Semiology // Semiotics

by Robert M. Seiler

We can define semiology or semiotics as the study of signs. We may not realize it, but in fact
semiology can be applied to all sorts of human endeavours, including cinema, theatre, dance,
architecture, painting, politics, medicine, history, and religion. That is, we use a variety of gestures
(signs) in everyday life to convey messages to people around us, e.g., rubbing our thumb and
forefinger together to signify money.

We should think of messages (or texts) as systems of signs, e.g., lexical, graphic, and so on, which
gain their effects via the constant clashes between these systems. For example, the menu we consult in
a restaurant has been drawn up with reference to a structure, but this structure can be filled differently,
according to time and place, e.g., breakfast or dinner (Barthes, 1964, p. 28).

In the notes that follow, I will say a few words about structuralism, an intellectual movement which
flourished during the 1950s and the 1960s, and semiology, which has been one of the chief modes of
this intellectual movement. The major figures in this movement include Ferdinand de Saussure,
Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Thomas Sebeok, Julia Kristeva, and Umberto
Eco. For reasons that will become obvious, I will focus on Saussure and Barthes, the pioneers. All
believed semiology is the key to unlocking meaning of all things.

the basic elements of structuralism

To begin with, we should think of structuralism as a mode of thought, a way of conceptualizing

phenomena. Whereas in the past, determinists like Aristotle saw things in terms of cause and effect,
structuralists look for structures:

 From the 15th century, the word "structure" was used as a noun: the process of building
(Williams, 1976).
 During the 17th century, the term developed in two main directions: towards the product of
building, as in "a wooden structure," and towards the manner of construction generally.
Modern developments flow from (b). The sense of the latter is: the mutual relation of the
constituent parts of a whole which define its nature, as in "internal structure."
 The term entered the vocabulary of biology in the 18th century, as in the structure of the hand.
 The term entered the vocabulary of language, literature, and philosophy in the 19th century, to
convey the idea of internal structure as constitutive, as in matters of building and engineering.
Scholars would talk (1863) about the structural differences that separate man from gorilla say.

We need to know this history if we are to understand the development of structural and structuralist
thinking in the 20th century, as in linguistics and anthropology. We note that this theoretical construct
dominated intellectual life in France, extending into the literary arts, during the period from WW I to
WW II. Linguists in North America had to discard the presuppositions of Indo-European linguistics
when they studied the languages of American Indians. They developed procedures for studying
language as a whole, i.e., deep internal relations. Thus, we now distinguish function (performance)
from structure (organization), as in structuralist linguistics and functional anthropology.

According to (orthodox) structuralism, these structures range from kinship to myth, not to mention
grammar, one permanent constitutive of human formations: the defining features of human
consciousness (and perhaps the human brain), e.g., Id, Ego, Superego, Libido, or Death-Wish in
psychology. Of course, the assumption here is that the structuralist is an objective observer,
independent of the object of consideration. In this context, we use words like code (hidden relations)
to describe sign-systems (like fashion).
We should note that structuralism challenges common sense, which believes that things have one
meaning and this meaning is pretty obvious. Common sense tells us that the world is pretty much as
we perceive it. In other words, structuralism tells us that meaning is constructed, as a product of
shared systems of signification.

Semiology: Two Pioneers

Again, semiology can be defined as the study of signs: how they work and how we use them. We
note again that almost anything can signify something for someone. Saussure developed the principles
of semiology as they applied to language; Barthes extended these ideas to messages (word-and-image
relations) of all sorts.

1. Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857-1913

Saussure was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to a family celebrated for its accomplishments in the
natural sciences. Not surprisingly, he discovered linguistic studies early in life.

In 1875, he entered the University of Geneva as a student of physics and chemistry, taking course in
Greek and Latin grammar as well. This experience convinced him that his career lay in the study of
language. In 1876, he entered the University of Leipzig to study Indo-European languages. Here, he
published (1878) a monograph on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages. He
was awarded the Ph.D. for his thesis on the genitive case in Sanskrit.

