SEMIOTICS

1
SEMIOTICS

• Of Roland Barthes

2
Basic Ideas

• Semiotics is the science of signs
• A sign is something that stands for something
  else
• Barthes focused on everyday signs that
  communicate ideological or connotative meaning
• Connotation is the ideological baggage that signs
  carry wherever they go
• Ideologies are the interpretive frameworks or
  lenses that we use to make sense of the world

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The Sign

• A sign is the combination of the signifier
  (something that stands for something else) and
  the signified (the thing that the sign stands
  for)
• The relationship between signifier and signified
  is often arbitrary, especially in language. But
  some signifiers are indicative (e.g. where a
  cause signifies its effect) and others have an
  affinity with their signified (e.g. the icon of a
  pedestrian at a traffic stop)

4
The Sign System

• A sign does not stand on its own it is part of a
  system of signs (e.g. in order to work, a sign
  often evokes its opposite, or things it is not
  as the word hill evokes mound and mountain.
• Significant semiotic systems are myths that
  affirm the status quo as natural, inevitable and
  eternal

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Myths

• Myths are second order sign systems that build
  on existing signs but transform the meaning of
  those existing signs, converting them into
  ideological tools. The sign of the first system
  becomes the signifier of the second. But the
  second-order sign system undercuts the
  historicity of the first

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Critique

• Not all connotative systems uphold the dominant
  values
• Signs can subvert the status quo, at least
  temporarily, before they are co-opted by
  mainstream society.