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    INTRODUCTION TO SEMIOTICS IN MAKING CRITICAL SENSE OF TEXTS
    FROM FILM, VIDEO, AND MOVING-IMAGE CULTURE

    
    BOB NOWLAN

    Semiotics represents a critical theoretical way of making sense of meaning that departs from and challenges commonsense.  (According to its inventors and practitioners its represents a “scientific approach to understanding meaning in cultural context”; semiotics is in other words a sophisticated tool of critical analysis that can be applied to all kinds of meaningful entities–including films, videos, and other moving-image cultural productions.)   The commonsensical view of the relation between language and “reality” is that the world is meaningful in itself and all that language does is give the meaningful entities of the world names.  Language is thereby seen as a nomenclature: a set of labels which are placed on preexisting phenomena.   If this were the case, however, all languages of the world would be readily translatable into one another, because, according to this commonsense conception, they are really nothing more than different labels for the “same thing”–“the world out there” is the same in all cultures.  However, languages are not so readily translatable into one another, and comparative studies often reveal sharp differences that exist in the “worlds” they articulate.   Even such “physical” phenomena as colors are not “the same” in different languages.   For example, Russian does not have a word for “blue.”  The words goluboj and sinji which are usually translated as “light blue” and “dark blue” refer to what are in Russian distinct colors, not different shades of the same color.  Similarly, the English word “brown” has no equivalent in French, as this is usually translated into brun, marron, or even jaune, depending on the context.  Probably one of the most famous examples of the way in which different cultures experience and relate to different “realities” according to the different ways their different languages and other sign-system construct reality is the hundreds of different words Eskimos use to describe what we commonly identify as one kind of thing: “snow.”  In these Eskimo languages, these different words don’t simply refer to slightly different kinds of “the same thing,” but rather to multiple “different things,” and, as a result, Eskimos perceive and relate to a different “reality” than do non-Eskimos.


    According to semiotics (at least according to structuralist-based and structuralist-derived semiotics, which has been the most influential form of semiotics to date in critical theory of film, video, and moving-image culture), language is not a set of labels–a transparent medium that merely reflects an entirely external reality–but rather it is a system of signs that makes the world intelligible–i.e., meaningful–to the people using the language.  This does not mean that language creates “actuality” (e.g., trees, desks, chairs, men, and women), but rather that language turns undifferentiated, meaningless nature into a differentiated, meaningful cultural “reality”: for example, “male” (an actual, physical entity in nature) is translated into “man” (a real, gendered cultural entity).   


    Language represents the most fundamental, pervasive, and widely influential as well as broadly determinate kind of sign-system that human beings make use of to render the world intelligible: to convert “the actual” into “the real.”  Yet it is hardly the only such sign-system.  Gestures, expressions, body language, clothes and fashion, music, dance, and film–just to take a few examples–all make use of different kinds of signs, and constitute different kinds of sign-systems or constellations of sign-systems than ordinary written and spoken language.  Because they operate, like language, to render the world in which we live intelligible to us, something that we find meaningful, that we can relate to and act upon as that which is meaningful, and which we can communicate with each other about as meaningful, these other kinds of sign-systems are sometimes described as operating like “languages” in their own right: e.g., the language of gesture, the language of facial expression, the language of music, the language of clothing or of fashion, and even the language of food or of cooking.  


    This brings us, however, to the question of what exactly is a “sign.”   Within semiotics, signs represent the fundamental elements of meaning.   Conventionally, semiotics defines a sign as a unity of a “signifier” and a “signified.”   Signifiers represent the sensorily perceptible dimension of the sign (what we literally see, hear, feel, smell, or taste) whereas signifieds represent ideas or concepts that we associate with these signifiers.   For example, the word /Bed/, in English, is a sign; the letters, or phonemes, “b-e-d,” constitute a signifier, and the idea or concept of “bed” is its signified.   Here, it is important to note that the “signified”–in this case “bed”–is not the same as the “referent”–an actual, physically material object; the signified refers to the idea or concept of a bed that we think of when we see or hear the signifier “b-e-d.”  


