Social semiotics

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Chapter 14 Social Semiotics Constructing Stuff in Everyday Life Phillip Vannini ID 501 – Kıvılcım Çınar

Transcript of Social semiotics

Chapter 14

Social SemioticsConstructing Stuff in Everyday Life

Phillip Vannini

ID 501 – Kıvılcım Çınar

Content

Social semiotics

Structural semiotics versus social semiotics

Three circles of social semiotics

Everyday reality for social semiotics

Socio-semiotic research strategies

Dimensions of social semiotic analysis

Keywords

Social semiotics, structural semiotics, semiotic analysis,

unnoticed stuff, everyday life perspective, signifier,

signified, semiotic power, arbitrariness, ideological complex,

discourse, genre, style, modality, semiotic rules, and

semiotic transformation

Phillip Vannini

He discusses the significance of social semiotics as an

everyday life perspective.

He explains social semiotics as a body of critical and

interpretive theory.

He examines social semiotics as a research strategy.

He defines dimensions of social semiotic analysis with van

Leeuwen approach.

Stuff. The world is full of it.(Despite our lives being so full of stuff, we know

very little about the significance of our day to day interaction with it.)

We are all supposed to know that the meaning of the object

lies in its obvious function; however we never question

them.

For the studies of unnoticed stuff, he reviews the analytical

perspective known as ‘social semiotics’.

Social semiotics:

studies the ways in which people use semiotic resources both

to produce communicative artifacts and to interpret them

in the context of specific social situations and practices

compares and contrasts semiotic modes

studies ways in which semiotic resources are regulated in

specific locations and practices

practice of analysis and observations to discover new

semiotic resources

Reads all artifacts as texts

Does not study what signs stands for but how it is used

Why use social semiotics to understand stuff?

Social semiotics is best equipped for understanding different

modes of expressing meaning through all the senses. (EL stuffs –

non linguistic level)

Social semiotics is particularly useful in making mute mundane

objects speak:in bringing their unnoticed significance and

functionality to light.

Social semiotics is highly eclectic and it can be used easily in

combinations with a broad variety of E.L sociological perspectives.

Social semiotics focuses on meanings in context and therefore on

situated practices of communication , rather than merely on

abstract, structural and formal grammar-like associations.

As a semiotic theory

Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He

defined a sign as being composed of:

a 'signifier' (signifiant) - the form which the sign takes;

and

the 'signified' (signifié) - the concept it represents.

Three schools (circles) of social semiotics

Sdyney Semiotics Circle (Roland Barthes, Micheal Halliday’s functional grammer tradition) Grammer of language is not based in unchangeable codes or

rules but rather in a system of resources for making meanings.

European – Critical Discourse Analysis Group (Faucauldion version) Power and meaning are inseparable. Discourse is shaped by

unequal arrangements of power. It is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing written

and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias.

North American Network influenced by the sociologists who have combined elements of

social semiotics with the post Marxist, the pragmatist and symbolic interactionist.

Structural Semiotics And Social Semiotics Structural Semiotics ; signifiers refer to mental concepts not

to actual material things.

Structural semioticians emphasize the importance of structures because they believe that the interrelations of semiotic systems hold the codes or rules “that govern the conventions of signification, whether these be in kinship, etiquette, mathematics, or art”

Structural semioticians conducting ethnographic work, therefore, are primarily interested in understanding how signs and structures of semiotic rules make people, rather than in understanding how people make, use, and renegotiate semiotic rules.

Structuralist semioticians believe that meaning arises out of

a structure of oppositions.

from the linguistic side (e.g: skirt – shirt, short, squirt)

from the cultural side ( binary position of values, social and moral norms)

(e.g: Cold vs. Hot, Happy vs. Sad, Sleep vs. Awake)

Social semioticians reject, instead, all forms of structural

determinism.

Social semiotics attributes meaning to power instead of

merely attributing power to meaning

Structuralist Semioticians look for meaning in deep

structures of semantic associations and differences.

agree that languages express or represent thoughts.

tend to focus on language and its deep structures of signification informing speech.

concentrate on synchronic associations (one point in time)

Social Semioticians look for meaning in social-

meaning -making practices and in the contexts where specific practices occur.

suggest that the social organization of thinking shapes both language itself and other, multimodal,forms of communication.

tend to focus on instances of speech and their effects on larger linguistic order.

concentrate on the importance of diachrony (semiotic transformations over time)

rejecting the idea of arbitrariness

productive semiotic power

does not only weigh on us as a force that says no it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms

knowledge, produce discourse.

power struggles over competing definitions

of meaning stable social organization

they exercise their force by successfully imposing their ideological complexes.

Ideological complex

exists to sustain relationships of both power and

solidarity.

represents the social order as simultaneously serving the

interests of both dominant and subordinate.

does not determine what people will do, feel or think at any

given moment.

is not forever lasting.

