He developed a semiotic approach to the study of culture and established a communication model for the study of text semiotics. He also introduced the concept of se- miosphere. Among his Moscow colleagues were Vladimir Toporov, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, and Boris Uspensky.

Umberto Eco (1932–present) made a wider audience aware of semiotics by various publications, most notably with A Theory of Semiotics and his novel The Name of the Rose, which includes applied semiotic operations. His most important contributions to the field bear on interpretation, encyclopaedia, and model reader. He has also criticized in several works (A Theory of Semiotics, La struttura assente, Le signe, La production de signes) the iconism or “iconic signs” (taken from Peirce’s most famous triadic relation, based on indexes, icons, and symbols), to which he purposes four modes of sign production: recognition, ostension, repli- ca, and invention.

Eliseo Verón (1935–present) developed his Social Discourse Theory inspired in the Peircian conception of semiosis.

The Mu Group (Groupe µ, founded 1967) developed a structural version of rhetoric, and the visual semiotics.

91 BASIC SEMIOTICS CONCEPTS, THEIR EXPLANATIONS

Code – the term code designates one of the six elements that make up Jakobson’s model of communication. In order to function properly, i.e. in order for it to be effectively transmitted, a message must contain a code that is understood by both the sender (addresser) and the receiver (addressee). In other words, there must be some measure of agreement about the meanings of the words used (or of the gestures,movements, colours, sounds).

Connotation – a procedure whereby a term, in addition to meanings allotted to it in a dictionary (denotative meanings), acquires additional signification from the context in which it is applied. In this sense, the signifier white, apart from denoting a colour, might connote desire, absence, spirituality, death, etc., depending on the conditions of its application. The distinction between connotative and denotative terms is frequently blurred.

Denotation [Lat. de – from + notare – to mark] – the initial meaning that a sign is designed to capture.

Note: the denotative meaning of, for instance, the word cat is not something specific, but more precisely the quality of catness, which is marked by specific distinctive features such as mammal, retractile claws, long tail, etc. This composite mental image allows individuals to determine whether a specific real or imaginary animal under consideration will fall within the category of catness. Similarly the word square does not denote a specific square but rather a figure consisting of four equal straight lines that meet at right angles. It is irrelevant, if the lines are thick, dotted, 2 meters long, 80 feet long, or of any other characteristic. So long as the figure can be seen to have the distinctive features, i.e. four equal straight lines that meet at right angles, it is denotatively identified as a square.

Explication [Lat. explicatio – explanation] – an explanation and clarification of a concept, arbitrary sign, or content.

Icon [Gr. eicon – image]

1. a sign that is made to resemble its referent through some form of replication, resemblance or simulation;

2. a visual image of some kind;

3. portraits of people are visual icons, which reproduce faces from the perspective of the artist.

Information [Lat. informatio – explanation, message]:

1. scientific and scholarly, societal, political or technical knowledge that is passed on from one individual to another;

92 2. in written form or via the media (periodicals, radio, television, film, computer -net works), the entirety of data and knowledge on a certain topic.

Category [Fr. categorie] – according to the principles of structural analysis, a category indicates a categorical opposition – a pair of opposites, extremes, e.g. upward vs. downward = verticality.

Code [Fr. code < Lat. codex – list] – a system of symbols and arbitrary signs for the process- ing, transmission, storage, and concealment of information. Arbitrary systems of symbols for the transmission of secret military, diplomatic, commercial, or similar information using communications tools.

Communication [Lat. communicatio – message]:

1. the creation of a meaning in a message between the sender (encoder) and the receiver (decoder);

2. interaction, exchange of experience and ideas.

Language – the term designates any signifying whole (system), be it verbal, musical, visual, gestural, or any other. We speak of the language of architecture, the language of music or the language of landscape, just to mention a few examples. A language must necessarily bring into play the relationship between the signifier and signified (Saussure) or (in Hjelmslev’s terminology) expression and content.

Linguistics – a term that in the general sense describes the sciences that study natural languages. Some scholars consider linguistics a branch of semiotics.

