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Panopticon's Subject Index Ss
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CT. Subject IndexSs
Semiotics
Signifiers and Signifieds (Sign systems)
Signification (and Baudrillard)
Simulation & Simulacra
Social constructionism
Sous Rature
Spinal Tap
Stereotypes
Structuralism
Style
Semiotics, a term taken from the work of American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, deals with communication as the science of signs and meanings, and their production and exchange. Critical analysis from a semiotic perspective concerns itself with the role of texts in our culture (Fiske, 1990: 2). It is this cultural perspective, combined with linguistic analysis pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure and subsequently developed by followers such as Roland Barthes, that makes this branch of communication theory so useful. Reference to such terms as 'codes,' 'signs,' and 'signifiers,' is often made in this context of mainstream semiotic theory. Because semioticians believe that cultural behavior can be systematically analyzed, analysis can be focused on such codes of dress, music, advertising, and other forms of communication.
"Semiotics is a form of structuralism, for it argues that that we cannot know the world on its own terms, but only through the conceptual and linguistic structures of our culture. Empiricism argues exactly the opposite. For the empiricist the work of the researcher is to discover the meanings and patterns that already exist in the world (see also Hume, the empiricist supreme).
"While structuralism does not deny the existence of an external, universal reality, it does deny the possibility of humans having access to this reality. Structuralism's enterprise is to discover how people make sense of the world, not what the world is" (Fiske, 1990: 115).
However, in more recent times, the study of semiotics has relied not just on structuralist linguistics but has also encompassed more fluid models that incorporate psychoanalytic elements. Here the focus is "more upon meaning-producing processes than upon textual systems" (Photography: a critical introduction, 43).
See also:
- Roland Barthes
- David Hume
- Psychoanalysis
- Social constructionism
- Structuralism
- Signifiers and Signifieds (Sign systems)
- Signification (and Baudrillard)
~~~~~~~~~~ Signs and Signification
In traditional, structuralist theories on meaning, signifiers (words) come to rest in the signifieds (concepts) of a conscious mind. In contrast, for poststructuralists, such as Derrida, the signified is only a moment in a never-ending process of signification where meaning is produced not in a stable, referential relation between subject and object, but within an infinite, intertextual play of signifiers. (Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory 21, 1991).
See also:
~~~~~~~~~~ Baudrillard's four orders of signification:
1st order: Signs are thought of as reflecting basic reality.
2nd order: Signs mask reality.
3rd order: Signs mask the absence of reality.
4th order: Signs become "simulacra" - they have no relation to reality; pure simulation.We therefore arrive at hyperreality at the end of these four stages; the sign replaces reality, or IS reality. For example, Madonna's "prayer" is either a sign masking the absence of reality (in this case, religiousness - Baudrillard's 3rd order of signification); or it's all sign and no meaning (Baudrillard's 4th sign order).
~~~~~~~~~~ In relation to critical/cultural theory, simulation is the process whereby representations of things come to replace the things being represented. In other words, we think that the representations are more important than the "real". So what does that mean? Well, one way to think about it is in terms of the famous "map" story told by Jorge Luis Borges. In this story the cartographers of an imaginary Empire "draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering exactly covering the territory" so that the real territory underneath the map is obscured. The people of this Empire come to relate more closely to this map than they do to the original territory underneath (they live, work, and play on it, etc.) When, eventually, the map becomes tattered and frayed, and ultimately disintegrates, the people become nostalgic for it, feeling that they have lost something. The real territory which is now revealed to them seems alien, unfamiliar.
The story might sound hokey, but it does have some relevance when applied to pomo theory and the nature of reality. Someone like Baudrillard, for example, would argue that we, as a society, have lost touch with reality. Instead, we're hooked into a simulation of reality, made up of television, the Internet, etc. This new "reality" supplants the real thing. It's like the Borges map -- we feel comfortable in our new simulated world, and feel a little unsettled if we stray away from it from too long, e.g., if we go on an extended camping trip. (Think about the last time you were completely cut off from all media, including the Web and e-mail -- how long was it before you started to get withdrawal symptoms?) Remember, this simulation is not really a fake, a mere copy of something real. It is another reality, that has a power and a meaning that is, if anything, greater than that of the "real" real.
Now on to Simulacra. These are similar to simulations, but they go one step further. The concept of the simulacrum is associated most strongly with (guess who?) Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra are copies of things that no longer have an original (or never had one to begin with). E.g., Disneyland's Main Street USA is a representation of something that exists
in the absence of reality . Similarly, files and folders on a computer desktop "function as copies of objects of which they are the reality" (Turkle, 1995: 47). There is no "real" file or document for the symbols to represent. The files that you keep in your computer relate only to themselves. Ideas about simulacra are part of the postmodern notion of worlds without origins and a world "without depth, a world of surface. There is no underlying meaning, only an exploration of surfaces (ibid.).
See also:
- Jorge Borges
- Cheers
- Metaphors, metonyms
- Spinal Tap
- Talking Heads
~~~~~~~~~~
Social constructionism, a type of structuralism, is the basic approach to theorizing the world based on how we make meaning of the world, rather than what's actually "out there." It holds that humans can have no access to reality, beyond the systems of representation that they build up to describe and make sense of that reality. This doesn't mean that there is no reality out there, however -- just that we can't make sense of it, except in terms of the systems of representation (i.e., our conceptual maps of meaning) we create (culturally) to help us gain meaning from what's around us.
