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That which we call rose by any other name would smell as sweet (Shakespeare) Semiotics and Its Historical Traces his modern term ‘Semiotics’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Semeiotikos’ which means an observant of signs. Earliest writings available to us reveals that the writers of the classical period used the term ‘Semeion’ as a synonym for ‘Tekmerion’ to mean evidence, proof, symptom of what was at least temporarily absent or hidden from the view. For example smoke is a sign of fire, clouds as a sign of an impending storm and so on. In these events we have natural object or event which can be directly observed in the present standing of the other. However, the concept of ‘Paradigm’ signs was discussed in the writings of Sextus Empiricus as the medical symptom as a mean of diagnosing the condition of a patient. So the principal Semeiotikos was thus physician seeking to determine the hidden disease. T Among classical writers it was Quintillian who explicitly points out the three temporal directions of the sign: with the inference from sign to what is signified going from effect to prior cause as the founding of the fossils of the aquatic animals in a desert shows the presence of the water

Transcript of Semiotics Final

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That which we call rose by any other name would smell as sweet

(Shakespeare)Semiotics and Its Historical Traces

his modern term ‘Semiotics’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Semeiotikos’ which

means an observant of signs. Earliest writings available to us reveals that the

writers of the classical period used the term ‘Semeion’ as a synonym for ‘Tekmerion’ to

mean evidence, proof, symptom of what was at least temporarily absent or hidden from

the view. For example smoke is a sign of fire, clouds as a sign of an impending storm and

so on. In these events we have natural object or event which can be directly observed in

the present standing of the other. However, the concept of ‘Paradigm’ signs was

discussed in the writings of Sextus Empiricus as the medical symptom as a mean of

diagnosing the condition of a patient. So the principal Semeiotikos was thus physician

seeking to determine the hidden disease.

T

Among classical writers it was Quintillian who explicitly points out the three temporal

directions of the sign: with the inference from sign to what is signified going from effect

to prior cause as the founding of the fossils of the aquatic animals in a desert shows the

presence of the water reservoir at that place in some past time, with the inference now

from a presently observed cause to a future effect as a serious wound is the sign of an

impending death, and contemporaneous inference means the inference from the present

sign to the present cause as the presence of smoke signifies the presence of fire at the

same time. These classical writers also differentiate, following Aristotle, between

‘Infallible’ and ‘Refutable’ signs. For example the seizing of heart beat is a sign of sure

death. However, refutable signs can be explained through fast breathing as a sign of

fever, since a man may breathe hard without having a fever. Classical philosophers did

not attempt to include within the extension of ‘Semeion’ Words or Sentences as a

linguistic signs. However, Parmenides drew a contrast between ‘Semeia’ (Sign) as a

reliable indication of what they stand for and ‘Onoma’ (words) which are arbitrary

posited names introducing distinction where none exist in the objective world. Contrary

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to it classical included within the scope of their discussion certain conventional signs

such as ‘Torch’ and ‘Bell’. These signs were determined by lawgivers and are in our

power whether we wish them to make known one thing or the other. It was Aristotle who

discussed linguistics or language in terms of sign and argued in the opening passage of

De Interpretation that spoken expressions are symbols (Symbola) of mental impression,

and written expressions are the symbols of spoken expression. And just as not all men

have the same writing, so not all make the same vocal sounds but the thing of which all

these are primarily the signs (Semeia) are the mental impressions for all men. Here one

thing is very important that Aristotle refers to spoken or written words not as signs

(Semeia) as he does at the end of his statement, but as symbols (Symbola) which are

arbitrarily instituted marks of significance. Because they are arbitrary they vary from one

culture to another. We can see that Aristotle draws a relationship between written and

spoken words on the one hand and the spoken to the mental impression on the other. So

we can not say that written words are the evidence of the spoken rather we can say that

written words replaces the spoken words and serves as a more permanent substitute

which enables communication at a greater distance, both spatially and temporally. In the

same way and on the same grounds we can say that spoken words or expressions are the

replacement or substitute for mental impression. Just as the same spoken words can be

replaced by a variety of written marks depending on the culture’s system of writing, so

the same mental impression should in common by all can be replaced by a variety of

speech sounds. So we can notice that written and spoken words are termed as symbols

and contrasted with signs, though they were like signs if they could function as evidence

of the mental state of those producing them.