After completing his thesis, he moved to Paris, where he taught Sanskrit, as well as Old High German.
For 10 years, he focused on specific languages--as opposed to general linguistics. In 1891, he returned
to Geneva, to teach taught Sanskrit and historical linguistics at the university. The university provided
the catalyst for shaping semiology--he was asked to teach (1906-11) a course of lectures in general
linguistics. He died in February of 1913.

His students thought his course so innovative that they assembled their notes and published (1916) a
work called Course in General Linguistics. In this work, Saussure focuses on the linguistic sign,
making a number of crucial points about the relationship between the signifier (Sr) and the signified
(Sd). Below I summarise the key ideas:

 Language (Saussure, 1916) is a self-contained system, one which is made up of elements

which perform a variety of functions, based on the relations the various elements have one
with another. We can think of syntax and grammar as organizing principles of langauge. We
have no trouble recognizing the grammatical sense of the following construction: Colorless
green ideas sleep furiously.
 We can think of language (p. 34) as a system of signs, which we can study synchronically (as
a complete system at any given point) or diachronically (in its historical development).
 A signifier (Sr), the sound-image or its graphical equivalent, and its signified (Sd), the
concept or the meaning, make up the sign (pp. 36-38). For example, we can say that, to an
English speaking person, the three black marks c-a-t serve as the signifier which evokes the
"cat."
 The relation between Sr and Sd is arbitrary (pp. 37-38). Different languages use different
words for the same thing. No physical connection links a given signifier and a signified.
 Described in these terms, language is a system of formal relations. This means that the key to
understanding the structure of the system lies in difference. One sound differs from another
sound (as p and b); one word differs from another (as pat and bat); and one grammatical
forms differs from another (as has run from will run). No linguistic unit (sound or word) has
significance in and of itself. Each unit acquires meaning in conjunction with other units. We
can distinguish (p. 29) formal language (Saussure calls it langue) from the actual use of
language (which he calls parole).
  Every expression we use is based on collective behavior or convention. We can say that a sign
is motivated when we perceive a connection between Sr and Sd, e.g. in instances of
onomatopoeia like "bow-wow" and "tick-tock" (pp. 39-30).

2. Roland Barthes, 1915-80

This cultural theorist and analyst was born in Cherbourg, a port-city northwest of Paris. His parents
were Louis Barthes, a naval officer, and Henriette Binger. His father died in 1916, during combat in
the North Sea. In 1924, Barthes and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended (1924-30) the
Lycee Montaigne. Unfortunately, he spent long periods of his youth in sanatoriums, undergoing
treatment for TB. When he recovered, he studied (1935-39) French and the classics at the University
of Paris. He was exempted from military service during WW II (he was ill with TB during the period
1941-47). Later, when he wasn't undergoing treatment for TB, he taught at a variety of schools,
including the Lycees Voltaire and Carnot. He taught at universities in Rumania (1948-49) and Egypt
(1949-50) before he joined (in 1952) the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he
devoted his time to sociology and lexicology.

Barthes' academic career fell into three phases. During the first phase, he concentrated on
demystifying the stereotypes of bourgeois culture (as he put it). For example, in Writing degree
Zero (1953), Barthes examined the link between writing and biography: he studied the historical
conditions of literary language and the difficulty of a modern practice of writing. Committed to
language, he argued, the writer is at once caught up in particular discursive orders, the socially
instituted forms of writing, a set of signs (a myth) of literature--hence the search for an unmarked
language, before the closure of myth, a writing degree zero.

During the years 1954-56, Barthes wrote a series of essays for the magazine called Les Lettres
nouvelles, in which he exposed a "Mythology of the Month," i.e., he showed how the denotations in
the signs of popular culture betray connotations which are themselves "myths" generated by the larger
sign system that makes up society. The book which contains these studies of everyday signs--
appropriately enough, it is entitled Mythologies (1957)--offers his meditations on many topics, such as
striptease, the New Citroen, steak and chips, and so on. In each essay, he takes a seemingly unnoticed
phenomenon from everyday life and deconstructs it, i.e., shows that the "obvious" connotations which
it carries have been carefully constructed. This account of contemporary myth involved Barthes in the
development of semiology.