    In addition, it is crucial as well, in order to understand the intervention versus commonsense that semiotics represents, to recognize that we understand a sign such as “bed” in English not because of our experience, or knowledge, of the actual beds in our dorm rooms, apartments, or houses, but rather because we are familiar with the conventions of the English language, which, as an organized system of differences, differentiates between the signifiers “bed” and “Ted,” on the one hand, and the signifieds “bed” and “cot,” on the other hand.  The relation between signifier and signified here is arbitrary (in the sense of being a culturally conventional one); in other words, there is no naturally inherent connection between the two, and this means that “meaning” is never simply, directly “present” in the sign, just as the signified is never simply, directly “present” in the signifier.  To put it another way, there is nothing natural about this combination of sounds or marks that simply demands, in itself, that we understand it to mean what we conventionally associate with that set of sounds or marks.  Likewise, there is nothing about the actual, physically material entities that we refer to as “beds,” that simply, in itself, out of its own intrinsic nature, demands that we call these entities “beds”; it is a matter of cultural, and more precisely linguistic, convention that we do so.


    Signs, therefore, typically are not positive terms but the effects of differences and absences.  Signs constitute elements of meaning because they can be distinguished from other possible combinations of signifiers and signifieds within the same sign-system.   Language as a system of differentiation places signs in two types of combinatory possibilities: 1.) The relations between elements which might combine in a sequence (e.g., the sign’s place in a sentence, as a subject, or verb, etc.), and 2.) The relations between elements which might substitute for each other within the same sequence, or series, because they represent the same part of speech, and, in particular, either a very closely linked idea or concept (one that we may  tend to think of as “synonymous”) or a very different, even antithetical,  idea or concept (one that we may tend to think of an “antonymous”).    


    Key here is that the meaning of any particular sign (again, a singular uniting of a single signifier with a signified) follows from 1.) The place of this particular sign within a sequence, series, nexus, or even network of linked signs, and 2.) Its similarity and differences versus all the other possible signifieds within the same sign-system that could be united with this same signifier to form a single, concrete sign.   What’s most interesting and important quickly to grasp about point number 2 that I’ve just described is that this shows us, moreover, that signs can and do constitute crucial sites, and stakes, of social conflict and struggle.  Different social groups, representing different social positions and different social interests, will associate different signifieds with the same signifier–and we will engage differently in relation to the referent of the sign, to what the sign refers (what we perceive it to represent), depending upon what signified we do associate with this same signifier.   Let’s take a few examples to help clarify: for example, the signifier “Nelson Mandela” has been commonly united with at least three distinct signifieds: “terrorist,” “freedom fighter,” and “hero of liberation.”   Very different implications follow for how people will value, and especially relate to and engage with Nelson Mandela, along with the movement he organized, led, and ultimately brought to power in South Africa (defeating and superseding the prior apartheid regime), depending upon whether one associates his name with the idea or concept of  “terrorist” on the one hand or with the idea or concept of “freedom fighter” on the other hand.   


    Let’s take a few other, perhaps even easier examples.   First, the American flag is a sign.  The signifier here is a particular pattern of colors and shapes that we visually perceive; the signified is what idea(s) or concept(s) we associate with it.  For some, this signifier unites with the signifieds “freedom,” “democracy,” “the greatest nation on Earth,” and even “the greatest nation in human history to date,” while for others this signifier unites with the signifieds “imperialism,” “arrogance,” “hypocrisy,” and “pretension.”  And of course multiple other meaningful combinations exist as well (i.e., multiple other interpretations of the same signifier, and, thereby, multiple other understandings of what the American flag stands for as a sign).


    Here’s another example: the word “queer.”   For some (and in some contexts, and in some uses) this is an insulting, derogatory way to refer to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.  For others (and in other contexts, and in other uses), including glbt people who have taken up this term as a mode of self-identification, it is a defiantly positive way of asserting one’s proud refusal to simply be content as “normal,” and a strong inclination toward wanting instead to be bold, daring, and unrestrained as well as uninhibited by artificially restrictive and unnecessarily oppressive societal and cultural conventions.  


    At any give moment in time, some signs represent hotly contested sites and stakes of conflict and struggle, while over time the effects of this conflict and struggle can change the dominant meaning of a sign.  “Nelson Mandela” and “queer” are good examples of the latter, as is “gay,” for that matter, although “gay” is also a good example of the former, because today it has recently become popular in many places to casually refer to something or someone as “gay,” or “so gay,” in the sense of “stupid.”   Here the effect is to take back, from a subculture, a word that has become predominantly associated with “homosexual” rather than with “cheerful,” as a result of the historical efforts of that subculture to re-signify this term (i.e., “gay” as referring to a social identity rooted in but also extending outward from a homosexual ‘orientation’), and to link (to subsequently further ‘re-signify’) gay-stupid-homosexual all together such that not only are certain kinds of objects or actions come to be seen as ‘stupid’ but also ‘gay people’ as well.  


