Much the same could be said of texts in other genres and media. The meanings generated by a single sign are multiple. Semiotics highlights 'the infinite richness of interpretation which... signs are open to' (Sturrock 1986, 101). Voloshinov referred to the multi-accentuality of the sign - the potential for diverse interpretations of the same sign according to particular social and historical contexts (Voloshinov 1973, 23). #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
The romantic mythology of individual creativity and of the 'originality' of 'the author' (e.g. the auteur in film) has been undermined by various strands in semiotics: by the structuralist emphasis on the primacy of the semiotic system and of ourselves as produced by language; by the social semiotic emphasis on the role of the interpreters of a text; and by the post-structuralist semiotic notion of intertextuality (highlighting what texts owe to other texts). Individuals are not unconstrained in their construction of meanings. As Stuart Hall puts it, our 'systems of signs... speak us as much as we speak in and through them' (Hall 1977, 328). 'Common-sense' suggests that 'I' am a unique individual with a stable, unified identity and ideas of my own. Semiotics can help us to realise that such notions are created and maintained by our engagement with sign systems: our sense of identity is established through signs. We derive a sense of 'self' from drawing upon conventional, pre-existing repertoires of signs and codes which we did not ourselves create. We are thus the subjects of our sign systems rather than being simply instrumental 'users' who are fully in control of them. Whilst we are not determined by semiotic processes we are shaped by them far more than we realise. Pierre Guiraud goes further: 'Man [sic] is the vehicle and the substance of the sign, he is both the signifier and the signified; in fact, he is a sign and therefore a convention' (Guiraud 1975, 83). The postmodernist notion of fragmented and shifting identities may provide a useful corrective to the myth of the unified self. But unlike those postmodernist stances which simply celebrate radical relativism, semiotics can help us to focus on how we make sense of ourselves, whilst social semiotics anchors us to the study of situated practices in the construction of identities and the part that our engagement with sign systems plays in such processes. Justin Lewis notes that 'we are part of a prearranged semiological world. From the cradle to the grave, we are encouraged by the shape of our environment to engage with the world of signifiers in particular ways' (Lewis 1991, 30).
Guy Cook argues that 'forty years ago, the method was a revolutionary one, and justly captured the intellectual imagination, not only for the added complexity it could bring to analysis but also for its political and philosophical implications. Its visions of cultures and cultural artefacts, no matter how superficially different, as fundamentally similar was a powerful weapon against racism and cultural chauvinism, and held out hope of the discovery of abstract structures universal in human culture' (Cook 1992, 70-71). Feminist theorists note that structuralist semiotics has been important for feminists as a tool for critiques of reductionism and essentialism and has 'facilitated the analysis of contradictory meanings and identities' (Franklin et al. 1996, 263). Semiotics has sought to study cultural artifacts and practices of whatever kind on the basis of unified principles, at its best bringing some coherence to media and cultural studies. Whilst semiotic analysis has been widely applied to the literary, artistic and musical canon, it has been applied to the 'decoding' of a wide variety of popular cultural phenomena. It has thus helped to stimulate the serious study of popular culture. #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
Anthony Wilden has observed that 'all language is communication but very little communication is language' (Wilden 1987, 137). In an increasingly visual age, an important contribution of semiotics from Roland Barthes onwards has been a concern with imagistic as well as linguistic signs, particularly in the context of advertising, photography and audio-visual media. Semiotics may encourage us not to dismiss a particular medium as of less worth than another: literary and film critics often regard television as of less worth than prose fiction or 'artistic' film. To 幨itist literary critics, of course, this would be a weakness of semiotics. Potentially, semiotics could help us to realize differences as well as similarities between various media. It could help us to avoid the routine privileging of one semiotic mode over another, such as the spoken over the written or the verbal over the non-verbal. We need to recognize, as Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen note, that 'different semiotic modes - the visual, the verbal, the gestural... have their potentialities, and their limitations' (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 31). Such a realization could lead to the recognition of the importance of new literacies in a changing semiotic ecology. At present, 'with regard to images, most people in most societies are mostly confined to the role of spectator of other people's productions' (Messaris 1994, 121). Most people feel unable to draw or paint, and even amongst those who own video-cameras not everyone knows how to make effective use of them. This is a legacy of an educational system which still focuses almost exclusively on the acquisition of one kind of symbolic literacy (that of verbal language) at the expense of most other semiotic modes (in particular the iconic mode). This institutional bias disempowers people not only by excluding many from engaging in those representational practices which are not purely linguistic but by handicapping them as critical readers of the majority of texts to which they are routinely exposed throughout their lives. A working understanding of key concepts in semiotics - including their practical application - can be seen as essential for everyone who wants to understand the complex and dynamic communication ecologies within which we live. Those who cannot understand such environments are in the greatest danger of being manipulated by those who can. For Peirce, 'the universe... is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs' (Peirce 1931-58, 5.449n). There is no escape from signs. As Bill Nichols puts it, 'As long as signs are produced, we will be obliged to understand them. This is a matter of nothing less than survival' (Nichols 1981, 8).
