Semiotics

The science of signs

Semiotics

"the study of signs and symbols in various fields, esp. language." - OED

Rhetoric

"the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing." - OED

"language designed to persuade or impress (often with an implication of insincerity or exaggeration etc.)" - OED

Semiotics and rhetoric in relation to journalism

Any proposition (a statement or assertion) can be expressed in a variety of ways. In any given situation journalists find the way that will be the most effective in swaying their audience.

News organisations and their journalists use semiotics and rhetoric in order to cause a desired effect. Some would call this “putting a spin” on the news.

However, each media organisation has a set of its own signs that establish the relationship between the organisation and its audience.

As human beings we communicate with each other and, as a result, produce a host of messages,

symbolism and signifying systems and, naturally, also have to interpret all sorts of messages.

A simple model representing the way we communicate with each other looks like this:

In communicating with each other we produce meanings that require decoding. A knowledge of semiotics allows us to do this more thoroughly.

Semiotics, or semiology, was founded, separately, by American philosopher Charles S Pierce (1839-1914)

and Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).

Leading modern semiotic theorists include Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917-1992),

Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), Christian Metz (1931-1993), Umberto Eco (b 1932) and Julia Kristeva (b 1941).

“semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign” (Umberto Eco).

Saussure said a sign composed of:

a 'signifier' - the form which the sign takes; and the 'signified' - the concept it represents.

Put simply, a sign is a pattern of data which, when perceived, brings to mind something other than itself.

Look at the following for a few moments.

What does what you have just seen mean to you? Write these thoughts down.

Your thoughts on the sign you have just seen are, clearly:

a perception of something that exists in the physical world

an object or concept to which the perception is said to refer

a thought, image or concept that is formed in the mind as a result of the perception and which relates to the object

Repeat the exercise with:

Repeat the exercise with:

Repeat the exercise with:

Repeat the exercise with:

Repeat the exercise with:

More terminology...

the sign: something which is perceived, but which stands for something else

the concept: the thoughts or images that are brought to mind by the perception of the sign

the object: the "something else" in the world to which the sign refers

A semiotic model provides a way to talk about how our thoughts can be expressed in terms of the world

outside of our minds.

The triangle of meaning (Ogden & Richards, The Meaning of Meaning, 1923)

There are three basic types of signs: the icon, the index, and the symbol.

Icon - a sign that resembles or imitates its object (eg a portrait, a cartoon, a scale-model, onomatopoeia, metaphors, SFX)

Index - a sign that is physically connected to its object (eg natural signs such as smoke, footprints; medical symptoms such as pulse, pain; directional signposts; rain, sunshine etc on a TV weather map)

Symbol - a sign whose relationship to its object is arbitrary (eg language in general, alphabets, punctuation, numbers, morse code, traffic lights, national flags)

News organisations could be considered “semiotic manipulators” as they attempt to seduce, persuade and

manipulate their audience.

The relationship that we have with the news organisations that we trust is a relationship between object and

consumer.

We tend to consume our news from organisations that we ourselves feel aligned to.

Consider how you consume news – are you complicit in allowing media outlets a level of control over the information that you are allowed to experience?

Do you consent to being told what you, as a receiver of information, are allowed to think?

Those who control media organisations – the media gatekeepers – assume that they have full control over

semiotics and audience manipulation.

How does the decline of 'old media' and the increase of information dissemination and increased news flow threaten/undermine a media organisation's ability to

manipulate its audience?

So, we can use semiotics to deconstruct and analyse texts. However, whilst content analysis involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest 'content' of media texts, semiotics seeks to analyse media texts as structured wholes and investigates latent, connotative meanings. Semiotics is rarely quantitative.

Conduct a semiotic analysis of a media text

Start by... selecting your media text

Semiotics

The science of signs