Aydın Sanat Yıl 2 Sayı 3 (2016) (1 -13) What Do Images Mean in Visual Semiotics? Veysel Kılıç1 Zekiye Sarıkartal2 ABSTRACT “There can be no words without images.” (Aristotle) We all live in a visually surrounded world. We are intensively surrounded by exciting and moti- vating images. This is visual communication, which doesn’t include language codes in a sense. The production of meaning from visual objects can be evaluated and examined with the help of semiotics. Images mean everything. Commercials and visual objects mean lots of things without using language codes. This paper offers a kind of analytical perspective for under- standing and producing meaning from visual objects with a special reference to semiotics. Keywords: Semiotics, Code, Icon, Index, Image, Visual Semiotics Görsel Göstergebilimde İmgelerin Anlamı Nedir? ÖZET “Hiçbir sözcük imgesiz olamaz.” (Aristoteles) Görsel bir dünyada yaşıyoruz. Yoğun olarak hoş ve ilham verici imgeler tarafından çevriliyiz. Bu, bir bakıma dil kodlarını içermeyen görsel iletişim. Görsel nesnelerden anlam üretimi gösterge- bilim yardımıyla değerlendirilebilir ve incelenebilir. İmgeler herşeyi ifade eder. Reklamlar ve görsel nesneler dilsel kodları kullanmadan pek çok mana barındırabilir. Bu makale, görsel nesneleri anlama ve anlam üretme üstüne, göstergebilimi referansalara analilitik bir bakış açısı sunmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Göstergebilim, Kod, Ikon, Index, Imge, Görsel Göstergebilim 1 (Prof. Dr.), Mardin Artuklu Üniversitesi, Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi 2 (Prof. Dr.), Mardin Artuklu Üniversitesi, Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi, [email protected] 1 What Do Images Mean in Visual Semiotics? “One picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, but only if you look at the picture and say or think the thousand words.” William Saroyan Introduction Communication is an act. It is the act of It has got unique properties of which the transferring meaningful signs from one communication models lack. According to party to another. Apparently, there are vari- George Yule, a natural language has some ous forms, means and categories of com- unique properties. These properties distin- munication. A message, speaker’s intention guish human language from other commu- nication systems. They are: is sent through a proper channel to receiv- er’s ear. Speaker first thinks of his message, Displacement: Language is independent his intention then he chooses appropriate from time and place. Human language re- grammatical rules and vocabulary–lan- fers to the present, past and future. We can guage codes and articulates them. The re- also communicate with people those who ceiver receives this message; he first tries are thousands of miles far from us. to detect the sounds and then language codes in order to comprehend the mes- Productivity/Creativity: Human beings sage. In other words; speaker encodes the are continually creating new expressions message and receiver decodes it. Effective and novel utterances by manipulating their communication is the one, which minimiz- linguistic resources to describe new objects es potential misunderstanding. In the era of and situations. This property is described as information, we have to send, receive and productivity or creativity. process lots of messages everyday via dif- ferent channels. When we send messages, If we internalize the rules and the basic vo- we don’t only send language codes; we add cabulary of our mother tongue, we can pro- our emotion to the messages as well. In an duce infinite number of sentences, which effective communication we are supposed we have not heard before, and we can ut- to understand the emotion of the sender ter sentences which we have not uttered behind the message. According to Baudril- before, because language is open-ended. It lard successive phases of the image are; “It also can create new words when the situa- is the reflection of basic reality. It makes any tion demands. perverts as basic reality. It bears no relation to any reality. Whatever it is, its own pure simu- Cultural Transmission: We learn every- lacrum.” (Baudrillard, 1988: 170) thing from our ancestors via language. Although we may have inherited physical Among various communication tools hu- features from our parents, we do not inherit man language-natural language is the their language. On the contrary, we acquire most effective and sophisticated means of language in a cultural situation with other communication. Human language is differ- speakers. This process, whereby, a language ent from other communication models or handed down from on generation to next is means because it is unique. described as cultural transformation. 