Criticisms of Semiotic Analysis
Other than as 'the study of signs' there is relatively little agreement amongst semioticians themselves as to the scope and methodology of semiotics. Although Saussure had looked forward to the day when semiotics would become part of the social sciences, semiotics is still a relatively loosely defined critical practice rather than a unified, fully-fledged analytical method or theory. At worst, what passes for 'semiotic analysis' is little more than a pretentious form of literary criticism applied beyond the bounds of literature and based merely on subjective interpretation and grand assertions. This kind of abuse has earned semiotics an unenviable reputation in some quarters as the last refuge for academic charlatans. Criticisms of structuralist semiotics have led some theorists to abandon semiotics altogether, whilst others have sought to merge it with new perspectives. It is difficult to offer a critique of a shifting target which changes its form so fluidly as it moves. #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
Semiotics is often criticized as 'imperialistic', since some semioticians appear to regard it as concerned with, and applicable to, anything and everything, trespassing on almost every academic discipline. John Sturrock comments that the 'dramatic extension of the semiotic field, to include the whole of culture, is looked on by those suspicious of it as a kind of intellectual terrorism, overfilling our lives with meanings' (Sturrock 1986, 89). Semiotic analysis is just one of many techniques which may be used to explore sign practices. Signs in various media are not alike - different types may need to be studied in different ways. As with any other process of mediation, semiotics suits some purposes better than others. Semiotics does not, for instance, lend itself to quantification, a function to which content analysis is far better adapted (which is not to suggest that the two techniques are incompatible, as many semioticians seem to assume). The empirical testing of semiotic claims requires other methods. Semiotic approaches make certain kinds of questions easier to ask than others: they do not in themselves shed light on how people in particular social contexts actually interpret texts, which may require ethnographic and phenomenological approaches (see McQuarrie & Mick 1992).
Semioticians do not always make explicit the limitations of their techniques, and semiotics is sometimes uncritically presented as a general-purpose tool. Saussurean semiotics is based on a linguistic model but not everyone agrees that it is productive to treat photography and film, for instance, as 'languages'. Paul Messaris disputes that we need to learn to 'read' the formal codes of photographic and audio-visual media, arguing that the resemblance of their images to observable reality is not merely a matter of cultural convention: 'to a substantial degree the formal conventions encountered in still or motion pictures should make a good deal of sense even to a first-time viewer' (Messaris 1994, 7). John Corner has criticised the way in which some semioticians have treated almost anything as a code, whilst leaving the details of such codes inexplicit (particularly in the case of ideological codes) (Corner 1980).
Sometimes semioticians present their analyses as if they were purely objective 'scientific' accounts rather than subjective interpretations. Yet few semioticians seem to feel much need to provide empirical evidence for particular interpretations, and much semiotic analysis is loosely impressionistic and highly unsystematic (or alternatively, generates elaborate taxonomies with little evident practical application). Some semioticians seem to choose examples which illustrate the points they wish to make rather than applying semiotic analysis to an extensive random sample (Leiss et al. 1990, 214). William Leiss and his colleagues argue that a major disadvantage of semiotics is that 'it is heavily dependent upon the skill of the individual analyst'. Less skilful practitioners 'can do little more than state the obvious in a complex and often pretentious manner' (Leiss et al. 1990, 214). Certainly, in some cases, semiotic analysis seems little more than an excuse for interpreters to display the appearance of mastery through the use of jargon which excludes most people from participation. In practice, semiotic analysis invariably consists of individual readings. We are seldom presented with the commentaries of several analysts on the same text, to say nothing of evidence of any kind of consensus amongst different semioticians. Few semioticians make their analytical strategy sufficiently explicit for others to apply it either to the examples used or to others. Structuralist semioticians tend to make no allowance for alternative readings, assuming either that their own interpretations reflect a general consensus or that 'their text interpretations are immanent in the sign structure and need no cross-validation' (McQuarrie & Mick 1992, 194). Semioticians who reject the investigation of other people's interpretations privilege what has been called the '幨ite interpreter' - though socially-oriented semioticians would insist that the exploration of people's interpretive practices is fundamental to semiotics. #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
Some semiotic analysis has been criticised as nothing more than an abstract and 'arid formalism' which is preoccupied with classification. Susan Hayward declares that structuralist semiotics can lead to 'a crushing of the aesthetic response through the weight of the theoretical framework' (Hayward 1996, 352). Semiotic analysis often shows a tendency to downplay the affective domain - though the study of connotations ought to include the sensitive exploration of highly variable and subjective emotional nuances.