Paradigm [Gr. paradeigma – example]:

1. a system of incidence, an example of conjugation, accentuation, declension;

2. the entirety of theoretical and methodological premises that are based on concrete scientific research;

3. an example from history that is used as the basis for an argument or for comparison.

Utterance and Enunciation. Each type of communication can be analysed in one of two ways: as an utterance or as an enunciation. The term enunciation (Fr. enonciation) establishes a framework of conditions that enable one to produce and to understand a meaningful utterance. The analysis of enunciation mostly aims to explain the semiotic competences that the partners within the process of communication (the sender and receiver) have to possess in order to produce and to understand meanings. An utterance (Fr. enonce) analysis describes semantic and syntax structures that transform simple text into closed text (content–wise).

93 Pragmatics [Gr. pragmatikos – actual] – a section of semiotics that studies the human relation (communication, comprehension, concept, expression) to language and to the system of signs.

Expression, expression–form and level of expression (counter–concepts to content, content–form and level of content). Expression and content are the two components of any given text. Expression corresponds to the sensual aspects of a text, while content corresponds to the the cognitive visuals that are attributed to expression.

Meaning – that, which is signified to the signifier.

Relevant, relevance [Fr. relevant, pertinent] – in linguistics, it is the minimal contrast on the level of expression, which forms meaning, i.e. certain sound configurations as carriers of meaning that help to differentiate them from other carriers of meaning. The principle of relevance has a decisive impact on the description of each semiotic system. The aim of a semiotic as well as of a visual analysis is to describe texts based on the relevant contrasts of expression (content–wise).

Semiotics, semiotic [Fr. semiotique] – According to Greimas, semiotics (etymologically, the study of signs) is a science that explains the conditions for comprehension and production of meaning in the form of an explicit theoretical model. Semiotics, or semiologie as named by Saussure and developed as a science to support linguistics, is a composite part of the methodological framework that constitutes humanitarian studies. The purpose of semiotics as a scholarly discipline is to describe semiotic systems, which help individuals to interact (communicate) with the world and with other people. Hjelmslev defines the term semiotic system as the ascription of the content–form to the expression–form.

Semiotics [Gr. σημειωτικός, semeiotikos] – an interpreter of signs, was first used in English by Henry Stubbes (1670) in a very precise sense to denote the branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs. John Locke used the terms semeiotike and semeiotics in his book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).

Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology – the study of sign processes (semiosis) or of signification and communication, signs and symbols. Semiotics is the theory of signification, i.e. of the generation or production of meaning. In contrast to semiology, which studies sign systems and their organization (e.g. traffic codes, sign language), semiotics aims to determine how meaning is produced. In other words, the thing that interests the semiotician is what makes an utterance meaningful, how it signifies and what precedes it on a deeper level to result in the manifestation of meaning.

Semiotic theory is based on the belief that meaning is not inherent in objects, that they alone do not signify, but that meaning is constructed by a competent observer, a subject, who is capable of giving form to objects. For example, confronted with an implement from a

94 different culture, say African or Asian, we would probably be incapable of immediately grasp- ing its signification. However, left alone with it, we will give it a meaning that is based on what knowledge we have and what will suit our purposes. Thus, the semiotician sees the whole of our signifying universe as the product of a presupposed semiotic competence, including statements about it, and is the only one capable constructing its signification.

The semiotic working method is derived from the assumption that the structures underly- ing and resulting in the production of meaning are susceptible to hypothetical representation in the shape of models. The correctness of particular models is confirmed or invalidated by testing them against the semiotic object, such as a text, to which they are supposed to be applied. Students, who study literature, when conducting semiotic analysis, make use of such models to decode the effects of meaning perceptible on the surface level of a text.

Semantics – the relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata. The term designates a branch of linguistics which deals with the meaning given to words or syntagms. In other words, semantics aims to determine the scientific description of the level of the signified in language rather than the signifier.

Syntactics – the relations among signs in formal structures.

