TTG Library Notice Board& Semiotics

For analysis June 2009

MEETING NOTES

Sites/Spaces (different scales in size and time)1. TTG Library Complex

(including cafe and council chambers

1. TTG library parent/child area plus toy library (with outreach)

1. TTG noticeboard and learning area and foyer

1. Two Wells Library1. Princeton Library

Discourses Library discourse (including

‘authorised’ signs, behaviours, etc)

Parenting discourse Early learning Pedagogic discourse e.g.

about social behaviours, parenting/child-rearing etc.

Library spaces as semiotic aggregates

Methods of identification – tracing, analysis – semiotic analysis

1. Note the discourses and follow the spaces/places where they manifest (eg in signs, injunctions etc).

2. Note the signs/texts in library spaces and note the emergent/constitutive disjunctive discourses.

3. Follow the text or the discourse into and out of the space and note any transformations/changes, different practices associated with them in different spaces.

4. Think about 1 and 3 as networks/nodes c.f. How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer – movement between people/cells. Same general idea of how things operate but in different situations.

Analytic Concepts – explanatory power

•Centripetal/centrifugal - Does this imply centres of origin? C.f. Fluidity of networks

•Eg. C.f. Urry’s ‘tipping points’o Complexity theory/chaos theoryo Rhizomatic (Deleuze)

•Note: Contradictions/tensions implicit in:o networks and flows VS geo-semiotics or groundedness in place/context

• But also the usefulness of geosemiotics as a way of explaining how a sign or discourse takes on meaning in particular locations and social practices.

oi.e. both movement and fixidity, possibilities and transformations

•Joint reading: Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. (2003). Discourses in Place: language in the material world. London, Routledge. Chapter 9 on semiotic aggregate.

SEMIOTICS - NOTES

Geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003)

A theory of mediated action – (see Scollon in R. Wodak, R., & M. Meyer (2001/2004). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage.)

The study of the social meaning of the material placement of signs and discourses and our actions in the material world (p. 2)

‘The study of the indexability of the material world’ (p. 111).

‘[G]oes beyond the ‘social situatedness of social interaction research to a kind of geo-situatedness’ (p. 20)

‘Information only becomes knowledge when it is grounded quite concretely in the social, material world.’ (p. vii)

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Takes 4 elements to be central to our understanding of human action in the 3D and multiply discursive spaces in which we live and act:

1. Social actor 2. Interaction order3. Visual semiotics4. Place semiotics (p. 14)

Three main semiotic systems of any form of social action:1. The interaction order (speech, movement, gesture, e.g. a conversation, a

walk with a friend in a mall, a single reading a paper at a café table)2. Visual semiotics (text and image, e.g. the design, layout and production

of all signs, posters & other images being used or ignored in the interaction order)

3. ‘Place’ semiotics (the built environment along with the ‘natural’ landscape within which the action takes place (pp. 8-9); see chaps 6-9)

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Chaps 6-9: Place semiotics

• 6: Code preference• 7: Inscription• 8: Emplacement• 9: Time and space

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Chap 8: Place semiotics: Emplacement

3 general semiotic practices of discourse or language in place1. Decontextualised semiotics (signs/pictures/texts which

appear in multiple contexts but always in the same form, e.g. Westfield ‘W’ logo – slide 5)

2. Transgressive semiotics (any sign that is in the wrong place (e.g. price tag fallen on sidewalk; graffiti; trash; inverted ‘R’ in Toys ‘Я’ Us – no slide)

3. Situated semiotics (any aspect of meaning that is predicated on the placement of the sign in the material world regulatory signs; store names placed to signify “This is Kmart” – slide 6)

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• SX2 suggests one can ‘follow a single discourse through the many semiotic aggregates of which it forms an element’.

• When signs are produced by a single producer (sign-shop or catalogue publisher) then these signs carry a discourse through space.

• The TTG library is both a semiotic aggregate and a sign-producing institution. An authorised library discourse can be read through the signs it produces, places and allows to be placed.

3 Geosemiotic Practices

• How discourse in place are socioculturally organised:– Decontextualised semiotics – signs, pictures, logos, texts

that appear in multiple contexts but always in the same form (p145)

– Transgressive semiotics – includes any sign that is in the wrong place (p146)

– Situated semiotics – common regulatory signs or notices (p146)

• Semiotic aggregate – the convergence of several discourse in one place

PHOTOS - MARCH 2008

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PHOTOS - MARCH 2009