In structuralist semiotics the focus is on langue rather than parole (Saussure's terms), on formal systems rather than on processes of use and production. Structuralist studies have tended to be purely textual analyses, and it has been suggested that even when semioticians move beyond textual analysis, 'they subordinate other moments to textual analysis' (Johnson 1996, 98). Semiotics can appear to suggest that meaning is purely explicable in terms of determining textual structures. Such a stance is subject to the same criticisms as linguistic determinism. In giving priority to the determining power of the system it can be seen as fundamentally conservative. Purely structuralist semiotics does not address processes of production, audience interpretation or even authorial intentions. It ignores particular practices, institutional frameworks and the cultural, social, economic and political context. Even Roland Barthes, who argues that texts are codified to encourage a reading which favours the interests of the dominant class, confines his attention to the internal textual organization and does not engage with the social context of interpretation (Gardiner 1992, 149-50). It cannot be assumed that preferred readings will go unchallenged (Hall 1980). The sociologist Don Slater has criticised the functionalism of structuralist semiotics, arguing that material practices such as the 'reading of texts' must be related to the social relations which give rise to the 'politics of cultural practice'. Functionalism, he comments, 'admits of thoroughly internal solutions to problems of determination' (Slater 1983, 259). David Buxton also argues that structuralist approaches 'deny... social determination' and he insists that 'the text must be related to something other than its own structure: in other words, we must explain how it comes to be structured' (Buxton 1990, 13). We must consider not only how signs signify (structurally) but also why (socially); structures are not causes. The relationships between signifiers and their signifieds may be ontologically arbitrary but they are not socially arbitrary. We should beware of allowing the notion of the sign as arbitrary to foster the myth of the neutrality of the medium.
Dominic Strinati notes:
How can we know that a bunch of roses signifies passion unless we also know the intention of the sender and the reaction of the receiver, and the kind of relationship they are involved in? If they are lovers and accept the conventions of giving and receiving flowers as an aspect of romantic, sexual love, then we might accept... [this] interpretation. But if we do this, we do so on the basis not of the sign but of the social relationships in which we can locate the sign... The roses may also be sent as a joke, an insult, a sign of gratitude, and so on. They may indicate passion on the part of the sender but repulsion on the part of the receiver; they may signify family relations between grandparents and grandchildren rather than relations between lovers, and so on. They might even connote sexual harassment. (Strinati 1995, 125). #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
Feminist theorists have suggested that despite its usefulness to feminists in some respects, structuralist semiotics 'has often obscured the significance of power relations in the constitution of difference, such as patriarchal forms of domination and subordination' (Franklin et al. 1996, 263).
Synchronic analysis studies a phenomenon as if it were frozen at one moment in time; diachronic analysis focuses on change over time. Insofar as semiotics tends to focus on synchronic rather than diachronic analysis (as it does in Saussurean semiotics), it underplays the dynamic nature of media conventions (for instance, television conventions change fairly rapidly compared to conventions for written English). It can also underplay dynamic changes in the cultural myths which signification both alludes to and helps to shape. Purely structuralist semiotics ignores process and historicity - unlike historical theories like Marxism.
