Semiotics Definition and the History Wayan swardhani – 2012 •Defining Semiotics • Semiotics related to different types of theoretical criticism and fields of knowledge Linguistics Literary Studies Semiotics Communication Studies Anthropology • Semiology (06:30) the study of existing conventional communicative system (Saussure) language as system the world negotiation tool gestures semaphore a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life (Saussure in Chandler 3) • Semiotics • “Semeiotic” formal doctrine of signs closely related to • logic (Charles Peirce) • concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign • (Umberto Eco) • the science of signs (Charles W. Morris) Sign anything stands for something else words, images, sounds, gestures and objects (Chandler 2) What to study in Semiotics - Sign-system medium or genre - How meanings are made mental process - How reality is represented Why Semiotics is important to Linguistics? • Language is ... a purely semiotics system... (Jakobson) • Semiotics draws heavily on linguistics concepts, partly because of his influence, and also because linguistics is a more established discipline than the study of other sign-systems (Saussure) • linguistics is branch of semiology (Chandler 7) • semiology is branch of linguistics (Roland Barthes in Chandler • 8) • Language is the central and most important among all human semiotic systems (Jakobson). •History and Development • The exploration of signs and the world Plato and Aristotle • Founder of Semiotics Saussure and Peirce Etimology of Semiotics • σημείο /simeío̱ / sign • σήμα / síma̱ / signal, sign Use of terms two traditions - Semiology in the tradition of Saussure, Hjelmslev, Barthes - Semiotics in the tradition of Peirce and Morris Plato (427-347) - Verbal signs (either natural or conventional) incomplete representations of the true nature of things - The study of words reveals the true nature of things since the realm of ideas is independent of its representation in the form of words - Knowledge mediated by signs is indirect and inferior to immediate knowledge, and truth about things through words, even if words are excellent likeness, is inferior to knowing the truth itself Aristotle (384-322) Definition of sign - Written marks are symbols of spoken sounds - Spoken sounds are (in the first place) signs and symbols of mental impressions - Mental impressions are likeness of actual things - While mental events and things are the same for all mankind, speech is not The difference in the structure of sign systems is only a matter of the expression-plane, not of the content-plane. A name is a spoken sound significant by convention when it becomes a symbol Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) One of the great figures in the history of semiotics The founder of the modern theory of signs Developed logical taxonomies of types of sign cognition, thought, and even man are semiotic in their essence • Sign : • “anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant, that the later is thereby mediately determined by the former”. • Chandler p. 29 According to Peirce, signs consist of three inter-related parts (triad relation model): • the representamen/ sign vehicle (r) the signifier, the form which the sign takes for example, a written word, an utterance, smoke as a sign for fire etc. • an interpretant (i) the understanding that we have of the sign/object relation central to the content of the sign the sense made of the sign • an object (referent) (o) something beyond the sign whatever is signified for example, the object to which the written or uttered word attaches, or the fire signified by the smoke. • Candler p. 31 Interpretant (I) Representamen (R) Object (O) Peirce Divisions of Sign (Chandler p. 36-37) • Symbol/ symbolic A symbol has no logical meaning between it and the object, based on convention the signifier does not resemble the signified relationship: agreed, learned • Icon/ iconic A sign that resembles/ imitates something, such as photographs of people. An icon can also be illustrative or diagrammatic, for example a ‘no- smoking’ sign. • Index/ indexical A sign where there is a direct/casual link between the sign and the object. The majority of traffic signs are Index signs as they represent information which relates to a location (eg, a ‘slippery road surface’ sign placed on a road which is prone to flooding). Symbol Icon Julia grabbed that carrot and went CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP Index Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) Basic principles of his theory influenced the development of structuralism Fundamental aspects of Saussure’s theory of the sign are its bilateral structure, its mentalistic conception, the exclusion of reference, and the structural conception of meaning. “Linguistic sign can be compared with the two sides of a sheet of a paper: thought is the front and the sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time.” bilateral/ dyadic linguistic sign is two-sided psychological entity consisting a concept and a sound-image Chandler p. 14 •Sign the whole that results from the association of the signifier and signified Another important terms by Saussure: - Language as a system or a code, and a social phenomenon - Langue vs. Parole Langue: language system Parole: speech individual’s use of the social sign system in speech acts and texts - Synchronic vs. Diachronic synchronic: studies of a sign system at a given point of time, irrespective of its history diachronic : studies of the evolution of a sign system in its historical development Louis Hjelmslev [‘jεlmsleu] (1899-1965) - Semiotics is first and foremost a hierarchy. - Its distinguishing feature is that it is guided by a dynamic principle by which it is split into dichotomies at all levels, yielding expression and content,system and process, denotative and non- denotative semiotics, and, within the latter, metasemiotics and connotative semiotics. Roman Jakobson Semiotics deals with those general principles which underlie the structure of all signs whatever and with the character of the utilization messages, as well as with the specifies of the various sign systems and of the diverse messages using those different kinds of signs (Chandler 4) .