It was during the Middle Ages that the conception of the sign was given a new

dimension. The Greek word Semeion was translated in Latin word ‘Signum’ and included

natural occurrences and linguistic expression within its circumference. However the main

focus was on the latter, transforming the linguistic sign into ‘Paradigm Signs’. It was St

Augustine who proposed that a sign is something which is itself sensed and which

indicated to the mind something beyond the sign itself. Under this general definition a

distinction was made between natural occurrences and linguistic expressions and were

termed as ‘Natural’ signs and ‘Conventional’ signs respectively. Natural signs are those

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which without the intent or desire of signifying makes us aware of something beyond

themselves. Contrary to this is the ‘signa data’ (Signs Given or Produced). Such signs are

used by living creatures with the intent of conveying something to others or to show the

motion of the spirit or something they have sensed or understand. However, here comes a

very slight difference between signa data and conventional signs. Signa data produced

with the intent of communication may not be conventional in the sense of confirming to a

rule established within a linguistic community. The mental word or impression will be

one which is common to all men, but for the purpose of transferring to another mind the

speaker must use an arbitrary conventional words unique to his linguistic community.

Now the primary Natural-Conventional contrast shifts towards the contrast between

mental and spoken and written words by which they are made public. Hobbes calls them

‘Private’ and ‘Public’ signs. Private signs are for our own use while public signs are signs

by which we make our thought known to others. Here the term sign has no virtual affinity

with the ‘Semeion’ of classical period, which had excluded from the domain of sign

exactly what it is now being restricted to. These public and private signs are included in

the scope of branch of philosophy. Locke later terms ‘Semiotics’ and whereof the

business is to study the nature of sign.

After these in the Modern Ages come Peirce and Saussure who revolutionize the idea of

sign, Semeiotics and Semeiology. Both the scholars proposed their own models of sign

and their own philosophies. The tradition of Saussure became Semeiology and the

tradition set by the Peirce came to light as Semeiotics. However, nowadays semeiotics is

an umbrella term to embrace the whole field. Peirce’s Semeiotics involves the study not

only of what we call sign but also of any thing which stands for something else. It means

that sign can take form of words, image, sound, gesture and so on. While Saussure’s

Semeiology was a science which studied the role of sign as a part of social life.

Contemporary semioticians study signs not in isolation but as a part of a semiotic system.

They study how meanings are made and how the reality is reconstructed through signs to

communicate. Here the two genres Semeiotics and Semantics meet. However, Semantic

deals with what the words or signs mean, while Semeiotics deals with how the sign

means. Semeiotics also relates with other branches of linguistics:

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Semantic: The relationship of the signs with what they stand for.

Syntactic: The formal or structural relationship between signs.

Pragmatics: The relation of signs to the interpreter.

Here a question arises why semioticians choose the language for study. There are many

other communicative systems also comprising signs. However, language is the most

developed and organized communicative system which has a strong tradition behind it

and it can translate any other communicative system in itself. It does not mean that

semiotics is limited to the human language only rather linguistics is only a part of

Semiotics which deals with all sorts of communications through any medium. However,

it chooses the language system to deal with.

Now come to the most fundamental point what is sign. According to Peirce nothing is

sign unless it is interpreted as a sign. Anything can be sign as long as someone interprets

it as signifying something else. These signs, however, convey meanings by a familiar

system of convention. Peirce and Saussure offered two different models of what

constitute a sign. Saussure offered ‘Dyadic’ model while Peirce offered ‘Triadic’ model.

According to Saussure’s model a sign is composed of

A Signifier – The form which a sign takes

A Signified – The concept it represents

So sign is the realm or entity where Signifier and Signified both meet and their

relationship is called Signification. A sign must have both the Signifier and the Signified.

a totally meaningless Signifier or an absolutely formless Signified is impossible.

