Semiotics, narrative and genre

1. Semiotics, narrative and genre
A course about media texts, how
they signify, and the implications this
has for society

2. Why semiotics?
• 'semiotics tells us things we already know in a
language we will never understand' (Paddy
Whannel, in Seiter 1992:1)

3. Why semiotics?
• “makes the world strange”: we no longer take
reality for granted
• What we experience as “reality” does not
have an objective existence outside of human
understanding or interpretation
• Understanding how signs works is an act of
intellectual and political emancipation

4. Semiotics helps us to
• see that we collectively construct reality
• understand that an event’s meaning (eg. an
accident, or Nkandla, or a sports event) is not
something that the media simply collects and
distributes to an audience
• see that we create meaning within sets of
codes and conventions (unconsciously)
• become aware of these codes and
conventions

5. Denaturalising the sign
• Signs are the means through which we
organise and understand our world(s): signs
“define” reality
• Be becoming aware of the codes through
which we “make sense” of the world, we
become aware of how signs privilege certain
world views
• Awareness of codes assists in challenging
power

6. Semiotics
• The study of signs
• How is meaning created within a language?
• How do things in the world come to have
social significance (meaning)
• Verbal language one of many systems of signs
– can you give examples of others?

7. Different approaches to language
• Reflective: Language reflects the world its
meaning
• Intentional: Language reflects the intentions
of the speaker
• Social constructivist: Language is socially
constructed to produce shared meanings

8. Exercise 1
– Look at something in this room
– Do you “recognise” it? What is the basis of
this recognition – what does “recognise”
mean?
– Close your eyes. Can you still “see” the
object? What does this have to do with
“recognising” it?
– Look at me and tell me what the object is –
say it aloud “It’s a lamp”.

9. Exercise 2
• What does each colour
“mean”
• What else could they
mean?
• Does it matter what colours
we use?
• Construct a set of traffic
light rules using yellow,
blue and pink

10. What can we learn from this exercise?
• Signs are arbitrary: any colour will do if we
agree to obey the rules
• Meanings are fixed by codes (rules)
• Anything can function as a sign if assigned a
concept and a meaning within our cultural
and linguistic codes
• Signs create real effects (material and social
consequences) in the world

11. de Saussure
• Language is a system of signs
• Sounds, images written words, paintings,
natural objects function as signs “only when
they serve to express or communicate ideas…
[To] communicate ideas, they must be part of
a system of conventions” (Culler 1976:19)

12. The sign
• divided analytically into two parts:
– Signifier (spoken word, image etc)
– Signified (the mental concept)
SIGN
SIGNIFIER
SIGNIFIED

13. Try this…
• Write down a few words
• Try to separate the word from its meaning – it can help
by saying it over and over
• How difficult is it to separate the word (signifier) from
its signified (concept)
• Look at the list again and contemplate the words as
signs (combined signifier and signified)
• Then put the list away and conjure up the concept or
mental image
• Try to explain to someone what you have done, using
the terms “sign”, “signifier” and “signified”

14. The sign
is the union of a form which signifies (signifier)
and an idea signified (signified). Though we may
speak... as if they are separate entities, they
exist only as components of the sign [which is]
the central fact of language” (Culler 1976:19)

15. The meaning is in the difference
• There is no natural or inevitable link between
the signifier and the signified
• Signs do not possess a fixed or essential
meaning
• In the traffic light example, what signifies
(means)is not red or green, but the difference
between red and green

16. “Members of systems”
• Signs are members of systems and are defined
in relation to each other
• Organised within “systems of differences”: it is
the differences between signifiers that signify!
– eg, father because not mother, not child etc
• Binary opposites a simple way of marking
difference
– black/white
– man/woman