During the second phase, the semiotics phase dating from 1956, he took over Saussure's concept of
the sign, together with the concept of language as a sign system, producing work which can be
regarded as an appendix to Mythologies. During this period, Barthes produced such works
as Elements of Semiology (1964), and The Fashion System (1967), adapting Saussure's model to the
study of cultural phenomena other than language. During this period, he became (in 1962) Directeur
d'Etudes in the VIth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, where he devoted his time to the
"sociology of signs, symbols, and representations."

The third phase began with the publication of S/Z (1970), marking a shift from Saussurean semiology
to a theory of "the text," which he defined as a field of the signifier and of the symbolic. S/Z is a
reading of Balzac's novel Sarrasine, plotting the migration of five "codes," understood as open
groupings of signifieds and as points of crossing with other texts. The distinction between "the
writable" and "the readable," between what can be written/rewritten today, i.e., actively produced by
the reader, and what can no longer be written but only read, i.e., passively consumed, provides a new
basis for evaluation. Barthes extends this idea in The Pleasure of the Text (1973) via the body as text
and language as an object of desire. During this period, he wrote books as fragments, suggesting his
retreat from what might be called the discourse of power, as caught in the subject/object relationship
and the habits of rhetoric. He tried to distinguish "the ideological" from "the aesthetic," between the
language of science, which deals with stable meanings and which is identified with the sign, and the
language of writing, which aims as displacement, dispersion. He offers a "textual" reading of himself
in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975). In 1976, he became professor of "literary semiology" at
the College de France. In his last book, Camera Lucinda (1980), he reflects on the levels of meaning
of the photograph.

Barthes died on 26 March 1980, having been knocked over by a laundry van (reports suggest that the
driver was drunk).

In the notes that follow, I summarise the principle he forumlates in Elements of Semiology:

the basic elements of semiology

The goal of semiological analysis is to identify the principle at work in the message or text, i.e., to
determine the rhetoric or the grammar tying together all the elements. I gloss the chief terms used by
analysts in the section below, and I provide a short guide to semiological analysis in the very last
section.

1. axes of language

We get a sense of how language works as a system (Barthes, 1983, p. 58) if we think of language as a
pair of axes or two planes of mental activity, the vertical plane being the selective principle
(vocabulary) and the horizontal dimension being the combinative principle (sentences). For example,
we might select items (words) from various categories in the vertical (associative) dimension, such as
kitten, cat, moggy, tom, puss, mouser; sat, rested, crouched; mat, rug, carpet and so on, and link them
in the horizontal (combinative) plane to formulate statements like The cat sat on the mat.

The idea is to think of language (Saussure, 1916) as a system of signs. Let me say a few words about
this important concept. By "system" we mean an organized whole, involving a number of parts in
some non-random relationship with one another. In other words, a system is a set of entities that
interact with one another to form a whole. We speak of mechanical, biological, psychological, or
socio-cultural systems. A machine is a system. We think of the brake system in a car. An organism
like the body is a system. We think of the nervous system. With regard to social units, we think of
the family. The members of the family are the objects of the system. Their characteristics as
individuals are the attributes; their interaction forms constitute the relationships. A family exists in a
social and cultural environment, which affects and is shaped by, the members.

The following example will help clarify three related terms: The system of traffic signals performs the
function of controlling traffic; the structure of this system is the binary opposition of red and green
lights in alternating sequence.

To make a long story short, we should think of texts as systems, e.g., lexical, graphic, and so on,
which gain their effects via the constant clashes between these systems.

2. Signs

As we have seen, de Saussure--the founder of semiology--was the first to elaborate the tripartite
relationship

signifier + signified = sign

According to Saussure, the linguistic sign unites a sound-image and a concept. The relationship
between Sr and Sd is arbitrary. It should be remembered that neither of these entities exist outside the
construct we call a sign. We separate these entities for convenience only.
  The signifier--which has a physical existence--carries the meaning. This is the sign as we
perceive it: the marks on the paper or the sounds in the air.
 The signified is a mental concept that is the meaning. It is common to all members of the
same culture who share the same language.
 The sign is the associative total of the two: we speak of it as a signifying construct.