However, same Signifier can stand for a different Signified. Similarly many Signifiers can

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stand for the same Signified. For Saussure, both the Signifier and the Signified were

purely psychological. However, this model gradually tends to take a very materialistic

approach. Now the signifier is commonly interpreted as the material form of the sign

which can be seen, heard, touched, smelt or tasted. However, it should be kept in mind

that for Saussure both the Signifier and the Signified were Psychological, Saussure’s

Signified is not to be identified with a referent but is a concept in the mind – not a thing

but the notion of the thing. As symbols or signs is not proxy of their objects but a vehicle

for the conception of the object. In talking about things we have conception of them, not

the thing themselves and it is the conception not the thing that symbols directly mean.

Saussure was aware that the term Signifier and Signified showed the inseparable unity

like the two sides of a piece of a paper. They were intimately linked in the mind by an

associative link. Within in the context of the language a sign could not consist of sounds

without sense or sense without sound. Saussure argued that signs only make sense as a

part of formal, generalized and abstract system. His concept of meaning was purely

relational rather than referential. For him signs refer to each other. Within the language

system everything depends upon relation. No sign makes sense but only in relations with

others or in some context. So it can be said that it is not the individual Signifier that

stands for or reflects the individual object or event in the real world, rather entire system

of signs, the entire field of ‘Langue’, lies parallel to reality itself. It is the totality of the

systematic language which is analogous to whatever organized structure exists in the

world of reality, and that our understanding processes from one whole to the other rather

than one to one basis. It means that the value of the sign is not absolute and independent

one and it is determined by the relationship between the sign and the other sign within the

system as a whole.

Although Saussure’s Signifier is treated by its users as standing for signified but there is

no intrinsic, direct or inevitable relationship between the two. He stressed the

arbitrariness of the sign rather in more formal words: arbitrariness of the link between

Signifier and the Signified. As Saussure’s main concern was with linguistic signs he felt

that the arbitrary nature of the sign was the first principle of the language. He observed

that there is nothing at all to prevent the association of any idea whatsoever with any

sequence of sounds whatsoever. When we say that the relationship between Signifier and

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Signified is arbitrary it does not mean that there is no rule governing their relationship

and one is free to associate any signified with any signifier or vice versa. The relation

between the two is not a matter of individual’s choice; if it were then communication

would have become impossible. It can be said that individual has no power to alter any

sign in any respect once it has become established in the linguistic community. Levi

Strauss rightly argued that the sign is arbitrary ‘a priori’ but cease to be arbitrary ‘a

posteriori’ – after a sign has come into historical existence it cannot be arbitrarily

changed. Although it seems that a Signifier is chosen freely, but from the point of view of

linguistic community it is imposed rather than freely chosen because a language is always

an inheritance from the past which its users have no choice but to accept. Even in the case

of arbitrary colors of traffic lights, the original choice of ‘Red’ for ‘Stop’ was not entirely

arbitrary since it already carried relevant association with danger. Here we can see that

Saussurean legacy of arbitrariness is shifting towards conventional notions – dependent

on social and cultural conventions. In case of linguistic signs a word means what it does

to us only because we collectively agree to let it do so. Saussure felt that language is the

most suitable system which can serve as a model for the whole of Semiology. When

Saussure was formulating his model of Semiology, across the Atlantic a famous

philosopher and logician Charles Sander Peirce formulated his own model of sign, of

Semiotics. Contrary to Saussure’s model Peirce’s model is ‘Triadic’ involving three

things as the components of sign:

The Representamen: The form which the sign takes (not necessarily material)

An Interpretant: Not the interpreter but the sense made of the sign

An Object: To which the sign refers

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In this model Representamen is similar in meaning to Saussure’s ‘Signifier’ while the

Interpretant is similar in meaning to the ‘Signified’. However, the difference between

Interpretant and Signified is that Signified is a goal in itself while Interpretant is itself a

sign in the mind of the interpreter. Peirce argued that a sign, in the form of the

Representamen, creates an equivalent sign (Interpretant) in the mind of the interpreter

and then this Interpretant further signifies the thing in the real world which is an object –

the referent which Saussure excluded from his model. Though to some people the idea of

Signified (Interpretant) acting as a Signifier for an object may seem vague or rather

complex one but the people familiar to the use of dictionary definitely convince that an

entry in the dictionary and every lexical item in the lexicon refers to another which in

turn signified the other thing and the process goes on.

