Semiotics Flashcards
What is the earliest mode of communication?
Signs
The science of the sign, sign processes, and sign systems.
Semiotics/Semiology
The 3 key factors to Semiotics.
Sign, an organization system, and context.
The relation of signs.
Syntactics
Relation between the significant and the sign.
Semantics
Relation between the significant, the sign, and the user.
Pragmatics
Movement and approach that believes every human activity operates/exists because it is related to our system.
Structuralism
Linguist, semiotician, and philosopher who studied how language relates to and creates signs.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Explain Saussure’s model.
There are three parts: the signified, signifier, and the sign. The signified represents the mental concept or meaning the signifier refers to. The sign is the representation of these two sides that the audience perceives.
What is Saussure’s signified?
The mental concept/meaning the signifier refers to.
What is Saussure’s signifier?
The material component of a sign. It possesses the constituent parts of features we believe the sign has.
What is Saussure’s sign?
The representation of the other two sides that the audience perceives.
A logician and scientist who focused on the relationship between a sign and other signs in the same system.
Charles Sanders Peirce
That which represents; says something about something, but is not symbolic, linguistic, or artificial.
Peirce’s Representamen (Sign)
That which is represented; the subject matter.
Peirce’s Object
That which is represented; the subject matter.
Peirce’s Object
That who interprets; the sign created by the Representamen.
Peirce’s Interpretant
Sounds we use to make words.
Phonemes
Individual verbal utterance or written word.
Parole
Linguistic systems as a whole.
Langue
Relationship between the sign and other signs of the system, creating meaning.
Value
Low structuralist; horizontal grammatical relationships between words in a sentence.
Syntagmatic Relationships
How the various configurations of elements within the same sign relate to each other.
Syntagma
High structuralist; concerned with the universe of appropriate options within a grammatical structure.
Paradigm Relationships
Orderly combination of interacting signifiers forming a meaningful whole within a text.
Paradigm
Likening one thing to another thing.
Simile
Equating one unfamiliar thing with a more familiar thing.
Metaphor
How one object is related to another object metaphorically.
Transference
One small aspect of one thing is used to represent a much larger thing, and vice versa.
Synechdoche
One thing is substituted for another thing closely related to it.
Metonym
A sign of pure quality; needs nothing else but the idea to exist.
Qualisign
A sign of pure existence; forces its way into the world, independent of anyone’s will.
Sinsign
A sign that is a rule/convention; manifests as laws, rules, tendencies, and habits.
Legisign
Facsimiles of a thing; represents an object by embodying similar qualities. Makes no distinction between the object and itself.
Icon
Relates to an object by being contiguous with, materially related, or causally related to it. Represents an object by pointing to its existence.
Index
Represents an object by habit or convention. The sign has no resemblance or causal relationship with the object.
Symbol
Qualitative interpretant; possibility of an interpretation. It identifies sign but does not reveal its existence; it simply is.
Rhema
Says something about the world; stakes a claim. It can be true or false.
Dicisign
Interpretation relating to a convention, habit or law. A conclusion of many propositions.
Argument
A literary theorist and semiotician who asserts is impossible to divorce the human aspect or culture from a sign.
Roland Barthes
Barthes’ code that uses images to show mystery or entice a viewer.
Hermeneutic/Enigma Codes
Barthes’ code that uses elements within a media to signify something is about to happen.
Proairetic/Action Codes
Barthes’ code that uses an image to represent meaning.
Symbolic Codes
Barthes’ code that uses specific elements of media products that the audience understands has a hidden meaning.
Semantic Codes
Barthes’ code that uses elements of a media text that has a cultural reference or appeals to an audience’s familiarity with it.
Cultural/Referential Code
Literal meaning of a sign.
Denotation
Interpretation of a sign.
Connotation
Agreement on how we should respond to a sign. It’s built by culture around the reader and the sign.
Convention
The amount in wich the signifier describes the signified.
Motivation
A type of Barthes’ semiotic codes where all images are polysemous, meaning: readers can choose or ignore underlying signifiers or floating chains of signifiers.
Linguistic
A function of Linguistic semiotic code that directs a reader through a number of possible meanings via chain of signifiers.
Anchorage
A function of Linguistic semiotic code where it advances the readings of images by supplying meaning not found on the image itself.
Relay
A type of Barthes’ semiotic code that is densely coded, needing the reader to decrypt it to understand.
Coded Iconic
A type of Barthes’ semiotic code that has no codes, but a direct/objective reference to an idea.
Non-Coded Images
An example of a code that is temporally resistant but highly susceptible to trends.
Memes
A secondary layer of a sign in which the meaning of a product of context, experiences, current ideologies, and other social forces of its time. The sign becomes a signifier.
Myth
What do you call a sign turned signifiers in myths?
Form
What do you call the signified in a myth?
Concept
What do you call the sign in a myth?
Sginification