During the 1960s, long hair on a man, especially if it was dirty (the signifier) usually suggested
counterculture (the signified), whereas short hair on a man (the signifier) suggested the businessman
or "square" (the signifier). Of course, these meanings vary according to place and time.

3. motivation

The terms motivation and constraint describe the extent to which the signified determines the
signifier. In other words, the form that a photograph of a car can take is determined by the appearance
of the specific car itself. The form of the signifier of a generalized car or a traffic sign is determined
by the convention that is accepted by the users of the code.

motivated signs

Motivated signs are iconic signs; they are characterized by a natural relation between signifier and
signified. A portrait or a photograph is iconic, in that the signifier represents the appearance of the
signified. The faithfulness or the accuracy of the representation--the degree to which the signified is
re-presented in the signifier--is an inverse measure of how conventionalized it is. A realistic portrait
(painting) is highly conventionalized: this means that to signify the work relies on our experience of
the sort of reality it re-presents. A photograph of a street scene communicates easily because of our
familiarity with the reality it re-presents. It is important to recognize that (i) in signs of high
motivation, the signified is the determining influence, and (ii) in signs of low motivation, convention
determines the form of the signifier.

unmotivated signs

In unmotivated signs, the signifieds relate to their signifiers by convention alone, i.e., by an

agreement among the users of these signs. Thus, convention plays a key role in our understanding of
any sign. We need to know how to read a photograph or a sculpture, say. Convention serves as the
social dimension of signs. We may not understand the unmotivated verbal sign for car that the French
use, but we understand the road signs in France in so far as they are iconic. The arbitrary dimension of
the unmotivated sign is often disguised by the apparent natural iconic motivation; hence, a man in a
detective story showing the inside of his wallet is conventionally a sign of a policeman identifying
himself and not a sign of a peddler of pornographic postcards.

4. denotation and connotation

Saussure concentrated on the denotative function of signs; by contrast, Barthes pushed the analysis to
another level, the connotative. Simply put, these two terms describe the meanings signs convey.

denotation

By denotation we mean the common sense, obvious meaning of the sign. A photograph of a street
scene denotes the street that was photographed. This is the mechanical reproduction (on film) of the
object the camera points at. For example, I can use color film, pick a day of pale sunshine, and use a
soft focus lens to make the street appear warm and happy, a safe community for children. I can use
black and white film, hard focus, and strong contrast, to make the street appear cold, inhospitable. The
denotative meanings would be the same.
connotation

By connotation we mean the interaction that occurs when the sign and the feelings of the viewer meet.
At this point, meanings move toward the subjective interpretation of the sign (as illustrated by the
above examples). If denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed.

5. paradigms and syntagms

Saussure defined two ways in which signs are organized into codes (Fiske, 1982, pp. 61-64):

paradigm

A paradigm is a vertical set of units (each unit being a sign or word), from which the required one is
selected, e.g., the set of shapes for road signs: square, round and triangular.

syntagm

A syntagm is the horizontal chain into which units are linked, according to agreed rules and
conventions, to make a meaningful whole. The syntagm is the statement into which the chosen signs
are combined. A road sign is a syntagm, a combination of the chosen shape with the chosen symbol.

Paradigms and syntagms are fundamental to the way that any system of signs is organized. In written
language, the letters of the alphabet are the basic vertical paradigms. These may be combined into
syntagms called words. These words can be formed into syntagms called phrases or sentences, i.e.,
according to the rules of grammar.

Syntagms--like sentences--exist in time: we can think of them as a chain. But syntagms of visual signs
can exist simultaneously in space. Thus, a sign of two children leaving school, in black silhouette, can
be syntagmatically combined with a red triangle or a road sign to mean: SCHOOL: BEWARE OF
CHILDREN.