After Peirce many Semiotic triangles were introduced out of which one fairly famous is

of Ogden and Richards in which they merely changed the terms as ‘Symbol’, ‘Thought’

and Referent. The broken line at the end of the Semiotic Triangles intended to indicate

that there is not necessarily any observable or direct relationship between sign vehicle

and referent. Unlike Saussure’s abstract signified Peirce’s referent is an object real in the

world and thus allocates a place for an objective reality which Saussure’s model lacks.

Unlike Saussure who gave the notion of arbitrary relationship between Signifier

and the Signified Peirce explained the different types of relationships between the two.

He gave rather several logical typologies of signs. It is important to note that these

typologies are not the kinds of signs rather these are the modes of relationships between

Signifier and Signified. The actual number of these sign form is astonishingly great to the

extent of 59049. However these were boiled down to the mere figure of 66 and further

packed in three following modes:

Symbol / Symbolic A mode in which Signifier and Signified do not resemble at

all and their relationship is purely conventional – so that the

relationship must be learnt.

Icon / Iconic: A mode in which signifier resembles or imitates the

signified in looking, sounding, feeling, smelling and

so on.

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Index / Indexical: A mode in which signifier is not arbitrarily but directly

connected in some way to the signified – this link

can be observed or inferred.

Symbolic signs are always conventional to the highest degree. Iconic signs are always

involved with some degree of conventionality. However, indexical signs direct the

attention to their object by blind compulsion. For Peirce symbol is a sign which refers to

the object that it denotes by the virtue of a law, convention or an association of general

idea which operates to cause the symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object. So

all books, word, sentences and other conventional signs are symbols. A sign is an icon

insofar as it is like that thing and used as a sign for it. However, indexicality is the most

unfamiliar case. As we have already said that there is a genuine relation between sign ad

object, it is just like a piece torn away from the object it signifies.. the index is connected

to its referent as the matter of fact. Unlike the icon (the object of which can be fictional)

an index stands unequivocally for this or that existing thing. It is important to note that

Peirce’s these three modes of signs are not necessarily mutually exclusive: a sign can be

symbol, an icon, an index or any combination of these. For example a map is indexical in

pointing to the location of things, iconic in its representation of the directional relation

and symbolic in using the conventional symbols. In other words we can say that

determination of whether a sign is symbolic, iconic or indexical depends upon the way in

which it is used. A sign can be symbolic in one context and iconic in the other. A sign

may be iconic for one person and indexical for the other. For example the sign of woman

can be iconic for some particular women or indexical in some broader sense. So we can

say that when we call a sign symbolic, iconic or indexical we are not referring to the

objective quality of that sign rather we are refereeing to the viewer’s experience of the

sign. Moreover, viewer’s experience of the sign is not a permanent phenomenon rather it

is subject to change over the time. In other words any fixation of the chain of the

signifiers is temporary and socially determined. Peirce stipulates that there is a life in

these signs and they go through a certain order of development. He argued that iconicity

is the most original and default mode of signification, an index is a degenerate in lesser

degree whilst symbol is a degenerate in greater degree. He favored his notion by

presenting the fact that all the primitive writings such as Egyptian Hieroglyphics were

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iconic. The historical evidence also indicates a tendency of linguistic signs to evolve from

indexical and iconic forms towards symbolic forms. Writing system evolve from

Pictographs. Ideographs and Hieroglyphics and afterwards take the abstract alphabetical

shape / form.

