Semiotics

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(New page: '''Semiotics''' ''In proces by Harmen Bouter'' Study of signs and sign-using behaviour, especially in language. In the late 19th and early 20th century the work of Ferdinand de Saussure ...)
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'''Semiotics'''
'''Semiotics'''
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''In proces by Harmen Bouter''
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Study of signs and sign-using behaviour, especially in language. In the late 19th and early 20th century the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce led to the emergence of semiotics as a method for examining phenomena in different fields, including aesthetics, anthropology, communications, psychology, and semantics. Interest in the structure behind the use of particular signs links semiotics with the methods of structuralism. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/534099/semiotics]
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Study of signs and sign-using behaviour, especially in language. In the late 19th and early 20th century the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce led to the emergence of semiotics as a method for examining phenomena in different fields, including aesthetics, anthropology, communications, psychology, and semantics. Interest in the structure behind the use of particular signs links semiotics with the methods of structuralism. Saussure's theories are also fundamental to poststructuralism.[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/534099/semiotics]
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Semiotics is concerned not with the relations between signs and things but with the interrelationships between signs themselves, within their structured systems or codes of signification (see paradigm, syntagm). The semiotic approach to literary works stresses the production of literary meanings from shared conventions and codes; but the scope of semiotics goes beyond spoken or written language to other kinds of communicative systems such as cinema, advertising, clothing, gesture, and cuisine. [http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html]
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Summarized: Semiotics are the ways in which signs and meanings are created, decoded, and transformed. For geographers, these signs may be in the landscape; landscapes may be ‘read’ in different ways, and may become part of the political process.
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'''References'''
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Semiotics or semiology, the systematic study of signs, or, more precisely, of the production of meanings from sign‐systems, linguistic or non‐linguistic. As a distinct tradition of inquiry into human communications, semiotics was founded by the American philosopher C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) and separately by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), who proposed that linguistics would form one part of a more general science of signs: ‘semiology’. Peirce's term ‘semiotics’ is usually preferred in English, although Saussure's principles and concepts—especially the distinctions between signifier and signified and between langue and parole—have been more influential as the basis of structuralism and its approach to literature. Semiotics is concerned not with the relations between signs and things but with the interrelationships between signs themselves, within their structured systems or codes of signification (see paradigm, syntagm). The semiotic approach to literary works stresses the production of literary meanings from shared conventions and codes; but the scope of semiotics goes beyond spoken or written language to other kinds of communicative systems such as cinema, advertising, clothing, gesture, and cuisine. A practitioner of semiotics is a semiotician. The term semiosis is sometimes used to refer to the process of signifying. For a fuller account, consult Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (1977).
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*1 Unkown. Encyclopædia Britannica, Semiotics. Retrieved September 29, 2010 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/534099/semiotics
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*2 Chandler, D. (2001, Februari 19). Semiotics for beginners. ''Encoding/decoding''. Retrieved Septermber 29, 2010 from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html
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''Geography Dictionary:semiotics
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The ways in which signs and meanings are created, decoded, and transformed. For geographers, these signs may be in the landscape; landscapes may be ‘read’ in different ways, and may become part of the political process. See''
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'''STUART HALL'''
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Hall referred to various phases in the Encoding/Decoding model of communication as moments, a term which many other commentators have subsequently employed (frequently without explanation). John Corner offers his own definitions:
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the moment of encoding: 'the institutional practices and organizational conditions and practices of production' (Corner 1983, 266);
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the moment of the text: 'the... symbolic construction, arrangement and perhaps performance... The form and content of what is published or broadcast' (ibid., 267); and
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the moment of decoding: 'the moment of reception [or] consumption... by... the reader/hearer/viewer' which is regarded by most theorists as 'closer to a form of "construction"' than to 'the passivity... suggested by the term "reception"' (ibid.).
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Hall himself referred to several 'linked but distinctive moments - production, circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction' (Hall 1980, 128) as part of the 'circuit of communication' (a term which clearly signals the legacy of Saussure). Corner adds that the moment of encoding and that of decoding 'are socially contingent practices which may be in a greater or lesser degree of alignment in relation to each other but which are certainly not to be thought of... as 'sending' and 'receiving' linked by the conveyance of a 'message' which is the exclusive vehicle of meaning' (Corner 1983, pp. 267-8).
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Stuart Hall stressed the role of social positioning in the interpretation of mass media texts by different social groups. In a model deriving from Frank Parkin's 'meaning systems', Hall suggested three hypothetical interpretative codes or positions for the reader of a text (Parkin 1972; Hall 1973; Hall 1980, 136-8; Morley 1980, 20-21, 134-7; Morley 1981b, 51; Morley 1983, 109-10):
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dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading (a reading which may not have been the result of any conscious intention on the part of the author(s)) - in such a stance the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent';
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negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves contradictions;
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oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote against).
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This framework is based on the assumption that the latent meaning of the text is encoded in the dominant code.
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[http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html]
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Revision as of 12:29, 29 September 2010

Semiotics

Study of signs and sign-using behaviour, especially in language. In the late 19th and early 20th century the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce led to the emergence of semiotics as a method for examining phenomena in different fields, including aesthetics, anthropology, communications, psychology, and semantics. Interest in the structure behind the use of particular signs links semiotics with the methods of structuralism. [1]

Semiotics is concerned not with the relations between signs and things but with the interrelationships between signs themselves, within their structured systems or codes of signification (see paradigm, syntagm). The semiotic approach to literary works stresses the production of literary meanings from shared conventions and codes; but the scope of semiotics goes beyond spoken or written language to other kinds of communicative systems such as cinema, advertising, clothing, gesture, and cuisine. [2]

Summarized: Semiotics are the ways in which signs and meanings are created, decoded, and transformed. For geographers, these signs may be in the landscape; landscapes may be ‘read’ in different ways, and may become part of the political process.


References