    Here’s some other useful examples of entities that have functioned as the site of historic struggles over signification, that is over how signs are read, and, even more precisely, over what signifieds to predominantly associate with a particular signifier: words such as “black,” “cool, “ ”wicked,” “hectic,” and “bad”; the sign used to advise caution in areas where elderly people are likely to be crossing a road; and the words news reporters and commentators use to describe groups or actions that are understood in diametrically opposed ways by contesting social interests (e.g., ‘job loss,’ ‘made redundant’, ‘layoff’, ‘downsized’, ‘rationalized’, or ‘slimmed down’ by workers versus management when companies cut back on the number of people they employ).  All of these “signifiers” have been associated with different, and opposing, signifieds simultaneously, representing different, and opposing social ends and interests.   The key here is that signification is often far from an innocent, neutral process: the ways in which we signify the world provide us with particular directions for relating to and engaging with the world.  How we represent the world to ourselves and to each other will shape (and even to a substantial degree determine) the ways we act within it.  


    Another important point in relation to discussing signs as sites, and stakes, of social struggle is the following: dominant social forces, in the interest of conserving the status quo within which they maintain dominance, most often work particularly hard to narrow and limit the range of possible associations between signifiers and signifieds: to “anchor” meaning,, by trying to get rid of the disruptive challenges that recognition, and acceptance, of “polysemy” and ambiguity can bring.   Typically, such anchoring works by attempting to deny that signs actually do exist as the site and stake of social conflict and struggle, by proposing that there is only one possible right and natural way to make sense–and use–of them.  For example: to propose that there is only one natural, right way to “be a real, or true, man” and there is only one natural, right way to “be a real, or true, woman.”   It is worth paying close critical attention to these efforts whenever and wherever we encounter them, and to note well how news and entertainment as well as associated and linked forms of ‘mass media’ take on principal roles in these efforts.


    In making use of semiotics to analyze film, video, and moving-image culture, it will prove valuable also to recognize the three kinds of signs distinguished by American semiotician Charles Pearce: iconic, indexical, and symbolic.  Ordinary written and spoken language relies overwhelmingly on arbitrary (in the sense of culturally conventional) signs, where the signifier bears no necessary physical resemblance or connection with what it is supposed to refer to, given the signifieds we commonly associate with this signifier.  The word “daffodil” and the actual flower that we conventionally refer to as a “daffodil” bear no necessary physical resemblance or connection with each other.  However, in other sign-systems this lack of resemblance or connection is not always the case, by any means.


    In the case of iconic signs, the signifier always resembles what the sign is conventionally understood to signify.   For example, a photo of a daffodil, or a good drawing of a daffodil, closely resemble most people’s perception of what a daffodil looks like, and therefore the photo, and the drawing, are iconic signs.   Importantly, however, the photo and the drawing only resemble, and in fact only seem to resemble, what the flower looks like to us when we see it with our own eyes, and are therefore re-presentations: constructions of a ‘stand-in’ for the experience of our own direct , immediate perception of the flower, by way of what our eyes enable us to see, within an entirely different medium (photography or drawing).   Certainly, neither the photo nor the drawing are equal to, or identical with, the flower in itself.  Critical study of visual (and audio as well as audio-visual) productions will note well--and pay very close attention to--this distinction between iconic sign and referent.


    In the case of indexical signs, the signifier functions as a kind of evidence for what the sign is conventionally understood to signify: e.g.., smoke for fire; sweat for effort; spots for measles; etc.  Analogue technologies, such as thermometers or sundials, tend to involve an indexical construction whereas digital technologies, such as translating music into number signals, tend to act like symbolic signs.  Symbolic signs, again, are only arbitrarily linked with referents: they neither physically resemble what they refer to nor do they physically connect with, serving as evidence of, what they refer to.   Here’s a topical example: “red” for states that vote Republican and “blue” for states that vote Democrat.  To see how arbitrary this association happens to be, consider the fact that for more than 150 years prior to the quite recent emergence of this association (red with Republican and blue with Democrat) red was commonly associated with the political left, especially the socialist and communist far left: in fact, throughout much of modern history to be identified as a “red,” or to identify one’s self as a “red,” meant identification with progressive, radical, or revolutionary left politics.  So, obviously, associating “red” with Republican today shows how arbitrary the association of any color with any particular political direction happens to be.  (And, as an aside, as one who has long regarded ‘red’ as his favorite color, and has long identified with the political [far] left, this has been a somewhat personally disconcerting shift in association.)