Pragmatics – the relation between signs and their effects on those (individuals) who use them.

Semiosis [Fr. semiosis] or the semiotic function denotes the process whereby a mutual conjecture relationship forms between the expression–form and the content–form. Semiosis determines every enunciation.

Semantics [Fr. sémantique < Gr. sēmantikos – significant]:

1. in linguistics, meanings of words, collocations and word forms;

2. in linguistics, the study of language unit meanings, the relations and changes in the systems of such meanings;

3. formal semantics (also, logical semantics) – a branch of semiotics that studies the relations between the signs and the objects that these signs signify.

Signified (that which is marked) – the signified is indicated on the content spectrum.

Signifier (that which marks) – the signifier is indicated on the expression spectrum.

Syntagm [Gr. syntagma – that which is connected]:

1. a syntactic and intonational unit of meaning (a word or a word group), e.g. in the following excerpt from a poem by S. Nėris, there are 4 syntagms:

95 ·· I shall strew ·· early in the morning ·· the entire road ·· with flowers 2. a combination of two language elements (words or parts of words), where one element is the signified, while the other is the signifier, e.g. broomstick: broom is the signified, while stick is the signifier;

3. the main syntactic unit, which is expressed in various ways, depending on the syntactic context.

Symbol – in traditional literary usage, a symbol relates a word or idea to a concrete object, scene or action with which it indicates some kind of semantic connection, whereby the object, scene or action is essentially different from the word or idea. In Peirce’s semiotics, the term symbol denotes a sign (signifier) whose relationship to its object (signified) is entirely arbitrary or based on convention. An example would be the word car where there is no causal physical link or resemblance between the sign (the word car) and its object. In his system of classification, Peirce distinguishes signs used as symbols from those used as icons or as indices (index).

Syntactics [Gr. syntaktikos – arrangement] – a branch of semiotics that studies the relations among signs.

Paradigm [Gr. paradeigma – example]:

1. the entirety of theoretical and methodological premises that are based on concrete scientific research;

2. an example from history that is used as the basis for an argument or for comparison.

Text [Fr. texte] – a closed and meaningful utterance. Depending on the type of semiotic substance (form), it can be a verbal, visual, architectural, or any other text. The definition of text (as an autonomous unit) does not exclude its meaningful relations with other texts.

Sign [Fr. signe] – that, which resembles something to someone in some way. According to C. S. Peirce, a sign is the smallest unit that bases the analysis. Language studies have shown that the analysis of communication systems has to begin lower than the level of signs, starting with the oppositions of attributes that denote meaning – from relevant categories. There- fore, A. J. Greimas defined semiotics as notthe study of signs, but rather the study of meanings.

Sign [Lat. signum – mark] – something that stands for something else in some capacity.

Note: a sign consist of three dimensions. The first dimension involves something physical, such as a sound, a letter, a gesture, etc., that is made to refer to something in the world (a

96 thing, an object, an idea, etc.). The word cat, for instance, is a sign, because it does not stand for the sounds c–a–t that constitute it, but rather for “a carnivorous mammal (fellis catus) domesticated since early times as a catcher of rats and mice”. Similarly, an open palm directed at a person is a sign because it does not stand for itself, but rather for a warning motion, alerting an individual to stop. This physical dimension is called the signifier or representamen.

The second dimension of the sign is something other then itself for which it stands (a feline mammal, the action to stop, etc.). This is known as its referent, signified or object.

The third dimension, known as signification or the interpretant, is what the sign means in specific uses.

Sign, visual [Lat. signum – mark] – a sign that is constructed with a visual signifier, i.e. with a signifier that can be seen (rather than heard, smelt, etc.)

Visual semiotics – a sub–branch of semiotics, which analyses the way visual images communicate a message.

97 A GUIDE TO SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS

This guide identifies the key activities analysts undertake when conducting a semiological critique of a text, such as of an advertisement, a television programme, a film, a painting, etc.