2 Veysel Kılıç, Zekiye Sarıkartal Duality: Human language is organized at The founders of semiotics are Swiss linguist levels or layers simultaneously. This prop- Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sander erty is called duality. In speech produc- Peirce. Saussure is the founder of linguis- tion, we have a physical level at which we tics and semiotics both as sciences, which produce individual speech sounds like /n/, study the role of signs as a part of social /b/, /i/. As individual sounds, none of these life. Actually the origin of semiotics can be discrete has any intrinsic meaning. In a par- linked to structuralism, which is a method ticular combination, we have meaningful of analysis that looks for deeper structure units such as bin and nib. and meaning behind the surface structure. According to structuralisms’ all phenomena Arbitrariness: There is no logical relation are ruled by some unseen rules. between signifier and signified. The con- nection is quite arbitrary; the aspect of re- American linguist Chomsky says that every lationship between linguistic signs and ob- sentence has got two structures; surface jects in the world is called arbitrariness. In structure and deep structure. In order to other words, there is no logical connection get the meaning of a sentence, we have to between what comes out of our mouths reveal the meaning from deep structure, and what they refer to in the world. so structuralism tries to reveal the hidden rules, which organize anything from how Semiotics: Semiotics or semiology is con- people interact in particular social context. cerned with meaning. In other words; how The structural semiotics is more concerned meaning is represented in its broadest with the relation of elements to each other. sense, it generates meanings or processes “Semiotics studies how this referring results meaning by which readers or viewers com- from previously established social conven- prehend or attribute meaning. Representa- tion.” (Eco, 1976: 16) tion of meaning is realized by language, im- ages and objects. Semiotics can also offer a Semiotics is often employed in the analysis useful perspective about formalist analysis. of the text. Text doesn’t necessarily mean Semiotic analysis can be applied to liter- written language. In the broadest sense, ary texts as well as visual objects. Semiotic anything has got a message can be defined analysis, in effect, acknowledges some vari- as text. Furthermore; written language, able relationships. It is the study of signs movies, films, pictures etc. are texts, shortly and signifying practices. “Semiotics studies a text can exist in any medium verbal and how this referring results from previously es- non-verbal. tablished social convention.” (Eco, 1976: 16) A sign can be defined basically as an entity Some other approaches to textual analysis such as words, images and objects. A sign other than semiotic approach are rhetori- refers to something else other than itself. cal analysis, discourse analysis and content Signifying practices simply refers to how analysis. Semiotics is also very closely affili- rather than what meaning is produced and ated with cultural studies; content analysis finally the social convention with meaning is rather well established within the main- is called a code. stream tradition of social science research. Aydın Sanat Yıl 2 Sayı 3 (2016) (1 -13) 3 What Do Images Mean in Visual Semiotics? Although content analysis concerns a tween signifier and signified is arbitrary. -Ar quantitative approach to the analysis of bitrariness is one of the unique properties manifest contents of media texts, semiotics of language. The arbitrariness of the sign is is rarely quantitative and often involves a a radical concept because it proposes the rejection of such approaches. autonomy of language in relation to reality. A social semiotic would also emphasize the There is no one-to-one link between sig- importance of the significance, which read- nifier and signified; signs have multiple ers attach to signs within a text. Saussure meanings rather than single meanings. Sig- saw linguistics as a branch of semiotics be- nifiers change from culture to culture. Con- cause semiotics is concerned to stress the vention is the social dimension of signs; it is social aspect of signification, its practical, the agreement among the users about the aesthetic or ideological use in interper- appropriate uses of and responses to sign. sonal communication; there meaning is The relationship between one’s concept of constructed as semantic value produced fishers and the physical reality of fish is sig- through actually shared codes. nification; it is one’s way of giving meaning to the world of understanding it. Signs The study of signs is the study of construc- Peirce classified signs in terms ofsymbol, tion and maintenance of reality. “We only icon and index. Signs can be classified in think in signs.” (Peirce, 1931: 58) Signs take terms of these three modes without refer- the form of words, images, sounds, odors, ence to the purpose of their users within flavors, acts or objects, but such things particular context. A sign may consequent- have no intrinsic meaning and become ly be treated as symbolic by one person, as signs only when we invest them with iconic by another and as indexical by the meaning. No sign makes sense on its own third. but only in relation to other signs, because the value of signs is determined by the re- sense lationships between the sign and other signs within a system as a whole.