As Hodge and Tripp note, there can hardly be 'an exhaustive semiotic analysis... because a "complete" analysis... would still be located in particular social and historical circumstances' (Hodge & Tripp 1986, 27). This is reinforced by the poststructuralist stance that we cannot step outside our signifying systems. Semioticians seek to distance themselves from dominant codes by strategies aimed at denaturalization. The notion of 'making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar' is now a recurrent feature of artistic and photographic manifestos and of creative 'brainstorming' sessions in many fields. The phrase itself has been attributed to the German poet Novalis (1772-1801, aka Friedrich von Hardenberg), who declared that the essence of romanticism was 'to make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar'. The concept is found amongst other Romantic theorists such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. The notion is also closely associated with Surrealism and with Brechtian 'alienation'. However, its adoption by semioticians probably owes most to Russian Formalist criticism (Lemon & Reis 1965). Victor Shklovsky argued in 1916 that the key function of art was estrangement, defamiliarization or 'making strange' (ostranenie) - i.e. renewing our perception of everyday things and events which are so familiar that our perception of them has become routinized (Hawkes 1977, 62-67). Russian Formalism was a key influence on the development of semiotics in Eastern Europe, and the legacy of 'making the familiar strange' is an important one for semiotics. However, as Simon Watney notes, the strategy of defamiliarization is itself, of course, ideological and has been associated with the notion that the tactic of surprise may serve to banish 'distortions' so that we may 'objectively' perceive 'reality' (Watney 1982, 173-4). Clearly the strategy of 'making the familiar strange' needs to be coupled with an awareness that whilst we may be able to bypass one set of conventions we may never escape the framing of experience by convention.
John Sturrock notes that some commentators, such as Mikhail Bakhtin - a literary theorist - have used semiotics for the 'revelatory' political purpose of 'demystifying' society, and that such approaches can lead to 'loaded' 'readings' of society simply as an ideological conspiracy by one social class against the rest (Sturrock 1986, 91). Sturrock favoured 'a more or less neutral' approach, but few theorists would be likely to accept the possibility of such neutrality. Marxist theorists in particular emphasize 'the politics of signification' - signification cannot be neutral ('value-free'). John Tagg comments that he is 'not concerned with exposing the manipulation of a pristine "truth", or with unmasking some conspiracy, but rather with the analysis of the specific "political economy" within which the "mode of production" of "truth" is operative' (Tagg 1988, 174-5). Structuralist theorists tend to assume that we can use semiotic analysis to look beyond signs to an 'underlying' pre-given reality, but post-structuralist theorists have argued that this is impossible - we cannot stand outside our sign systems. #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
Guy Cook argues that there is a tendency for some semioticians to represent communication as a simple process of 'decoding':
The popular phrase Decoding Advertisements was first used by Judith Williamson as the title of a book published in 1978, and it has been echoed widely in courses and publications ever since (Umiker-Sebeok 1987: 249-335). The essence of Williamson's approach is to unveil through analysis what she calls the 'real' meaning of the words and images of an ad, and the 'real world' to which the 'unreal' images of the ad refer (Williamson 1978: 47). In this there is a clear assumption that 'reality' is not only quite distinct from 'fiction' but also morally superior... Though the decoding approach on occasion yields interesting results (in practice often rather obvious ones), a drawback of the approach is its hasty satisfaction that such equivalences constitute a complete analysis. This leads it to jettison all consideration of what is particular to the surface of discourse, or of a particular signifier, and thus miss much of complexity, skill and humour. (Cook 1992, 63-4)
Cook adds that 'a weakness of the semiotic approach is its exclusive devotion to similarities, and then an air of finality once these similarities are observed, which blinds it to what is unique' (ibid., 70). Rosalind Coward and John Ellis also comment that 'structural analysis proved to be inadequate to account for the differences between texts' (Coward & Ellis 1977, 5). The focus on 'underlying structures' which characterizes the structural formalism of theorists such as Propp, Greimas and L憝i-Strauss neglects 'surface forms' which may be important in themselves (Cook 1992, 71). This is particularly vexatious for literary critics, since it appears to ignore issues of stylistic difference.
Varda Langholz Leymore, who herself employed a structuralist approach, argued that:
Semiological studies derive a great inspiration from linguistics, yet in most cases they fall short of complying with probably its most revolutionary aspect, the infinite creativity of the base rules. In most semiological studies the identification of structure is tantamount to creating formal schemata into which all individual members of the system may, following some rules, be reduced. However, the converse is not true. The systems are incapable of generating one single example which belongs to their universe of discourse, in the sense that Chomsky is able to generate sentences. In other words, the rules enabling one to 'transform back' from the deep structure to the surface structure, are not specified. In this sense most semiological studies are not generative but static.