The Origins of Language

Curiosity is the instinct of man even right from the very natal day. An infant

shows curiosity when any thing comes to his view. Same is the case with curiosity about

language but curiosity about the only language which exist into his environment. For this

an already well developed language must be there which makes an infant curious and he

starts to learn it. But a question is who first of all use language and made man learn it.

There are different theories about it as has been described by C . Barber and George

Yule. But here we will discuss origin of language with reference to semiotics. As you

know semiotics is the study of signs.

Armstrong, Stokoe and Willox (1995) look beyond these theories for the origin of

language. Frank and Wilson (1998) argue that the human hand cum brain has evolved

with the capacity of doing every thing humans do including the production of language

signs.

Chomsky (1957) commented that language evolved naturally in specie that itself

had evolved wit in the latest to emerge our branch of primate order. Modern researches

speculate that speech was evolved in human history between 4,000-140, 00 but there are

also many clues and vestiges in the research which point to beginning of genuine

language much earlier perhaps about million years ago in initial form of sign languages.

Gestures have recently been studied as output from the same source as speaker’s

vocal output McNeil (1992). McNeil means to say that part of brain which deals with

speech and sign is the same. It puts the conclusion that the production of speech and sign

cannot be separated from each other rather they are complementary.

David McNeil finds gestural and guttural symbols accomplishing the same

purpose of communication. When early human communication had evolved from the

global gesture stage to:

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The hand- is- noun.

Movement- is- verb.

This two element grammar may be simple but it is powerful and its acquisition towards

a fully human mind, facial expression of approval, amazement and many other emotions

and the moving hand is expressing a sentence. It is economical as well as logical to

believe that these uses were representational as well as instrumental sources of various

signs. Even the users of today express themselves through gestures (signs) cum language.

But that such signs are also used as give the meaning e.g. good bye, victory etc. But it

would irresponsible to suggest that modern sign languages as ASL and BSL are just like

the very first sign languages

. We must know that the signs in their initial stage were very much simple and it

is the process of evolution which developed the signs into complex system of today’s

languages through sign languages and pictoral forms of languages and ideographic forms

of languages with unique features and unique grammar as well.

William C, Stokoe (1997) confirms that these gestures surely have been

accompanied by varying facial expressions and all behaviors subsumed in popular phrase

‘body language’ quite probably with incidental vocalization as well. There is no clear

evidence in all this however only likelihood that movements became sign languages

before there was or could be spoken language. It is well known evidence that a child in

the early days of his life communicates gesturely for some months before he uses the

language of his adult caretaker. It is a question like which came first

‘chicken or egg’

as which came first

‘signs or words’

But most probably they are signs because according to the theory of evolution by

Darwin for the origin of life and then origin of HUMAN LIFE there are many phases of

development. The same must be the case with human language. Evolution is always from

simple to complex system. First of all it was communication which was of vital

importance through simple sign system towards complex system of vocal languages.

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Modality and Representation

Modality and representation are linked together through Reality. Representation

always involves reality which is revealed through modality. Here modality is the truth

value of a sign which is source of representing reality. Semiotics involves studying

representation as signs always represent any signified reality. To semioticians, a

defining feature of signs is that they are treated by their users as 'standing for' or

‘representing reality’. As Russell commented that words are the labels we put on

things since Words are only Names for Things.

Reality or the world is created by the language we use: Even if we do not adopt

the radical stance that the real world is a product of our sign systems, we must still

acknowledge that there are many things in the experiential world for which we have

no words and that most words do not correspond to objects in the known world at all.

Thus, all words are 'abstractions', and there is no direct correspondence between

words and 'things'(reality) in the world.

We believe that 'Words are only Names for Things', a stance involving the

assumption that 'things' necessarily exist independently of language prior to them

being 'labeled' with words. According to this position there is a one-to-one

correspondence between word and referent and language is simply a nomenclature -

an item-by-item naming of things in the world. As Saussure put it,

‘This is 'the superficial view taken by the general public’

A language consists of many kinds of signs other than simply nouns. Clearly, language

cannot be reduced to the naming of things.