E.g., when we see a chair, we do see an object which is actually out there in the real world. BUT, the only way we can understand what the chair is (what it does, why it's there, etc.) is through the systems of representation that we have built up, that places the "chair" within a certain ordered strcuture of meaning in the world. Without the cultural system of meaning, we simply have no way of understanding that "thing", what it's supposed to do in the world, how we're supposed to relate to it, and so on.
Social constructionism is a broad approach that also encompasses semiotics. It is opposed to the humanist (or phenomenal) approach to epistemology that holds that we as humans can and do have some access of the real world that is independent of systems of representation. Thus, Stuart Hall is a particularly well-known follower of this approach (by contrast, Raymond Williams, with whom Hall is often closely associated, takes more of a humanist approach, since Williams still believes it's possible for people to have access, through culture, to a reality that is somewhat independent of systems of representation and power).
Most social constructionists, often showing their theoretical origins in marxism, link these systems of representation with power struggles in society, i.e., some groups in society, more powerful than others, are able to successfully -- if only temporarily -- impose a dominant system or systems of representation on the "masses". In this way these groups are able to maintain ideological control over the population. However, this control is never complete, and cannot be sustained indeifinitely. Opportunities exist for opposition to these dominant systems. (Gramsci posited much the same thing, in relation to his ideas on hegemony). All the same, some social constructionists -- Althusser comes to mind -- are less optimistic about the possibilities of opposition.
See also:
~~~~~~~~~~
Means "under erasure." Derrida (influenced by the German Heidegger) developed this concept into a fully fledged attack on language.
~~~~~~~~~~ A "Derrida-esque" film. In it, there is nothing outside the text, i.e., this "fly-on-the-wall documentary" is not about a real English rock band at all, but instead is a fictional spoof of the documentary genre where the bands' members are in fact all (American) actors playing roles. However, and this is really interesting, the "band" started to sell records and tour in its own right, even though it wasn't "real" (whatever that means). Spinal Tap the group is therefore also a good example of a simulacrum, a functioning copy of something that never existed in the first place.
~~~~~~~~~~ Invariably the press, in disseminating what it calls 'the news,' relies heavily on the use of stereotypes - a metaphor first coined by Walter Lippmann [Public Opinion, 1922] and later described by Fowler as "socially-constructed mental pigeon-holes into which events and individuals can be sorted." See Roger Fowler, Language in the News, 1991, 17.
Stereotypes can be used to simplify and categorize any number of social or cultural groupings. Stereotype-based images are, of course, nearly always are somewhat misleading or false. However, at the individual, or cognitive, level they do serve to simplify - or often over-simplify - complex concepts such as nationhood and European union; they provide convenient mental 'pegs' for people to hang whatever views or prejudices they have about something as nebulous as a 'nation.'
~~~~~~~~~~ Basically, structuralism is about 'big structures' and people trying to explain human behaviour in terms of 'big systems' (like Marxism, Darwinism, Psychoanalysis, etc.).
Its major precursor was the French artistic/cultural movement known as symbolism. "Symbolists reacted against the view of art as romantic self-expression" Rather, for them "the secret of poetic art lay in the 'objective independence of language" (Lunn, p. 46).
I.
Structuralism and Language
In structuralism, language still has some relationship to reality. For example, if I point to an airplane and say "airplane," I am using the structure of language to relate my concept of that physical object of an airplane (albeit in terms of other words in the system, but let's not get into that just now until I bring in Saussure at greater length). Although structuralists believe that language is effectively a self-contained system, most of them would probably go along with the idea that there is an external reality out there. (cf. poststructuralism).The Structuralist approach to language ultimately presents and accepts the impossibility of using language to study language, of examining culture while one is a part of that culture. Its adherents include, among others, Claude Levi-Strauss and Noam Chomsky, as well as poststructuralists such as Jacques Derrida.
"While structuralism does not deny the existence of an external, universal reality, it does deny the possibility of humans having access to this reality. Structuralism's enterprise is to discover how people make sense of the world, not what the world is" (Fiske, 1990, p. 115).
II.
Structuralism And The Self
1) A revising of the idea of self did not begin with the poststructuralists; it began with the structuralists; e.g., Levi-Strauss (French psychoanalyst):
a) Structuralists called the self "the spoiled brat."
b) Got rid of notion of the autonomous self as central to Western thought.
c) In 1960s, studied kinship patterns, grammar, etc. and discovered that thing we think we do as free selves are actually done to us.
2) Poststructuralism continues the structuralist project but abandons search for truth beneath the text; it was a more radical subversion of what we knew as self and meaning.III.
Structuralism and Semiotics:
1) Influential in 1960s-early '70s.
2) Saussure, Peirce, and Russian formalists were among key theorists.
3) Key tenets of structualism - systematicity, totalization, scientificity.
4) Structuralists assumed there were dominant patterns underneath culture; used lingistics as its mode to look at all of culture scientifically (cinema, literature, anthropology, etc.)."Semiotics is a form of structuralism, for it argues that that we cannot know the world on its own terms, but only through the conceptual and linguistic structures of our culture. Empiricism argues exactly the opposite. For the empiricist the work of the researcher is to discover the meanings and patterns that already exist in the world" (Fiske, 1990, p. 115).
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Last Updated: apr 18 2001