(Langholz Leymore 1975, 15)
Some contemporary theorists have rejected a purely structuralist semiotics. But such a rejection need not involve a wholesale rejection of semiotics. Influential as it has been, structuralist analysis is but one approach to semiotics. Many of the criticisms of semiotics are directed at a form of semiotics to which few contemporary semioticians adhere. Whilst some semioticians have retained a structuralist concern with formal systems (mainly focusing on detailed studies of narrative, film and television editing and so on), many have become more concerned with 'social semiotics' (Hodge & Kress 1988). A key concern of social semioticians is with what Stephen Heath calls the 'specific signifying practices' (see Lapsley & Westlake 1988, 55). Such 'reformed' semioticians practise 'poststructuralist' semiotics, focusing on what one has called 'situated social semiosis' (Jensen 1995, 57). This at least is the rhetoric of social semioticians, but the extent to which social semiotics has so far met the concerns of sociologists is debatable. However, it is early days: 'social semiotics' is still under construction. Contemporary theorists who have associated themselves with this development include Gunther Kress, Robert Hodge, Theo van Leeuwen, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Paul J Thibault and Jay Lemke (Hodge & Kress 1988; Jensen 1995; Lemke 1995; Kress & van Leeuwen 1996; Thibault 1997). #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
Victor Burgin notes that, of several discourses, 'Marxism and psychoanalysis [the latter particularly derived from the work of Jacques Lacan] have most informed [poststructuralist] semiotics in its moves to grasp the determinations of history and the subject in the production of meaning' (Burgin 1982b, 144-5). Strinati argues that semiotics has been used 'to render the Marxist theory of ideology less deterministic and instrumental. However, this still tends to underestimate the ways in which what is produced is itself subject to conflicts and negotiations, and how the meanings produced may not be uniform, consistent, unambiguous or reducible to a coherent dominant ideology' (Strinati 1995, 127; see also Tagg 1988, 23ff, 153-83). Another inflection of semiotics is Foucauldian - emphasising 'the power effects of discursive practices' (Tagg 1988, 22).
It is only fair to note that much of the criticism of semiotics has taken the form of self-criticism by those within the field. The theoretical literature of semiotics reflects a constant attempt by many semioticians to grapple with the implications of new theories for their framing of the semiotic enterprise. Furthermore, contemporary apologists have noted that there is nothing new about the emphasis on the social dimension of semiotics. The roots of social semiotics can be traced to the early theorists. Neither Saussure nor Peirce studied the social use of signs. However, Saussure did envisage semiotics as 'a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life'. As for Peirce, the notion of semiosis as a dialogic process is central to his thinking. Signs do not exist without interpreters, and semiotic codes are of course social conventions. However, it has to be acknowledged that an emphasis on the social dimension of semiotics in the form of the study of specific meaning-making practices is relatively recent outside of specialized academic journals and it is not yet much in evidence at the heart of the activities of many semiotic researchers.
Semiotics is not, never has been, and seems unlikely ever to be, an academic discipline in its own right. It is now widely regarded primarily as one mode of analysis amongst others rather than as a 'science' of cultural forms.
D.I.Y. Semiotic Analysis: Advice to My Own Students
Semiotics can be applied to anything which can be seen as signifying something - in other words, to everything which has meaning within a culture. Even within the context of the mass media you can apply semiotic analysis to any media texts (including television and radio programmes, films, cartoons, newspaper and magazine articles, posters and other ads) and to the practices involved in producing and interpreting such texts. Within the Saussurean tradition, the task of the semiotician is to look beyond the specific texts or practices to the systems of functional distinctions operating within them. The primary goal is to establish the underlying conventions, identifying significant differences and oppositions in an attempt to model the system of categories, relations (syntagmatic and paradigmatic), connotations, distinctions and rules of combination employed. For instance, 'What differentiates a polite from an impolite greeting, a fashionable from an unfashionable garment?' (Culler 1985, 93); the investigation of such practices involves trying to make explicit what is usually only implicit. #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
A 'text' (such as a printed advertisement, an animated cartoon or a radio news bulletin) is in itself a complex sign containing other signs. Your initial analytical task is to identify the signs within the text and the codes within which these signs have meaning (e.g. 'textual codes' such as camerawork or 'social codes' such as body language). Within these codes you need to identify paradigm sets (such as shot size: long shot, mid shot, close up). You also need to identify the structural relationships between the various signifiers (syntagms). Finally you need to discuss the ideological functions of the signs in the text and of the text as a whole. What sort of reality does the text construct and how does it do so? How does it seek to naturalize its own perspectives? What assumptions does it make about its readers?