    This brings us next, however, to the semiotic term “code.”   In semiotics, codes represent sets of conventions that enable members of a culture, or a subculture, to make sense of the texts of their culture, or subculture.   And, in this context, a “text” refers to any discrete entity that can be understood as possessing or bearing meaning (i.e., anything that we perceive as open to the possibility of interpretation as meaningful, as providing a source for and a stimulus to the process of signification).  Texts can include photographs, novels, films, food, architecture, clothing, and many, many other kinds of  things.  But let’s get on to codes.  When we “understand” a phenomenon, according to semiotics, we do so because we know the codes through which that phenomenon can, and within our culture or subculture “should,” be made intelligible.  A dream, for instance, has no meaning in itself.  We can interpret it (give it meaning) only when we place in a grid of codes–only when we bring to bear a code or set of codes to render it meaningful: we can understand it, for instance, in terms of pre-modern codes, in which case it might represent a direct visitation from the Gods or a prophetic announcement sent by them, or, for example, we can interpret in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis according to which dreams are expressions of thoughts and emotions repressed in the unconscious.  Depending, moreover, on which cultural or subcultural community we come from, we will use different sets of codes to understand how to manifest or display or make sense of or react to things like tattoos and piercings or dressing all in leather and sporting a shaved head (just to cite a couple of possible examples where different codes will direct their users [those who “read” with these codes] to read people’s appearances in very different ways).   


    Codes therefore can be understood as socially shared bodies of knowledge that provide frameworks for making sense of meaning–that give us direction in deciding what signifieds to associate with particular signifiers, and when, where, how, and why to do so.   Different fields of knowledge or of technical expertise rely upon different codes, and what is actually happening, therefore, according to semiotics, when someone finds a text “incomprehensible” is that this person is not familiar with the codes necessary to make (useful) sense of it–he or she has not, at least not yet, become a knowledgeable member of that cultural, or subcultural, community.  For example, a piece of writing may seem incomprehensible because we aren’t (yet) familiar with the field of knowledge, or technical expertise, within which this writing has been composed.   This idea can be aptly applied to experimental and avant-garde films, for many film audiences: i.e., because these people are not familiar with the codes necessary to make sense of these kinds of films, and can only bring to bear more familiar “realist,” “romantic,” and especially “Hollywood” codes in trying to make sense of these films, they have a hard time doing so–that is, they have a hard time making any sense of these films at all.


    Let’s take another example: within many subcultures, particular words and expressions and gestures and actions and even modes of dress and behavior maintain substantial, powerful meanings that those outside of the subculture are unaware of and do not recognize, let alone understand, so these outsiders tend to find the way members of the subculture speak, act, dress, and behave baffling–at best.   This has certainly been the case, for example, with those situated “inside” versus “outside” of punk and hip hop subcultures, just to cite a couple ready examples.  Outsiders have at times only been able to “read” insiders as bizarre, as degenerate, as criminal, as diabolical, or as insane (according to their ‘non-punk’ and ‘non-hip hop’ codes).


    When we bring this back, again, to film, one more semiotic concept introduced is worth taking up at this point, and that is “mode of address.”   Here the key is to recognize that texts (and films constitute a kind of text) address a prospective audience: they posit an audience, they assume an audience, and they target an audience.   In so doing they imagine this audience as being, and responding, in particular ways, and they set up corresponding “positions” for this audience to occupy in relating to what the texts show (and tell) us.   For example, a film might posit us as needing a great deal of guidance and assistance to follow along with its narrative or as preferring, even enjoying, the challenge of having to think things through without this kind of assistance; it might posit us as conservative or as liberal; it might posit us as sentimental or as anti-sentimental; it might posit us as ‘edgy’ or as ‘tame’; it might posit us as idealistic or as cynical; it might posit us as hyper-emotional or as hypo-emotional; it might posit us as passionate or as dispassionate; it might posit us as hip or as staid; it might posit us as sympathetic or as cruel; etc.  These are just a few examples of the many ways in which a film might posit a particular kind of audience by addressing us in a way that identifies us with (or as) exactly this kind of audience, and invites–as well as encourages–us to respond to this address by in effect agreeing that this identification is correct–‘yes, that’s me,’ I am that kind of audience, or, at least, I am willing to ‘play along’ and pretend to be so for the duration of the film.  As we started to discuss last week, here it is worthy of critical reflection: what precise ways of thinking, feeling, believing, understanding, communicating, acting, interacting, and behaving is the film thereby working to invite, and encourage, us to identify with, in addressing us as it is?  What kinds of values, attitudes, and ways of relating to ourselves, to people like us, to people different from us, and to the larger communities, society, and world of which we are a part does the film invite, and encourage, us to identify with?