SemioticsTHE STUDY OF MEANING MAKING.

ALSO KNOWN AS:

SEMIOLOGY SEMASIOLOGY SEMEIOLOGY

What is Semiotics ?

• The study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior; the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing.

• Semiotics is the science of communication and sign systems, in short, of the ways people understand phenomena and organize them mentally, and of the ways in which they devise means for transmitting that understanding and for sharing it with others.

• In a nut shell, semiotics is the study of meaning making.

Types of Semiotics.

Semantics

PragmaticsSyntactics

• Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning

• Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures

• Pragmatics: Relation between signs and sign-using agents

Semioticians

To Name a Few…

Mikhail Bakhtin 

Marcel Danesi 

Umberto Eco  

Félix Guattari

Roman Jakobson 

Kalevi Kull 

Charles S. Peirce  

Ferdinand de Sa

ussure

Thomas Sebeok 

Eero Tarasti  

Vyacheslav Ivanov  

Roland Barthes

 John Deely

Algirdas Julien Greimas

 Louis Hjelmslev

Roberta Kevelson

Juri Lotman

Augusto Ponzio

 Michael Silverstein

Jakob von Uexküll

Vladimir Toporov

Ferdinand de Saussure

Charles pierce

The Fathers of Semiotic theories.

Ferdinand de Saussure : “Semiology is a science which studies the role of signs as a part of social life”.

Charles Pierce : “Semiotics was the former doctrine of signs” which was closely related to logic. He decorated that “every thought is a sign”.

Umberto Eco: “Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign”.

Ferdinand de Saussure.• He was a Swiss linguist and Semiotician.

• His ideas laid a foundation for many significant development both in linguistics and Semiology in the 20th century.

• He knew various languages like Latin, Greek and SANSKRIT .

• He was one of the founding fathers of semiotics which he called semiology.

• His concept of the sign/ signified/ referent forms the core of the field.

• FATHER OF MODERN LINGUISTICS.

Charles Pierce.

•He was born on September 10th,1839.

•He was famous for his works on logic, math, philosophy, chemistry and linguistics.

•He broke down semiotics into three parts – Representamen, Object, Interpretant.•According to him nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign.

Saussure VS.

Pierce

• Binary vs. triadic conception of the sign.

• Generates an endless chain of interpretants.

• Saussure’s theory primarily applies to languages

and either excludes or assimilates to languages and also non-verbal semiotic facts.

• Peirce does not seem to have a distinct place in

his typology of signs for anything like Saussure’s

language.

Umberto Eco.

•He was a Philosopher, Essayist, Novelist and Semiotician.

•He was born on January 5th,1932.

•He is best known for his work for his novel, “Il Nome Della Rosa” ( The Name of the Rose).

Why study semiotics in Mass Communication?

•Semiotics is the science of communication and sign systems, in short, of the ways people understand phenomena and organize them mentally

•Its field covers all non-verbal signaling and extends to domains whose communicative dimension is perceived only unconsciously or subliminally.

Some Fields of Semiotics

• Biosemiotics

• Cognitive semiotics

• Computational semiotics

• Cultural semiotics

• Design semiotics

• Product semiotics

• Law and semiotics

• Literary semiotics

• Music semiology

• Gregorian chant semiology

• Organizational semiotics

• Semiotic anthropology

• Semiotic engineering

• Semiotic information theory .

• Social semiotics

• Urban semiotics

• Theatre semiotics

• Visual semiotics

• Zoo semiotics

Structuralism

• Structuralism is a method for analyzing the deep structuring logic of cultural products and practices.

• Everything from tribal kinship structures to clothing fashions and advertising could for the structuralists be subjected to structural analysis.

Semiotics and Religion.

A religious symbol is not only a picture of something that represents something else by the virtue of analogy. It is a full representation of the communicative process between the sign that is open for interpretation to its interpreter, and at the same time an object that stands open for interpretation as it is in the role of dynamic object.

Semiotics and Theatre.• As a methodology for analysis it is particularly useful for studying performance.

• There is a set, an actual performance venue, there are lights, props etcetera.

• Within all these elements there are signs that contribute to how we interpret and understand the meaning of any particular performance.

Semiotics and Colour.•How colors express certain coded information that make the viewer feel a certain emotion

• Colors influence mood and can even effect our energy levels

•People pay more attention to color than you might think, and it can play a huge part in influencing decision making

Semiotics and Architecture.•It seems that pre-modern architecture has utilized the three signs;- icons, index, symbols

• where as, the modern architecture mostly makes use of iconic signs attaching less importance to indexical and symbolic ones.

•The postmodern architecture, however, in protest against the inflexible approaches of the modern architecture, is iconic.

Semiotics, Language and Culture.

Linguistic and Cultural Semiotics is a branch of communication theory that investigates sign systems and the modes of representation that humans use to convey feelings, thoughts, ideas, and ideologies.

Semiotics and Marketing.

•It influences an array of marketplace activities, such as product design, branding, advertising, and retailing.

•In a general sense consumer culture is the product of the consumer's relationship to messages of all kinds.

Idea no.1

•Meaning exists only because it is shared and negotiated.

•We have entered into an unacknowledged agreement to make certain sounds mean certain things.

The sign :

• F Saussure asked, “why does a word mean what it means?”

• He came to a conclusion that a sign consists of three parts :

Signified(The concept)

Referent (Real item)

Signifier (sound, image or marks on paper)

s

Idea no.3

•Our perception of reality is structured and shaped by the words and signs we use

•We don’t simply label the world.

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