SEMIOTICS.
As required, today I am going to write an article on what is Semiotics. So what is Semiotics?
To put it in an easier context, this website says that Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning.
DEFINING SEMIOTICS
According to Wikipedia, Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication.This includes the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. As different from linguistics, however, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems.To put it in an easier context, this website says that Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning.
It is a way of seeing the world, and of understanding how the landscape and culture in which we live has a massive impact on all of us unconsciously.
Our actions and thoughts – what we do automatically – are often governed by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions, and dependent upon our ability to interpret them instinctively and instantly.
For instance, when we see the different colours of a traffic light, we automatically know how to react to them. We know this without even thinking about it. But this is a sign which has been established by cultural convention over a long period of time and which we learn as children, and requires a deal of unconscious cultural knowledge to understand its meaning.
Viewing and interpreting (or decoding) this sign enables us to navigate the landscape of our streets and society.
WHEN DID SEMIOTICS STARTED?
According to Wikipedia, the general study of signs that began in Latin with Augustine culminated in Latin with the 1632 Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot, and then began anew in late modernity with the attempt in 1867 by Charles Sanders Peirce to draw up a "new list of categories". Peirce aimed to base his new list directly upon experience precisely as constituted by action of signs, in contrast with the list of Aristotle's categories which aimed to articulate within experience the dimension of being that is independent of experience and knowable as such, through human understanding.SOME SEMIOTICIANS WORTH MENTIONING...
Here are some notable semioticians that are listed on the Wikipedia page.
- Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), a noted logician who founded philosophical pragmatism, defined semiosis as an irreducibly triadic process wherein something, as an object, logically determines or influences something as a sign to determine or influence something as an interpretation or interpretant, itself a sign, thus leading to further interpretants. Semiosis is logically structured to perpetuate itself. The object may be quality, fact, rule, or even fictional (Hamlet), and may be "immediate" to the sign, the object as represented in the sign, or "dynamic", the object as it really is, on which the immediate object is founded. The interpretant may be "immediate" to the sign, all that the sign immediately expresses, such as a word's usual meaning; or "dynamic", such as a state of agitation; or "final" or "normal", the ultimate ramifications of the sign about its object, to which inquiry taken far enough would be destined and with which any interpretant, at most, may coincide. His semiotic covered not only artificial, linguistic, and symbolic signs, but also semblances such as kindred sensible qualities, and indices such as reactions. He came c. 1903 to classify any sign by three interdependent trichotomies, intersecting to form ten (rather than 27) classes of sign. Signs also enter into various kinds of meaningful combinations; Peirce covered both semantic and syntactical issues in his speculative grammar. He regarded formal semiotic as logic per se and part of philosophy; as also encompassing study of arguments (hypothetical, deductive, and inductive) and inquiry's methods including pragmatism; and as allied to, but distinct from logic's pure mathematics. In addition to pragmatism, Peirce provided a definition of the term "sign" as:
- Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), the "father" of modern linguistics, proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating the signifier as the form of the word or phrase uttered, to the signified as the mental concept. According to Saussure, the sign is completely arbitrary—i.e., there is no necessary connection between the sign and its meaning. This sets him apart from previous philosophers, such as Plato or the scholastics, who thought that there must be some connection between a signifier and the object it signifies. In his Course in General Linguistics, Saussure credits the American linguist William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) with insisting on the arbitrary nature of the sign. Saussure's insistence on the arbitrariness of the sign also has influenced later philosophers and theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term sémiologie while teaching his landmark "Course on General Linguistics" at the University of Geneva from 1906 to 1911. Saussure posited that no word is inherently meaningful. Rather a word is only a "signifier", i.e., the representation of something, and it must be combined in the brain with the "signified", or the thing itself, in order to form a meaning-imbued "sign". Saussure believed that dismantling signs was a real science, for in doing so we come to an empirical understanding of how humans synthesize physical stimuli into words and other abstract concepts.
- Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) studied the sign processes in animals. He used the German word for "environment", umwelt, to describe the individual's subjective world, and he invented the concept of functional circle (funktionskreis) as a general model of sign processes. In his Theory of Meaning (Bedeutungslehre, 1940), he described the semiotic approach to biology, thus establishing the field that now is called biosemiotics.