6. difference

The term "difference" describes the relationship between the elements at work in any given message.
They work as rhetorical figures, such as the figures of addition, where the elements are added to a
word, sentence, or image; or the figures of suppression, where elements are suppressed, concealed, or
excluded. The key to understanding the structure of a system of signs, then, lies in understanding the
relationship(s) the system utilizes. We are interested in the techniques of additions primarily, which
include:

 Repetition is the repetition of the same element: word, sound or image;

 Similarity is similarity of form, as in rhyme, or on similarity of content, as in comparisons;
 Accumulation refers to a number of different elements conveying the idea of abundance or
profusion, verging on disorder and chaos; and
 Opposition occurs at the level of form (an ad set in two different countries) and the level of
content (an advertisement for detergent featuring a man in white smocking sitting on a heap
of coal).

Thus, difference might be a function of contrast or opposition in terms of:

balance - instability;
symmetry - asymmetry
harmony - confusion
 regularity - irregularity
understatement - exaggeration
predictability - spontaneity
expensive - cheap
high quality - low quality
exciting - boring

The idea is that nothing in and of itself has meaning: rather, meaning is a function of some
relationship.

7. Metaphor and Metonymy

These terms--used by Roman Jakobson, the linguist--define the two fundamental modes by which the
meanings of signs are conveyed.

metaphor

Metaphor involves a transposition or displacement from signified to signifier, together with the
recognition that such a transposition implies an equivalence between these two elements of the sign.
Likewise, "visual metaphors" are constructed, e.g., a portrait of a man is constructed in such a way as
to convince us that the two dimensional visual representation is equivalent to its three-dimensional
reality. Similarly, a map signifies the reality to which it refers by constructing an equivalent form in
whose features we can recognize those of the object itself. Thus, both verbal and non-verbal, arbitrary
and iconic signs can be metaphorical.

metonymy

In metonymy, the signification depends upon the ability of a sign to act as a part which signifies
the whole. Television advertisers are particularly adept at exploiting both metaphoric and metonymic
modes in order to cram as much meaning as possible into a short period of time. For example, the sign
of a mother pouring out a particular breakfast cereal for her children is a metonym of all her maternal
activities of cooking, cleaning, and so on, but a metaphor for the love and the security she provides.
As we have suggested, the structural relationship between these modes can be visualized as operating
on two axes, one vertical and one horizontal in character.

8. three orders of signification

In the study of signs, we can speak of different levels of meaning or orders of signification.

first order

In the first order of signification, the sign is self-contained: the photograph means the individual car.
This is the denotative order of signification.

second order

In the second order, this simple motivated meaning meets a whole range of cultural meanings that
derive not from the sign itself but from the way society uses and values the Sr and the Sd. This is the
connotative order of signification. In our society, a car--or a sign for a car--can signify virility or
freedom. According to Barthes (1964), signs in the second order of signification operate in two
distinct ways: as mythmakers and as connotative agents.
  When signs move to the second order of signification, they carry cultural meanings as well as
representational ones, i.e., the signs become the signifiers of CULTURAL MEANINGS.
Barthes calls the cultural meanings of these signs MYTHS. The sign loses its specific
signified and becomes a second-order signifier, i.e., a conveyor of cultural meaning.
 We can explain the connotative order of signification with a simple example. A general's
uniform denotes his rank (first-order sign) but connotes the respect we show it (second-order
sign). Say that by the end of the war film we are watching the general's uniform is tattered
and torn; it still denotes his rank; however, the connotative meaning will have changed.

Thus, in the connotative order, signs signify values, emotions, and attitudes. Camera angle, lighting,
and background music, for example, are used in film and television to connote meaning. The
connotative meaning of a televised painting can be changed by the background music accompanying
it.

third order

The range of cultural meanings that are generated in this second order cohere in the third order of
signification into a cultural picture of the world. It is in this order (the third) that a car forms part of
the imagery of an industrial, materialist, and rootless society. The myths which operate as organizing
structures, e.g., the myth of the neighborhood policeman as keeper of the peace and friend of all
residents of the community, are themselves organized into a pattern which we might call
MYTHOLOGY or IDEOLOGY. In the third order of signification, ideology reflects the broad
principles by which a culture organizes and interprets the reality with which it has to cope. This
mythology is a function of the social institutions and the individuals who make up these institutions.

