Analyzing Structure (the Summary of Chandler s Semiotics: the Basic ) -Semiotics- Ni Wayan Swardhani W. 2015
Semiotics An approach to textual analysis Structural analysis Focuses on the structural relations which are functional in the signifying system at a particular moment of history Involves identifying constituent units in a semiotics system (text or socio-cultural practice), the structural relationship between them (the opposition, correlation, and logical relations) and the relation of the parts to the whole (Chandler p. 83)
Horizontal and Vertical Axes
Syntagmatic positioning Paradigmatic substitution associative relations (Saussure)
girl kisses boyfriend old man punches his friend Paradigmatic axis The young lady calls her parents Syntactic axis
cloudy seems raining sky shows sunny Paradigmatic axis The weather looks stormy Syntactic axis
buys book Mother reads newspaper Paradigmatic axis Father writes letters Syntactic axis
Source: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/documents/s4b/semiotic.html Semiotics can be applied to: anything which can be seen as signifying something to everything which has meaning within a culture. media texts (including television and radio programs, films, cartoons, newspaper and magazine articles, posters and other ads) the practices involved in producing and interpreting such texts. The task of the semiotician (Saussurean tradition) to look beyond the specific texts or practices to the systems of functional distinctions operating within them. to establish the underlying conventions, identifying significant differences and oppositions in an attempt to model the system of categories, relations (syntagmatic and paradigmatic), connotations, distinctions and rules of combination employed.
Conducting Semiotic Analysis Identifying the text Include a copy of the text with your analysis of it (if possible), noting any significant shortcomings of the copy. Or provide a clear description which would allow someone to recognize the text easily if they encountered it themselves. Briefly describe the medium used the genre to which the text belongs the context in which it was found. Consider your purposes in analyzing the text. Why did you choose this text? Your purposes may reflect your values: how does the text relate to your own values?
How does the sign vehicle you are examining relate to the type-token distinction? Is it one among many copies (e.g. a poster) or virtually unique (e.g. an actual painting)? How does this influence your interpretation? Eco lists three kinds of sign vehicles, and it is notable that the distinction relates in part at least to material form: signs in which there may be any number of tokens (replicas) of the same type (e.g. a printed word, or exactly the same model of car in the same colour); 'signs whose tokens, even though produced according to a type, possess a certain quality of material uniqueness' (e.g. a word which someone speaks or which is handwritten); 'signs whose token is their type, or signs in which type and token are identical' (e.g. a unique original oil-painting or Princess Diana's wedding dress).
What are the important signifiers and what do they signify? What is the system within which these signs make sense? Modality What reality claims are made by the text? Does it allude to being fact or fiction? What references are made to an everyday experiential world? What modality markers are present? How do you make use of such markers to make judgments about the relationship between the text and the world? Does the text operate within a realist representational code? To whom might it appear realistic?
Paradigmatic analysis To which class of paradigms (medium; genre; theme) does the whole text belong? How might a change of medium affect the meanings generated? What might the text have been like if it had formed part of a different genre? What paradigm sets do each of the signifiers used belong to? Why do you think each signifier was chosen from the possible alternatives within the same paradigm set? What values does the choice of each particular signifier connote? What signifiers from the same paradigm set are noticeably absent? What contrasted pairs seem to be involved (e.g. nature/culture)? Which of those in each pairing seems to be the 'marked' category? Is there a central opposition in the text? Apply the commutation test in order to identify distinctive signifiers and to define their significance. This involves an imagined substitution of one signifier for another of your own, and assessing the effect.
What is the syntagmatic structure of the text? Identify and describe syntagmatic structures in the text which take forms such as narrative, argument or montage. How does one signifier relate to the others used (do some carry more weight than others)? How does the sequential or spatial arrangement of the elements influence meaning? Are there formulaic features that have shaped the text? If you are comparing several texts within a genre look for a shared syntagm. How far does identifying the paradigms and syntagms help you to understand the text?
Rhetorical tropes What tropes (e.g. metaphors and metonyms) are involved? How are they used to influence the preferred reading? Intertextuality Does it allude to other genres? Does it allude to or compare with other texts within the genre? How does it compare with treatments of similar themes within other genres? Does one code within the text (such as a linguistic caption to an advertisement or news photograph) serve to 'anchor' another (such as an image)? If so, how?
What semiotic codes are used? Do the codes have double, single or no articulation? Are the codes analogue or digital? Which conventions of its genre are most obvious in the text? Which codes are specific to the medium? Which codes are shared with other media? How do the codes involved relate to each other (e.g. words and images)? Are the codes broadcast or narrowcast? Which codes are notable by their absence? How direct is the mode of address and what is the significance of this? How else would you describe the mode of address? What cultural assumptions are called upon? To whom would these codes be most familiar? What seems to be the preferred reading? How far does this reflect or depart from dominant cultural values? How 'open' to interpretation does the sign seem to be? What relationships does the text seek to establish with its readers?
Social semiotics What does a purely structural analysis of the text downplay or ignore? Who created the sign? Try to consider all of those involved in the process. Whose realities does it represent and whose does it exclude? For whom was it intended? Look carefully at the clues and try to be as detailed as you can. How do people differ in their interpretation of the sign? Clearly this needs direct investigation. On what do their interpretations seem to depend? Illustrate, where possible, dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings. How might a change of context influence interpretation?
Benefits of semiotic analysis What other contributions have semioticians made that can be applied productively to the text? What insights has a semiotic analysis of this text offered? What other strategies might you need to employ to balance any shortcomings of your analysis?
