Reading Signs in the MediaLecture by Ayesha Mulla

HOC Winter 2015Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture

The Treachery of Images (1936)

Translation: This is not a pipe

This is not a cow.

This is not manhood

This is not womanhood

This is not patriotism

This is not love

What is Semiotics?

Semiotics = the study of “signs” in everyday speech [and of anything which 'stands for' something else]

In this sense, “signs” = words, images, sounds, gestures and objects.

Semiotics: Definitions

Ferdinand De Saussure (1916): Semiotics is a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life

Charles Peirce (1931): Semiotics is the formal doctrine of signs. A sign is something which stands for something in some respect or capacity-- “every thought is a sign”

In semiotics, the basic unit of meaning is a sign. A sign is anything that makes meaning.

All signs have two aspects: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is any material thing that signifies, e.g., words on a page, a facial expression, a picture, graffiti. The signified is the concept that a signifier refers to.

Denotation = the relation of signifier to signifiedThus, Denotation = the literal meaning of a sign

Connotations = involve signifying signs

signs that become the signifier for a second signified (The second level of meaning)

What is “medium”?

The term 'medium' is used in a variety of ways. It includes broad categories such as: - speech- writing- print- broadcasting

Medium

A Medium is a particular form or system of communication

Mass media (radio, television, newspapers, magazines, books, photographs, films and records)

Media of interpersonal communication (telephone, letter, fax, e-mail, video-conferencing, computer-based chat systems)

What does semiotics have to do with understanding Media?

Semiotics teaches us that reality is a system of signs.

Meaning is not 'transmitted' to us - we actively create it according to a complex system of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware.

We live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized.

IDEOLOGY

In semiotics, Ideology is the point where semiotic systems and codes intersect with the exercise of power in social life.

Ideology = the process where codes reinforce or become aligned with structures of power.