9. semiological analysis

Barthes (1964) points out that semiological analysis involves two operations: dissection and
articulation. The first operation (dissection) includes looking for fragments (elements) which when
associated one with another suggest a certain meaning. The analyst looks for paradigms, i.e., classes
or groups from which elements have been chosen (and endowed with specific meaning).

The units or elements in this group or class share a number of characteristics. Two units of the same
paradigm must resemble one another so that the difference which separates them becomes evident,
e.g., to a foreigner, American automobiles seem to look alike, yet they differ in make and color.

The second operation (articulation) involves determining the rules of combination. This is the activity
of articulation. In summary: The analyst takes the object, decomposes it and then re-composes it. The
analyst makes something appear which was invisible or unintelligible.

10. Concluding Remarks

Like structuralism, semiology decenters the individual, who is no longer the source of meaning.
Semiology (Barthes, 1964) refuses the obvious meaning of a work: it does not take the message at
face value. We are concerned with MESSAGES and the preferred ways to READ them.

I conclude these notes with a guide to a semiological analysis, based on Barthes' (1977) seminal
essay, "The Rhetoric of the Image."

a guide to a semiological analysis

This guide identifies the key activities analysts undertake when they conduct a semiological critique
of a text, such as an advertisement, a tv program, a movie, a painting, etc.
1. Offer your reader a brief overview of the message

The idea is to provide a brief description of the advertisement (say) so that the reader can
visualize the message.

2. Identify the key signifiers and signifieds.

Ask questions like: What are the important signifiers and what do they signify? What is the
system (of signs) that gives the text meaning? What ideological and sociological matters are
involved?

3. Identify the paradigms that have been exploited.

Ask questions like: What is the central opposition in the text? What paired opposites fit under
the various categories? Do these oppositions have any psychological or social significance?

4. Identify the syntagms that come across.

Ask questions like: What statements or messages (directly and implied) can you identify?
Answer this question by considering

(a) the linguistic message

This message is made up of all the words, denotations and connotations.

(b) the non-coded iconographic (literal) message

This message is made up of the denotations in the photograph.

(c) the coded iconographic (symbolic) message

This message is made up of the visual connotations we detect in the arrangement of

photographed elements.

5. Finally, identify the principle at work in the message or text. Remember, the goal of analysis
is to determine the rhetoric or the grammar tying together all the elements.

References

Barthes, R. 1964. "The Structuralist Activity." From Essais Critiques, trans. R. Howard.

In Partisan Review 34 (Winter):82-88.

---. 1967. Writing Degree Zero, trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith. 1953; rptd. New York: Hill
and Wang.

---. 1967. Mytholgies, trans. A. Lavers. 1957; rptd. London: Hill and Wang.

---. 1967. Elements of Semiology, trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith. 1964; rptd. New York: Hill
and Wang.

---. 1974. S/Z, trans. R. Howard. 1970; rptd. Oxford: Blackwell.

---. 1975. The Pleasure of the Text, trans. R. Howard. 1973; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.

---. 1977. Roland Barthes on Roland Barthes, trans. R. Howard. 1975; rptd. New York: Hill
and Wang.

---. 1977. "The Rhetoric of the Image." In his book Image-Music-Text, trans. S. Heath. 1964;
rpt. London: Wm. Collins Sons and Co., pp. 32-51.

---. 1981. Camera Lucinda, trans. R. Howard. 1980; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.

---. 1983. The Fashion System, trans. M. Ward and R. Howard. 1967; rptd. New York: Hill
and Wang.

de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1960. Course in General Linguistics. 1916; rpt. London: Peter Owen.

Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Fiske, John. 1982. Introduction to Communication. London: Methuen.

Jakobson, Roman. 1960. "Linguistics and Poetics." In Style in Language, ed. Thomas A.
Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 350-77.

Williams, Raymond. 1976. "Structural." In Key Words. London: Fontana, pp. 253-59.

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