For Social Semiotics

everyday reality

Grammar of communication

Particularities of context

Social and agentic

intend the system of rules inscribed into texts and acts of communications(Grammar of visual)

Context logonomic systems prescribe and proscribe the conditions under which meanings are produced, distributed and consumed.

the existence of context-bound rules and conditioning imposed upon meaning by the grammar and physicality of signs. users may be able to subvert the meaning either accidentally or intentionally.

Socio-semiotic research strategies

Making an inventory of semiotic resources.

Data generally include semioticized and unsemioticized empirical

material.

Semioticized: consist of motivated traces of human communicative behaviour such

as films, television series, sculpture and bodily expressions.

Unsemioticized: materials which haven’t been created by human practice.

Social semioticians have developed a keen interest and refined

their conceptual vocabulary to best understand multimodality

rather than pure linguistic discursivity alone. Most socio-semiotic

analyses deal with multimodal material.

Social semioticians are in the business of:

Inventorizing semiotic resources and investigating how they

are used in specific contexts

Discover and develop new semiotic resources and new ways

of using them. 

Inventorizing different types of rules, taken up in different

ways in different contexts

Analyzing the various ways semiotic resources are used

through analysis of discourse, genre, style, and

modality in which they are used.

Discourse

what of communication

a talk, whether spoken or expressed through written word.

an expression of a socially constructed body of language.

Discourses work by presenting and evaluating social

practices by regulating activities, the manners in which

activities are carried out, what actors can participate, how

they ought to present their roles and identities.

Genre

how of communication

speech acts (speech acts that construct realities of their own, such

as apologies, declarations of intent, requests, offers and demands.

Social semioticians have investigated a wide variety of genres,

focusing for the most part on multimodal genres.

Van Leeuwen has examined in great detail the genre of media interviews,

Cranny-Francis has examined representation of gender in popular fiction.

Socio-semiotic analysis of genre reveals that genres format

experiences and practices by laying out shared expectations on

the form, and therefore on the potential for meaning, of semiotic

resources.

Style

Styles are broad signifying systems which link together smaller parts,

turning them into concrete wholes.

individual style

social style

lifestyle

individual difference

self-expression

impression management

what people do as a

result of group

membership

is a combination of

both individual and

social lifestyles.

Modality

Modality is a measure of how true a representation is, in

terms of both degree of truth and the mechanisms through

which an impression of truth is achieved.

Modality can be either linguistic or non-linguistic ( visual,

abstract, sonsory and naturalistic)

Social Semiotic Concepts

Semiotic Transformation

Semiotic Rules

Semiotic Functions

Semiotic Multimodality

Semiotic Transformation Meanings and logonomic systems have changed over time.

the need for new resources new ways of using existing resourcese.g: look at the example of fashion, certain contexts may be more or less open to change, and certain properties of those contexts may facilitate or prevent change. (Vannini 2008)

Social semioticians have examined semiotic transformations in a wide variety of settings. From technology side, Scollon have reflected how the internet has

changed the sense of place in a small Alaskan town. Kress has looked at the phonetic emergence of words and studied

the significance of changes in spelling over time. Annemarie Jutel has analysed the changing meanings of fatness

throughout history.

Semiotic Rules Important for both structuralist and social semiotics. Rules (written or unwritten) are made by people. (can be

changed) difficult process as they become institutionalized and protected.

Lexicon Rules Grammar Rules

stipulate what signifiers refer to.

e.g: Western society, artificially tanned skin connotes such things as physical appeal, a relatively affluent lifestyle and youth.

Stipulate how coherent messages can be built up with smaller semiotic resources.

e.g: A tanned body is to be presented as a complex multimodal text which expressing its muscular fitness, sense of fashion, and other resources connoting a coherent lifestyle.

Semiotic Multimodality

To understand human communication in all of it forms,

social scientists must become able to relinquish methods

that rely on the collection of words.

The social semiotic attention to multimodal traces of

human behaviour especially acquires a particular

importance when we think of how everyday life is

increasingly mediated by a plurality of media of

communication, and how social interaction is more and

more surrounded by and enabled through deceivingly

simple and yet so important ‘stuff’.

Semiotic FunctionsExample of semiotic function Instrumental function – its most immediate, obvious, and taken

for granted function. Regulative function – its strategic use in the house. (Placing it in

the kitchen or on the table in the living room) Informative function – as a semiotic resource (type of meal which

will be served) Interpersonal function – absense of forks enables people to feed

with their hands off a common plate. Personal function – a sign of a class status (fork comes from

university cafeteria) Heuristic function – it can be used to find out things. (poking of

fish to understand whether the fish is cooked or not.

To sum up, Social Semiotic

the tools to understand materiality of semiotic resources.

the significance of context-bound rules and conditions

importance of agency

the openness to be mixed with a variety of research

strategies and theoretical perspectives