The less naive realists might note at this point that words do not necessarily name

only physical things which exist in an objective material world but may also label

imaginary things and also concepts. Peirce's referent, for instance, is not limited to

things which exist in the physical world but may include non-existent objects and

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ideas. However, as Saussure noted, the notion of words as labels for concepts

'assumes that ideas exist independently of words.

A radical response to realists is that things do not exist independently of the sign

systems which we use; 'reality' is created by the media which seem simply to

represent it. However, such observations clearly do not demonstrate that the lexical

structure of language reflects the structure of an external reality.

Saussure's model of the sign involves no direct reference to reality outside the

sign. This was not a 'denial' of reality in the Saussurean model the signified is only a

mental concept; concepts are mental constructs, not 'external' objects.

For Peirce, reality can only be known via signs. If representations are our only access

to reality, determining their accuracy is modality. Peirce introduced the notion of

'modality' to refer to the truth value of a sign. He introduced three kinds of Modality.

1. Actuality, (logical)

2. Necessity

3. Possibility (hypothetical)

Furthermore, his classification of signs in terms of the mode of relationship of the

sign vehicle to its referent reflects their modality. Peirce asserted that, logically,

signification could only ever offer a partial truth because if it offered the complete

truth it would destroy itself by becoming identical with its object.

Philosophical idealism considers that reality is purely subjective and is constructed in

our use of signs. Philosophical idealism may see no problem with the Saussurean

model. Indeed, the Saussurean model has itself been described as 'idealist'.

On the contrary, Philosophical realism believes that a single objective reality

exists indisputably 'outside' us. According to this stance, reality may be 'distorted' by

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the media which we use to apprehend it because reality can only be represented with

partial truth not a complete truth.

Even those who adopt an intermediate constructionist (or constructivist) position

believe that language and other media play a major part in the social construction of

reality. They may tend to object to the absence of social reality in Saussure's model.

Umberto Eco provocatively asserts that Semiotics is, in principle, the discipline

studying everything which can be used in order to lie.

Modality Markers

Modality Markers are such clues as refer to what are variously described as the

plausibility, reliability, credibility, truth, accuracy or facticity of texts within a given

genre as representations of some recognizable reality. Gunther Kress and Theo van

Leeuwen acknowledge that ‘A social semiotic theory of truth’ cannot claim to

establish the absolute truth or untruth of representations. Modality refers to the reality

status accorded to or claimed by a sign. More formally, Robert Hodge and Gunther

Kress declare that modality refers to its value as truth or fact.

Modality Judgments

In making sense of a text, its interpreters make 'Modality Judgments' about it. It is

drawn on their knowledge of the world and of the medium. For instance, they assign

it to fact or fiction, actuality or acting, live or recorded. Clearly the extent to which a

text may be perceived as real depends in part on the medium employed. Writing, for

instance, generally has a lower modality than film and television. However, no rigid

ranking of media modalities is possible.

Example:

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John Kennedy showed children a simple line drawing featuring a group of children sitting

in a circle with a gap in their midst. He asked them to add to this gap a drawing of their

own, and when they concentrated on the central region of the drawing, many of them

tried to pick up the pencil which was depicted in the top right-hand corner of the

drawing! Being absorbed in the task led them to unconsciously accept the terms in which

reality was constructed within the medium. This is not likely to be a phenomenon

confined to children, since when absorbed in narrative we frequently fall into a

'suspension of disbelief' without compromising our ability to distinguish representations

from reality. Charles Peirce reflected that 'in contemplating a painting, there is a moment

when we lose the consciousness that it is not the thing, the distinction of the real and the

copy disappears.

Example:

Whilst in a conscious comparison of a photographic image with a cartoon image of

the same thing the photograph is likely to be judged as more 'realistic', the mental

schemata involved in visual recognition may be closer to the simplicity of cartoon

images than to photographs. People can identify an image as a hand when it is drawn

as a cartoon more quickly than when they are shown a photograph of a hand. This

underlines the importance of perceptual codes in constructing reality.

