Showing papers on "Sign (semiotics) published in 1977"

Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject

Abstract: First published in 1977, this book presents a comprehensive and lucid guide through the labyrinths of semiology and structuralism — perhaps the most significant systems of study to have been developed in the twentieth century. The authors describe the early presuppositions of structuralism and semiology which claim to be a materialist theory of language based on Saussure’s notion of the sign. They show how these presuppositions have been challenged by work following Althusser’s development of the Marxist theory of ideology, and by Lacan’s re-reading of Freud. The book explains how the encounter of two disciplines — psychoanalysis and Marxism — on the ground of their common problem —language — has produced a new understanding of society and its subjects. It produces a critical re-examination of the traditional Marxist theory of ideology, together with the concepts of sign and identity of the subject.

Linguistic Communication: Theory and Definition

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of theory and definition in context to the linguistic communication. The sum of language as a communicatory system can be concluded into three indispensable characteristics. (1) There must be a set, or lexicon, of artificial signs. (2) These signs can be and are used as symbols; in other words, they are used on the conceptual level and without reference to a particular perceptual or behavioral instance of the item they signify. (3) There must be a grammar, that is, a set of conventional rules that govern the formation of sign combinations that have semantic content in addition to the meanings of the individual signs. The artificiality of signs and, thus, their communicatory status may be established only after prolonged observation in the wild. In the laboratory, it is a foregone conclusion that the signs are artificial as they are manmade and, as such, not a part of the subject's original behavioral repertoire. The use of signs as symbols by free-living organisms could be established only after a minute examination of their sign repertoire and the activities preceding and following the occurrence of specific signs. In the experimental situation, on the other hand, how the signs are being used can be discovered by certain questions, that is, by means of the very system of communication to which the subject is being introduced. The question of conformity to grammatical rules of sign combination is a good deal easier to decide.

Grapho-Linguistics: Children's Drawings in Relation to Reading and Writing Skills.

Abstract: IF WRITING HAD never been invented, reading problems would not exist. Writing has its roots in picture making activities. If early humans had not discovered that their draw ings conveyed meaning to others as well as to themselves, the earliest form of pictorial communication, picture-writing, would never have begun. Therefore, a deeper study of the writing processes may lead to better understanding of reading problems. The interaction between language and drawing is not surprising if one considers that both are part of the symbolic function of the brain which makes possible the representation of an object, event, or conceptual scheme by means of a signifier or sign. Several behavior patterns fall under this representative or figura ti ve ability of the mind, and all are based on the evocation of an object or event which is not present. This absent object may be evoked through imitative play activities, mental images, graphic images, physical gestures, or verbal actions. These functions appear toward the end of a child's second year and in crease in complexity through the sixth year when they are incorpo rated into more concrete operations which combine representation and abstract thinking. A study was undertaken in the Washington, D.C, elementary schools to discover new approaches to reading that would take advantage of the child's symbolic thinking and employ language and images relevant and credible to children, particularly disadvantaged children. Of the various symbolic behaviors, the graphic image is the easiest to

Little Big Man, the Novel and the Film: A Study of Narrative Structure

Abstract: The chief difficulty with comparative studies of novels and films remains the disparity between the two media. Unless the comparison is made in terms of content or generic conventions, a critic can hardly avoid the problems involved in considering a verbal as against a visual medium. These problems are generally compounded when the discussion involves a comparison of a film made from a novel. As George Bluestone has pointed out (in Novels Into FiIm^ ), such studies usually devolve into invidious comparisons, based on unfounded assumptions about the relationship between a film and its source. The film maker, according to Bluestone, does not attempt to reproduce the novel- at least not its discursive impact- but views the novel as raw material to be transformed into presentational art. Thus Bluestone provides a useful corrective to certain misguided attempts at comparison. But his conclusion that "cinematic and literary forms resist conversion" 2 tends to obscure the possibilities for comparative work at a new level of conceptualization, distinct from comparison per se, but dependent on the insights that such studies generate. In an effort to purse these possibilities, I have attempted an analysis of Arthur Penn's film version of Thomas Berger's novel Little Big Man. What I have to say about the film speaks for itself; but I would like here to outline the principles implicit in my study. If we are to make effective use of comparative studies between films and novels, we must first discover the appropriate grounds for comparison. The history of film suggests where the difficulty lies. In searching for an aesthetic model on which to fashion a new narrative form, early film makers (Melils, for example) borrowed first from stage conventions and later from novelistic ones (remembering D. W. Griffith's remark on the importance of Dickens for film). The implications of Griffith's discoveries in film were articulated in the film theories of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, who explained that " the raw material of the cinema is the filmstrip itself, which is subject to no laws but those inherent in its own unique nature and form." 3 From that moment on, any attempts to compare novels and films, based on the simplified notion that either form derives narrative models directly from reality, were vitiated. The question remains, however, what do novels and films share. The answer, simply enough, is narrative: both novels and films tells stories. What Griffith, Eisenstein, and Pudovkin were asking was how can film effectively tell a story. From this it would seem to follow that the way to approach comparisons of novels and films is through analyses of narrative. Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in fact, provide the impetus for such an approach in their attempts in The Nature of Narrative to "break down many of the chronological, linguistic, and narrowly conceived generic categories frequently employed in the discussion of narrative." 4 It requires only an additional step to include film narrative within that same critical re-evaluation. One problem, however, remains: the linguistic sign and the cinematic sign differ considerably. As Saussurian linguistics has informed us, language has a double articulation: that is, that a linguistic sign unites a concept (i.e., a mental image) with an acoustic image (the sound of a word), and that this linguistic sign derives its meanings from within the language system. In contrast, the cinematic sign is a mechanically reproduced image of reality; the cinematic sign, therefore, refers outside its own system. While this difference between linguistic and cinematic signs might seem to confirm the notion that film merely reproduces reality while fiction recreates it, Kuleshov's experiments with cinematic narration and geographic space demonstrate that the cinematic sign acquires additional meaning from the context in which it appears. Montage perception depends not on the individual shots, but on their sequential relationship. …