Syntagm and paradigm provide a structural context within which signs make sense does not only in sentence any kind of signs Garment system of paradigmatic and syntactic of Barthes (p. 86) Syntagmatic the combination of 'this-andthis-and-this' refer to intratextually to other signifiers co-present within the text possibilities of combination an orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole (sequential) Paradigmatic the selection of 'this-or-thisor-this refer to intertextuality to signifiers which are absent from the text functional contrasts - they involve differentiation. media or genre
Syntagmatic Level Syntagmatic Relation Signified conceptual Signifiers sequential spatial Syntagmatic forms: sequential (and causal) relationships before and after in film and television narrative sequences plotting, literary genre the pattern, how it is compossed
spatial relationships montage in posters and photographs, which works through juxtaposition spatial (space, dimention) above/below, in front/behind, close/distant, left/right, north/south/east/west, and inside/outside (or centre/periphery) conceptual relationships in exposition or argument (text) introduction, body, conclusion. Many texts contain more than one type of syntagmatic structure, though one may be dominant.
Paradigmatic seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing sets of signifiers) which underlie the manifest content of texts. involves comparing and contrasting each of the signifiers present in the text with absent signifiers which in similar circumstances might have been chosen, and considering the significance of the choices made. It can be applied at any semiotic level, from the choice of a particular word, image or sound to the level of the choice of style, genre or medium. The analysis of paradigmatic relations helps to define the 'value' of specific items in a text.
Denotation, Connotation, and Myth Connotation and denotation levels of representation or levels of meaning. Roland Barthes adopted from Louis Hjelmslev there are different orders of signification (Barthes 1957; Hjelmslev 1961, 114ff). The first order of signification denotation at this level there is a sign consisting of a signifier and a signified. Connotation a second-order of signification uses the denotative sign (signifier and signified) as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified connotation is a sign which derives from the signifier of a denotative sign (so denotation leads to a chain of connotations).
Denotation an underlying and primary meaning - a notion which many other commentators have challenged. Barthes himself later gave priority to connotation, and in 1971 noted that it was no longer easy to separate the signifier from the signified, the ideological from the 'literal' (Barthes 1977, 166). 'what is a signifier or a signified depends entirely on the level at which the analysis operates: a signified on one level can become a signifier on another level' (Willemen 1994, 105). This is the mechanism by which signs may seem to signify one thing but are loaded with multiple meanings.
Denotation literal, obvious, commonsense meaning (word) what all viewers from any culture and at any time would recognize the image as depicting (Panofsky) (visual image) socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign primarily representational and relatively self-contained The denotational meaning of a sign would be broadly agreed upon by members of the same culture, whereas 'nobody is ever taken to task because their connotations are incorrect', so no inventory of the connotational meanings generated by any sign could ever be complete (Barnard 1996, 83)
Connotation Connotations are not purely 'personal' meanings - they are determined by the codes to which the interpreter has access. Cultural codes provide a connotational framework since they are 'organized around key oppositions and equations', each term being 'aligned with a cluster of symbolic attributes' (Silverman 1983, 36) the 'expressive' values which are attached to a sign
Myth mythological or ideological extended metaphor the dominant ideologies of our time Barthes argues that the orders of signification called denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology function: to naturalize the cultural - in other words, to make dominant cultural and historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely 'natural', 'normal', self-evident, timeless, obvious 'common-sense' - and thus objective and 'true' reflections of 'the way things are'. order of signification the sign reflects major culturallyvariable concepts underpinning a particular worldview - such as masculinity, femininity, freedom, individualism, objectivism, Englishness and so on
I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier... In myth (and this is the chief peculiarity of the latter), the signifier is already formed by the signs of the language... Myth has in fact a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us...
One must put the biography of the Negro in parentheses if one wants to free the picture, and prepare it to receive its signified... The form does not suppress the meaning, it only impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance... It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth. The form of myth is not a symbol: the Negro who salutes is not the symbol of the French Empire: he has too much presence, he appears as a rich, fully experienced, spontaneous, innocent, indisputable image. But at the same time this presence is tamed, put at a distance, made almost transparent; it recedes a little, it becomes the accomplice of a concept which comes to it fully armed, French imperiality...
Myth is... defined by its intention... much more than by its literal sense... In spite of this, its intention is somehow frozen, purified, eternalized, made absent by this literal sense (The French Empire? It's just a fact: look at this good Negro who salutes like one of our own boys). This constituent ambiguity... has two consequences for the signification, which henceforth appears both like a notification and like a statement of fact... French imperiality condemns the saluting Negro to be nothing more than an instrumental signifier, the Negro suddenly hails me in the name of French imperiality; but at the same moment the Negro's salute thickens, becomes vitrified, freezes into an eternal reference meant to establish French imperiality...
We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature... In the case of the soldier-negro... what is got rid of is certainly not French imperiality (on the contrary, since what must be actualized is its presence); it is the contingent, historical, in one word: fabricated, quality of colonialism. Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact. If I state the fact of French imperiality without explaining it, I am very near to finding that it is natural and goes without saying: I am reassured. In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions... Things appear to mean something by themselves... (Barthes 1987)
Denotative level : (what are we looking at) This is a photograph of the movie star Marilyn Monroe. Connotative level : (what it implies) We associate this photograph with Marilyn Monroe's star qualities of glamour, sexuality, beauty - if this is an early photograph - but also with her depression, drug-taking and untimely death if it is one of her last photographs. Mythic level: (the world view) We understand this sign as activating the myth of Hollywood: the dream factory that produces glamour in the form of the stars it constructs, but also the dream machine that can crush them - all with a view to profit and expediency. (Hayward 1996, 310)