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Umberto Eco argues that through familiarity, an iconic signifier can acquire primacy

over its signified. Such a sign becomes conventional 'step by step, the more its

addressee becomes acquainted with it. At a certain point the iconic representation,

however stylized it may be, appears to be more true than the real experience, and

people begin to look at things through the glasses of iconic convention.

The media which are typically judged to be the most 'realistic' are photographic -

especially film and television.

James Monaco suggests that 'in film, the signifier and the signified are almost

identical... The power of language systems is that there is a very great difference

between the signifier and the signified. This is an important part of what Christian

Metz was referring to when he described the cinematic signifier as 'the imaginary

signifier'. In being less reliant than writing on symbolic signs, film, television and

photography suggest less of an obvious gap between the signifier and its signified,

which make them seem to offer 'reflections of reality’ But photography does not

reproduce its object. Whilst we do not mistake one for the other we do need to remind

ourselves that a photograph or a film does not simply record an event, but is only one

of an infinite number of possible representations.

All media texts, however 'realistic', are representations rather than simply recordings

or reproductions of reality.

. For Bazin, aesthetic realism depended on a broader 'truth to reality'

Modality judgments involve comparisons of textual representations with models drawn

from the everyday world and with models based on the genre; they are therefore

obviously dependent on relevant experience of both the world and the medium.

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Different genres, whether classified by medium (e.g. comic, cartoon, film, TV, painting)

or by content (e.g. Western, Science Fiction, Romance, news) establish sets of modality

markers. The content comes to be accepted as a 'reflection of reality'

John Tagg argues that the signifier is treated as if it were identical with a pre-existent

signified and the reader's role is purely that of a consumer. Signifier and signified

appear not only to unite, but the signifier seems to become transparent so that the

concept seems to present itself, and the arbitrary sign is naturalized by a false identity

between reference and referents, between the text and the world.

However, Tagg adds that such a stance need not involve positing 'a closed world of

codes' or the denial of the existence of what is represented outside the process which

represents it. He stresses 'the crucial relation of meaning to questions of practice and

power, arguing that 'the Real is a complex of dominant and dominated.

Example:

Anthony Wilden suggests several alternative interpretations regarding this sign:

this [pipe] is not a pipe;

this [image of a pipe] is not a pipe;

this [painting] is not a pipe;

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this [sentence] is not a pipe;

[this] this is not a pipe;

[this] is not a pipe.

Although we habitually relate the 'meaning' of texts to the stated or inferred purposes

of their makers, Magritte's own purposes are not essential to our current concerns. It

suits our purposes here to suggest that the painting could be taken as meaning that

this representation (or any representation) is not that which it represents. That this

image of a pipe is 'only an image' and that we can't smoke it, seems obvious - nobody

'in their right mind' would be so foolish as to try to pick it up and use it as a functional

pipe. The most realistic representation may also symbolically or metaphorically 'stand

for' something else entirely. Furthermore, the depiction of a pipe is no guarantee of

the existence of a specific pipe in the world of which this is an accurate depiction.

Indeed, it seems a fairly generalized pipe and could therefore be seen as an

illustration of the 'concept' of a pipe rather than of a specific pipe. One function of art

is 'to make the familiar strange.’

One reason for the confusion of signifiers and referential signifieds was that we

sometimes allow language to take us further up the 'ladder of abstraction' than we think

we are. The ladder metaphor is consistent with how we routinely refer to levels of

abstraction - we talk of thinkers with 'their heads in the clouds' and of 'realists' with their

'feet on the ground'. As we move up the ladder we move from the particular to the

general, from concrete reality to abstract generalization. The General Semanticists were

of course hard-headed realists and what they wanted was for people to keep their feet

firmly planted on the ground. Claude Lévi-Strauss declared that understanding consists in

the reduction of one type of reality to another. As we all know that the word 'dog' cannot

bark or bite.

In his massively influential book The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud

argued that 'dream-content is, as it were, presented in hieroglyphics, whose symbols

must be translated. It would of course be incorrect to read these symbols in

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accordance with their values as pictures, instead of in accordance with their meaning

as symbols'. He also observed that 'words are often treated in dreams as things'.