1. Offer your reader a brief overview of the message. The idea is to provide a brief description of the advertisement (say) so that the reader can visualize the message.

2. Identify the key signifiers and signifieds. Ask questions like: What are the important signifiers and what do they signify? What is the system (of signs) that gives the text meaning? What ideological and sociological matters are involved?

3. Identify the paradigms that have been exploited. Ask questions like: What is the central opposition in the text? What paired opposites fit under the various categories? Do these oppositions have any psychological or social significance?

4. Identify the syntagms that come across. Ask questions like: What statements or messages (directly and implied) can you identify? Answer this question by considering

·· the linguistic message. This message is made up of all of the words, denotations and connotations. ·· the non–coded iconographic (literal) message. This message is made up of the denotations in the photograph. ·· the coded iconographic (symbolic) message. This message is made up of the visual connotations that we detect in the arrangement of photographed elements. 5. Finally, identify the principle at work in the message or text. Remember, the goal of analysis is to determine the rhetoric or the grammar that ties all of the elements together.

98 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Andrijauskas Algirdas. Technologinė civilizacija, medijos ir kultūros globalizacija. In: Kultūrologi- ja. T. 13. 2006. 2. Barthes R. Atvaizdo retorika. In: Baltos lankos. 2003, No. 17. 3. Berger John. Reklama – vartotojų visuomenės kultūra. In: Kultūros barai, 1994, No. 4. 4. Bieliauskienė–Aleknaitė Rita. Sociologija ir socialinė politika. In: Socialinis darbas. 2008. No. 7(2). 5. Baudrillard, Jean. Simuliakrai ir simuliacija. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2002. 6. Braziulytė S. Intymumo dominantė populiariosios Lietuvių spaudos reklamoje nuo XX a.I pusės iki XXI a. Literatūrologijos magistro darbas. ŠU. Šiauliai, 2006. 7. Budrevičius Algirdas. Semiotikos įvadas. Vilnius: VU leidykla, 1998. 8. Chandler Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics, London: Routledge, 2001. 9. Černevičiūtė Jūratė. Kūnas vartojimo kultūroje: postmodernizmas, vartojimas, kūnas, kaip prekė. In: www.marksistai.lt [retrieved February 7th, 2014] from: http://www.marksistai.lt/skaityti/jurate–cerneviciute–kunas–vartojimo–kulturoje–postmodernizmas–vartojimas–kunas– kaip–preke. 10. Dailėtyra: teorijos, metodai, praktikos / Sud. G. Mickūnaitė. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2012 [retrieved February 4th, 2014] from: http://issuu.com/mariusdirgela/docs/dailetyra/325. 11. Duroy Rolf, Kerneris Giinter. Menas kaip ženklas: semiotinis – sigmatinis metodas. In: Meno istorijos įvadas. Vilnius: Alma littera, 2002. 12. Eagleton Terry. Įvadas į literatūros teoriją. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2000. 13. Fiske John. Įvadas į komunikacijos studijas. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998. 14. Greimas, Algirdas Julius. Bendrosios semiotikos problemos. In: Greimas, Iš arti ir iš toli: liter- atūra, kultūra, grožis. Vilnius: Vaga, 1991. 15. Greimas, Algirdas Julius. Semiotika. Vilnius: Mintis, 1989. 16. Greimas, Algirdas Julius. Figuratyvinė semiotika ir plastinė semiotika. In: Baltos lankos. 2006. No. 23. 17. Grigoravičienė Erika. Vaizdinis posūkis: vaizdai–žodžiai–kūnai–žvilgsniai. Vilnius: Lietuvos kultūros 18. tyrimų institutas, 2011. 19. Grinevičius Andrejus. Dailės tyrimo metodai kaip X–XII klasių mokinių meno istorijos pažinimą skatinantis veiksnys. Dailės istorijos edukologijos magistro darbas. VPU. Vilnius, 2007. 20. Gudonienė Vilija. Įvadas į masinės komunikacijos teorijas. Vilnius: Žara, 1999. 21. Javsas Paulius. Donelaičio semiotika su preiskoniu estetikos [retrieved January 10th, 2013] from: http://www.academia.edu/6100195/Donelaicio_semiotika_su_prieskoniu_estetikos. 22. Jeffrey C Alexander. Faktai–ženklai ir kultūros sociologija, arba kaip prasmės kūrimas išlaisvina socialinę vaizduotę. In: Sociologija.Mintis ir veiksmas. 2010/2 (27).