A classification of extensions & signs in media analysis

Abstract: The paper offers a classification of extensions (anything that mediates between the sender's message and the receiver) and signs (the generic term for vehicles of meaning). Extensions are divided into relaying, broadcasting, amplifying and reproducing, and the advantages and drawbacks of each are considered. The typologies or the sign proposed by Peirce and Langer are discussed and a modified version of the latter proposed in which the subcategories are the symbol, the signal and the symptom. An additional method of categorization‐‐according to the perceptual system addressed‐‐is suggested. Complicating factors arising from these classifications are discussed, including borderline cases such as performance. The paper concludes with an analysis of a phenomenon in which most of the categories of extension and sign converge: the feature film.

A Western Apache Writing System: The Symbols of Silas John

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses western apache writing system. It is essential to point out that problems may arise when etic concepts are applied a priori to the description of individual writing systems. Compound symbols are divided into five structural types according to the number of elements they contain and the classes to which these elements belong. The linguistic referent of a noncompound symbol is always isomorphic with the meaning of the element that forms it and can be learned in a single operation. Phonetic semantic signs are commonly partitioned into two subclasses—logographs and phraseographs. Apaches knowledge of Silas John's writing system is not widespread. The linguistic referents of compound symbols are never isomorphic with the names of the Class B and/or C elements that form them. The utility of kinetic sign and phonetic-kinetic sign as comparative concepts is judged on the basis of their capacity to clarify and describe emic distinctions in other systems of writing.

Deciphering the Signs of the Times

Abstract: Semiology is the science of signs, but this definition tells us very little. If anything which has meaning is a sign, then semiology might plausibly claim most of human knowledge as its province. All human artifacts, be they texts, paintings, songs, buildings, or everyday utilitarian objects, have meaning, as do all those human actions which are usually studied by sociology, psychology, history, anthropology. In treating artifacts and actions as bearers of meaning, semiology would already have immense scope, but it would not have reached its potential limits. The realm of semiology can also include natural objects, for they too function as signs: certain clouds mean rain to the meteorological eye, and a particular geological configuration may be a sign of oil, or at least tell of the region's history. If semiology studies everything which signifies, then it embraces a wide variety of disciplines with distinct objects and different methods. Not surprisingly, the first congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, which drew some seven hundred people to Milan in the summer of 1974, was something of a hotch-potch, with papers on literature, music, film, painting, architecture, advertising, animal communication, scientific languages, non-verbal communication, and psychopathology. How one can justify such imperialism (the word seems scarcely too strong)? Why should all these different things be brought together under the banner of semiology? What is the nature of semiology that it should seek to study in its terms objects which are already treated by other disciplines? For the answers to these questions one should turn first to Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics, who in his seminal Course in General Linguistics (1917) first proclaimed the need for a general science of signs that would "teach us what signs consist of and what laws govern them." Though he christened the discipline "semiology", Saussure refused to speculate on its precise nature, observing only that "its place is assured in advance." His confidence doubtless came from the conviction that students of language would be compelled to think about signs: "Is it not obvious that language is above all a system of signs and that therefore we must have recourse to the science of signs?" he wrote. Studying signs of other sorts would teach the linguist what was typical and what was peculiar to language. And Saussure added: "Not only will this procedure clarify the problems of linguistics, but rituals, customs, etc. will, we believe, appear in a new light if they are studied as signs, and one will come to see that they should be included in the domain of semiology and explained by its laws."