I strongly recommend detailed comparison and contrast of paired texts dealing with a similar topic: this is a lot easier than trying to analyse a single text. It may also help to use an example of semiotic analysis by an experienced practitioner as a model for your own analysis.
? Identifying the text
? Wherever possible, include a copy of the text with your analysis of it, noting any significant shortcomings of the copy. Where including a copy is not practicable, offer a clear description which would allow someone to recognize the text easily if they encountered it themselves.
? Briefly describe the medium used, the genre to which the text belongs and the context in which it was found.
? Consider your purposes in analysing the text. This will affect which questions seem important to you amongst those offered below.
? Why did you choose this text?
? Your purposes may reflect your values: how does the text relate to your own values?
? How does the sign vehicle you are examining relate to the type-token distinction?
? Is it one among many copies (e.g. a poster) or virtually unique (e.g. an actual painting)?
? How does this influence your interpretation?
? What are the important signifiers and what do they signify?
? What is the system within which these signs make sense?
? Modality
? What reality claims are made by the text?
? Does it allude to being fact or fiction?
? What references are made to an everyday experiential world?
? What modality markers are present?
? How do you make use of such markers to make judgements about the relationship between the text and the world?
? Does the text operate within a realist representational code?
? To whom might it appear realistic?
? 'What does transparency keep obscure?' (Butler 1999, xix)
? Paradigmatic analysis
? To which class of paradigms (medium; genre; theme) does the whole text belong?
? How might a change of medium affect the meanings generated?
? What might the text have been like if it had formed part of a different genre?
? What paradigm sets do each of the signifiers used belong to? For example, in photographic, televisual and filmic media, one paradigm might be shot size. #p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
? Why do you think each signifier was chosen from the possible alternatives within the same paradigm set? What values does the choice of each particular signifier connote?
? What signifiers from the same paradigm set are noticeably absent?
? What contrasted pairs seem to be involved (e.g. nature/culture)?
? Which of those in each pairing seems to be the 'marked' category?
? Is there a central opposition in the text?
? Apply the commutation test in order to identify distinctive signifiers and to define their significance. This involves an imagined substitution of one signifier for another of your own, and assessing the effect.
? What is the syntagmatic structure of the text?
? Identify and describe syntagmatic structures in the text which take forms such as narrative, argument or montage.
? How does one signifier relate to the others used (do some carry more weight than others)?
? How does the sequential or spatial arrangement of the elements influence meaning?
? Are there formulaic features that have shaped the text?
? If you are comparing several texts within a genre look for a shared syntagm.
? How far does identifying the paradigms and syntagms help you to understand the text?
? Rhetorical tropes
? ?What tropes (e.g. metaphors and metonyms) are involved?
? How are they used to influence the preferred reading?
? Intertextuality
? Does it allude to other genres?
? Does it allude to or compare with other texts within the genre?
? How does it compare with treatments of similar themes within other genres?
? Does one code within the text (such as a linguistic caption to an advertisement or news photograph) serve to 'anchor' another (such as an image)? If so, how?
? What semiotic codes are used?
? Do the codes have double, single or no articulation?
? Are the codes analogue or digital?
? Which conventions of its genre are most obvious in the text?
? Which codes are specific to the medium?
? Which codes are shared with other media?
? How do the codes involved relate to each other (e.g. words and images)?
? Are the codes broadcast or narrowcast?
? Which codes are notable by their absence?
? What relationships does the text seek to establish with its readers?
? How direct is the mode of address and what is the significance of this?
? How else would you describe the mode of address?
? What cultural assumptions are called upon?
? To whom would these codes be most familiar?
? What seems to be the preferred reading?
? How far does this reflect or depart from dominant cultural values?
? How 'open' to interpretation does the sign seem to be?
? Social semiotics
? What does a purely structural analysis of the text downplay or ignore?
? Who created the sign? Try to consider all of those involved in the process.#p#分頁(yè)標(biāo)題#e#
? Whose realities does it represent and whose does it exclude?
? For whom was it intended? Look carefully at the clues and try to be as detailed as you can.
? How do people differ in their interpretation of the sign? Clearly this needs direct investigation.
? On what do their interpretations seem to depend?
? 留學(xué)生dissertationIllustrate, where possible, dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings.
? How might a change of context influence interpretation?
? Benefits of semiotic analysis
? What other contributions have semioticians made that can be applied productively to the text?
? What insights has a semiotic analysis of this text offered?
? What other strategies might you need to employ to balance any shortcomings of your analysis?