"A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable...; I shall call it semiology [semiotics]. [Semiotics] would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them." |
Semiotics
The work we will be doing with the Twitterive and with the video mashup will call for you to develop familiarity with semiotics--the theoretical understanding of how signs construct meanings for particular audiences.
At the simplest level, any sign, whether a spoken or written word, a still or moving image, has two basic parts: the signifier and the signified. The signifier points to a conceptual meaning; the signified is the conceptual meaning toward which the signifier points.
Key terms
Rhetorical/semiotic strategies
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Hall, chapter 4
(Visual structures) View and image
Ideal and real Given and new Center and margin Foreground and background Proximity and presence Before and after Past, present, and future Fast and slow |
Hall, Chapter 5
(Textual structures) Readers and texts
Words and images Functions Forms Placing Prominence Voices Intertextuality |
Hall, Chapter 6
(Interpretation) Concepts
Connotation and denotation Combinations and substitutions Tokens and types Rule-following Conventions Classifications |
Hall, Chapter 7
(Framing) Semantic units
genres styles Stereotypes Institutions Ideologies Discourses Myths Paradigms |
Hall, Chapter 8
(Stories) Fact and fiction
Narratives Legends Characters and personas Viewpoints Mysteries Tensions Turning points Resolutions |
Alan Watts, The Book, p. 27
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"[I]n language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system" (Saussure 120). |
Coding narrative with Roland Barthes
The following is from Kaja Silverman's Subject of Semiotics, chapter 6, "Re-Writing the Classic Text," which is devoted to explicating Roland Barthes approach to transforming a "readerly" text into a "writerly" text (the book S/Z).
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Barthes uses a series of five codes to read a text as a writer would:
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