99 23. Kačerauskas Tomas. Mąstymas, žiūra, vaizdijimas: egzistencinės sąveikos. In: FilosoFija. So- ciologija. T. 21. No. 1, 2010 [retrieved February 4th, 2014] from: http://www.lmaleidykla.lt/ publ/0235–7186/2010/1/11–19.pdf. 24. Kinčinaitis Virginijus. Interpretacijos. Postmodernizmas. Vizualinė kultūra. Dailė. Šiauliai: Saulės delta, 2001. 25. Kuznetsova–Juodinytė K. Architektūrinė erdvė ir Greimo semiotika. In: Socialinių mokslų studijos. 2011. No. 3(4). 26. Lidžiuvienė Gintautė. Apie vizualinę semiotiką. In: Formų difuzijos XXa. dailėje. T.43. Vilnius: VDA leidykla, 2006. 27. Lotman Jurij. Kultūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2004. 28. Maskuliūnienė Džiuljeta. Kvapo vizualizavimas reklamos diskurse. In: Acta humanitarica universitatis Saulensis. T. 17. 2013 [retrieved February 22nd, 2014] from: 29. http://vddb.library.lt/fedora/get/LT–eLABa–0001:J.04~2013~ISSN_1822–7309.N_17.PG_152– 164/DS.002.0.01.ARTIC. 30. Maumevičienė Dainora. Prototipų teorija ir semantika [retrieved January 24th, 2014] from: http://www.kalbos.lt/zurnalai/17_numeris/02.pdf. 31. McLuhan Marshal. Kaip suprasti medijas.Žmogaus tęsiniai. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2003. 32. Meškys Kęstutis. Kultūra kaip žinia. Nuo ženklo iki teksto. Vilnius: Ciklonas, 2007. 33. Michelkevičius Vytautas. Po fotografijos. In: www.photography.lt [retrieved February 10th, 2014] from: http://www.photography.lt/lt.php/Metrastis?met=17&page=79. 34. Musneckienė Edita. Vizualinės kultūros diskursas rengiant dailės pedagogus postmodernios edukacinės paradigmos kontekste. Social.m.dr.disertacija. ŠU. Šiauliai, 2007. 35. Nastopka Kęstutis. Literatūros semiotika. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2010. 36. Nastopka Kęstutis. Reikšmių poetika. Vilnius:Baltos lankos, 2002. 37. Nastopka K. Semiotika [retrieved January 17th, 2013] from: http://studijos.info/biblioteka/ziureti/semiotika–52606.html. 38. Nevinskaitė Laima. Reklama kaip socialinis diskursas [retrieved January 19th, 2014] from: 39. http://193.219.137.3/irm/medziaga/Reklama_kaip_socialinis_diskursas_galutinis.pdf. 40. Pabedinskas Tomas. Tautinės tapatybės ženklai šiuolaikinėje fotografijoje: Artūro Valiaugos fotografijų ciklas „Tylusis identitetas“, In: www.fotoexpress.lt [retrieved February 15th, 2014] from: 41. http://www.fotoexpress.lt/fotografija/fotografijos–straipsniai/do/straipsniai.php?id=40. 42. Pajuodis Arvydas, Pranulis V., Urbonavičius S., Virvilaitė R. Marketingas. Vilnius: The Baltic Press, 2000. 43. Panofsky Erwin. Prasmė vizualiniuose menuose. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2002. 44. Ricouer P. Tarp hermeneutikos ir semiotikos. In: Baltos Lankos.1992, Nr. 2. 45. Rubavičius Vytautas. Populiarioji kultūra ir reklama: subjekto fragmentacija vartojimo kapitalizmo sąlygomis. In: Kultūrologija. T.11.2004.