APPLICATION OF SEMIOTICS
Applications of semiotics include:
- It represents a methodology for the analysis of "texts" regardless of the medium in which it is presented. For these purposes, "text" is any message preserved in a form whose existence is independent of both sender and receiver;
- It may improve ergonomic design in situations where it is important to ensure that human beings are able to interact more effectively with their environments, whether it be on a large scale, as in architecture, or on a small scale, such as the configuration of instrumentation for human use.
In some countries, its role is limited to literary criticism and an appreciation of audio and visual media. This narrow focus may inhibit a more general study of the social and political forces shaping how different media are used and their dynamic status within modern culture. Issues of technological determinism in the choice of media and the design of communication strategies assume new importance in this age of mass media.
Publication of research is both in dedicated journals such as Sign Systems Studies, established by Yuri Lotman and published by Tartu University Press; Semiotica, founded by Thomas A. Sebeok and published by Mouton de Gruyter; Zeitschrift für Semiotik; European Journal of Semiotics; Versus (founded and directed by Umberto Eco), et al.; The American Journal of Semiotics; and as articles accepted in periodicals of other disciplines, especially journals oriented toward philosophy and cultural criticism.
The major semiotic book series "Semiotics, Communication, Cognition", published by De Gruyter Mouton (series editors Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull) replaces the former "Approaches to Semiotics" (more than 120 volumes) and "Approaches to Applied Semiotics" (series editor Thomas A. Sebeok). Since 1980 the Semiotic Society of America has produced an annual conference series: Semiotics: The Proceedings of the Semiotic Society of America.
Marketing is another application of semiotics. Epure, Eisenstat and Dinu (2014) said, "semiotics allows for the practical distinction of persuasion from manipulation in marketing communication" (p. 592). Semiotics is used in marketing as a persuasive device to influence buyers to change their attitudes and behaviours in the market place. Two ways that Epure, Eisenstat and Dinu (2014) state that semiotics are used are:
- Surface: signs are used to create a personality for the product; creativity plays its foremost role at this level.
- Underlying: the concealed meaning of the text, imagery, sounds, etc.
Semiotics analysis is used by scholars and professional researchers as a method to interpret meanings behind symbols and how the meanings are created. Below is an example of how semiotic analysis is utilized in a research paper published in an academic journal: Educational Research and Reviews.
In 2016 Kibar Aktin (Sinop Üniversitesi, Turkey) presented a research study on "how children fictionalize the past by using their imagination skills in the process of historical thinking" (Aktin, 2016). The data collected as part of this project included pictures drawn by pre-school age children depicting their recollection of a field trip to a historical museum. Aktin used semiotics to analyze these drawings through attempting to understand the different aspects of the drawings and the meaning behind the drawings. In doing this, the researcher and the two experts assisting him were seeking the connotative meaning behind the symbols presented by the young students. Their analysis was divided into three sections:
- Definitional meaning analysis
- Personal meaning analysis
- Contextual meaning analysis
Definitional meaning analysis consists of the researcher's own interpretation and definition of the children's drawings. The images in the drawing are related to what the researcher believes they represent in the literal world.
Personal meaning analysis involves the researcher sitting with the artist and discussing their interpretation of their drawing. By doing this the researcher can get an understanding as to what the students were trying to express through their drawings.
Lastly, Aktin used contextual meaning analysis to perceive the context behind the facets of the drawings to decipher what was derived from the children's memory and what was purely imaginative. This enables the researcher to achieve their goal of understanding how children fictionalize the past by using their imaginative skills.
Marketing Semiotics research, based on Connotations has been stated in the research conducted by Pathak Gauri and Kazi Roshan in 2016.The research studied whether connotations/context as semiotic elements affect brand building parameters like Brand awareness, Brand feelings, Brand image, Brand reliability, Brand association, Brand preference/bonding and Brand trust.They have concluded that, the type of Brand influences the Brand building parameters in terms of the marketing semiotic element of Connotations. Their recommendations state that it is imperative to consider the possible connotations that would arise through the communication messages before launching/publicising it. This research has been substantiated with the results attained under the research conducted on the beauty bar Dove.<Pathak Gauri & Kazi Roshan,2015> (Source: Wikipedia)
CONCLUSION
Anyone can be considered a s a semiotician as we interpret signs unconsciously anytime, anywhere. As an example, we follow traffic rules that are mostly represented by icons. We know which restroom is for male and female from the sign or symbol on the doors of the restrooms. These occasions show that semiotics plays an important role in our lives.
Referenced Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
Comments
Post a Comment