Pesaro festival of modern cinema (1965)

The debate between Metz, Eco and Pasolini. Linguistics is the foundation of semiology. The image is not decomposable: there are no articulations

"below" the level of the shot. Coding is a function of syntagmatic categories. Cinema semiology is on the level of poetics or rhetoric rather

than theory of the sign. A cinema semiology is best described in relation to narrative.

Metz: from the point of view of the text; Eco : from the point of view of the interpreter or reader; Pasolini: from the point of view of the creator.

The semiotic of Umberto Eco

Charles Sanders Peirce: "A sign is something which stands for something else in some respect or capacity for someone.”

representamen or representer object or referent interpretant

1. representamen (icon, index, symbol) Â „2. obj ect ‡ 3. i nterpretant

The semiotic of Umberto Eco Charles Sanders Peirce: "A sign is something which

stands for something else in some respect or capacity for someone."

We think only in signs. Interpretation is guided by context. This context may be

cultural as well as a personal ideolect or ideolects. Signification and interpretation are essentially an open-

ended process.

1. representamen (icon, index, symbol) Â „2. obj ect ‡ 3. i nterpretant

The semiotic of Umberto Eco

1. A sign is a material representation (representamen).2. A representation is recognized to be a sign through an act of

interpretation (interpretant).3. A sign is recognized as standing for its referent on the basis

of a rule or convention.4. The function of a sign is to correlate an expression and a

content.5. A code is a repertoire of these correlations of expression and

content.6. Expression and content are independent of one another. In

other words, the meaning (content) of the expression changes with context.

7. Both expression and content have pertinent, articulated features.

The semiotic of Umberto Eco

8. The content of an expression can be described as independent of any "real" referent. In other words, an expression can refer to an imaginary or false world as well as a real and truthful one.

9. The rules of semiotics are not necessarily the rules of linguistics. There are many kinds of codes or correlations that are not those of verbal speech.

10. The content of an expression is both denotative and connotative.

11. Every act of signification is both complex and heterogeneous. It can encompass or combine:

multiple modes of representation: iconic, indexical, symbolic; different kinds of articulation; both arbitrary and motivated correlation of expression and content; different kinds of interpretive labor: recognition, categorization, combination,

invention.

Complexity of sign-functions

connotation connotation connotation

CONTENT denotation----------------------------------------------------------------------- | |1st "star"

EXPRESSION | |2nd /star/ | symbolic iconic indexical

The semiotic of Umberto Eco

Eco’s critique of Barthes and Metz critique of analogy poverty vs. repleteness of photographic

image the effect of context on interpretation codes of similitude vs. “impression of

reality”