Levels of Reality

The confusion of 'levels of reality' is also a normal feature of an early phase of

cognitive development in childhood. Jerome Bruner observed that for pre-school children

thought and the object of thought seem to be the same thing, but that during schooling

one comes to separate word and thing. Helen Keller, who became blind and deaf at the

age of eighteen months, was gradually taught to speak by her nurse. At the age of nine

whilst playing with water she felt with her hand the motions of the nurse's throat and

mouth vibrating the word 'water'. In a sudden flash of revelation she cried out words to

the effect that 'everything has a name!'

Piaget illustrates the 'nominal realism' of young children in an interview with

a child aged nine-and-a-half:

Could the sun have been called 'moon' and the moon 'sun'?

No.

Why not?

Because the sun shines brighter than the moon.

But if everyone had called the sun 'moon', and the moon 'sun', would we have

known it was wrong?

Yes, because the sun is always bigger, it always stays like it is and so does the

moon.

Yes, but the sun isn't changed, only its name. Could it have been called... etc.?

No... Because the moon rises in the evening, and the sun in the day.

Thus for the child, words do not seem at all arbitrary

However, in the Middle Ages words and images were still seen as having a natural

connection to things. Words were seen as the names of things rather than as

representations.

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. By the seventeenth century clear distinctions were being made between

representations (signifiers), ideas (signifieds) and things (referents). Scholars now

regarded signifiers as referring to ideas rather than directly to things. Representations

were conventionalized constructions which were relatively independent both of what

they represented and of their authors; knowledge involved manipulating such signs.

Olson notes that once such distinctions are made, the way is open to making Modality

Judgments about the status of representations as there is no representation without

intention and interpretation.

Illusion of Transparency

The medium of language comes to acquire the illusion of transparency. Yet even

an image is not what it represents - the presence of an image marks the absence of its

referent. The difference between signifier and signified is fundamental. Nevertheless,

when the signifiers are experienced as highly realistic as in the case of photography and

film - it is particularly easy to slip into regarding them as identical with their signifieds.

Yet in the commonsense attitude of everyday life we routinely treat high modality

signifiers in this way. Thus television is frequently described as a 'window on the world'

and we usually assume that:

The camera never lies

We know, of course, that 'the dog in the film can bark but it cannot bite. In the

sense that there is always an unavoidable difference between the represented and its

representation so it can be argued:

The camera always lies

Signs cannot be permitted to swallow up their referents in a never-ending chain of

signification, in which one sign always points on to another, and the circle is never

broken by the intrusion of that to which the sign refers. Some theorists note that an

emphasis on the unavoidability of signification does not necessitate denying any external

reality.

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David Sless comments that 'I am not suggesting that the only things in the

universe are signs or texts, or that without signs nothing could exist. However, I am

arguing that without signs nothing is conceivable.

These would be the successive phases of the image:

1. It is the reflection of a basic reality.

2. It masks and perverts a basic reality.

3. It masks the absence of a basic reality.

4. It bears no relation to any reality.

Baudrillard argues that when speech and writing were created, signs were invented to

point to material or social reality. In the postmodern age of 'hyper-reality' in which

what are only illusions in the media of communication seem very real, signs hide the

absence of reality and only pretend to mean something.

Such perspectives, of course, beg the fundamental question,

'What is "Real"?

The semiotic stance which problematizes Reality and emphasizes mediation and

convention is sometimes criticized as extreme 'cultural relativism' by those who turn

towards realism - such critics often object to an apparent sidelining of referential

concerns such as 'accuracy'. However, even philosophical realists would accept that

much of our knowledge of the world is indirect. We experience many things

primarily as they are represented to us within our media and communication

technologies. Since representations cannot be identical copies of what they represent,

they can never be neutral and transparent but are instead constitutive of reality.

Judith Butler puts it, we need to ask,

'What does transparency keep obscure?'

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Semiotics helps us to not to take representations for granted as 'reflections of

reality', enabling us to take them apart and consider whose realities they represent.