100 46. Šatkauskytė Dalia. Tekstas, kontekstas ir istorija Algirdo Juliaus Greimo veikaluose [retrieved January 19th, 2014] from: http://www.llti.lt/failai/Nr16_02_Satkauskyte.pdf. 47. Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas / Sud. V. Vaitkevičiūtė.Vilnius: Žodynas, 2000. 48. Thürlemann Felix. Nuo vaizdo į erdvę. Apie semiotinę dailėtyrą. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1994. 49. Tučkutė Dalia. Kino meno interpretavimo filosofinės prielaidos. Socialinių mokslų magistro darbas. VU. Vilnius, 2011 [retrieved January 27th, 2014] from: http://vddb.laba.lt/fedora/get/LT– eLABa– 0001:E.02~2011~D_20110627_143502–63490/DS.005.0.01.ETD. 50. Vasinauskaitė Rasa. Kalbos problema šiuolaikiniame teatre. Referento kazusas [retrieved Janu- ary 25th, 2014] from: http://www.elibrary.lt/resursai/LMA/Menotyra/M–35–3.pdf. 51. Žemaitytė Gintautė. Plastinės semiotikos etiudas: statiško vaizdo dinamizmas Vytauto Mačer- nio vizijose. In: Colloquia. 2011. No. 27 [retrieved January 27th, 2014] from: http://www.llti.lt/ failai/str_G_Zemaityte(14–26).pdf. 52. Žukauskienė Odeta. Žiūros antropologija: apie kasdienybę ir ekranų kultūrą. In: Logos. 2010. No. 63 [retrieved February 7th, 2014] from: http://litlogos.eu/L63/Logos_63_165_173_Zukausk- iene.pdf. 53. Эко Умбе́рто. Отсутствующая структура. Введение в семиологию / У.Эко; пер. с ит. В.Г. Резник и А.Г. Погоняйло. СПб.: Симпозиум, 2006. 54. Bignel Jonathan. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. UK: Manchester University Press, 2002. 55. Bronwen Martin, Ringham Felizitas. Dictionary of Semiotics. London: Cassell, 2000. 56. [retrieved March 20th, 2014] from: http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_10478.pdf 57. Noble Ian, Bestley Russel. Visual research. An introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. Switzerland: AVA publishing SA, 2005. 58. Бел М., Брайсен Н. Семиотика и искусствознание. In: Вопросы искусствознания.1996. (2/96) [retrieved February 23rd, 2014] from: http://philosophy.ru/library/aesthetics/bal_bry- son_semiotics_art.pdf. Elekroniniai duomenys 1. Seiler R.M. Semiology // Semiotics // http://people.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/semiolog.htm. 2. New World Encyclopaedia // http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/semiotics. 3. Rolex logo // https://www.google.lt/search?q=ROLEX+logo&tbm=isch&imgil=oW–RRsps3 wkqM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%.... 4. Burger King logo // https://www.google.lt/search?q=Burger+King+logo&source=lnms&t- bm=isch&sa=X&ei=V0OWU7L8HcK5O8ywgbAD&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bi- h=909#facrc.... 5. This course handbook used photographs that are credited to the following students of the Uni- versity of Applied Social Sciences: L.Žukauskaitės, T.Galicino, E.Pemkutės and to the following H. Zudermano gymnasium students: J.Mamedovaitės, A. Bezenar. The author would like to thank Violeta Kačinskienė for the help provided during the preparation of this course handbook.

101 ISBN 978-9955-648-36-9

Ruta Jakstoniene

VISUAL SEMIOTICS Course Handbook with Exercises

Layout by Lina Ličkienė

Order No. 150427932 S. Jokužys Publishing – printing house. 2015. Nemunas str. 139, LT-93262 Klaipeda www.spaustuve.lt VISUAL SEMIOTICS