Semiotics Flashcards
The systematic study of signs
Semiotics
Any activity that involves signs and the production of meaning
Semiosis
A sound that is iterated to express a meaning
Signifier
A mental image formed by the utterance or signifier
Signified
The two things that make up a sign are the signifier and the signified.
True.
signs can have cultural or traditional meanings
Symbolical
signs that look like they are signified
Iconic
The signifier induces the signified
Indexical
A sign’s literal meaning
Denotation
A sign’s cultural meaning or “signifying sign”, wherein they are used as signifiers for a second meaning
Connotation
introduced linguistics as a superior sign system
Ferdinand de Saussure
the philosophy of semiotic studies consist of a triadic relationship
Charles Sanders Pierce
the image evoked by the mind (signified)
An image of a bird’s nest
Interpretant
describes the iteration of sound and movement (signifier)
A bird’s nest
Representamen
also known as the referent, symbol, icon, index, or implied representation
There is a bird, eggs, and chicks
Object
Semiotics is a system of signification based on images, actions, gestures (muestra), sounds, rituals, and objects
Wrote about the death of the author
Literature is a message of signification that creates meaning
Roland Barthes
The idea that the unity of text is not in its origin but in its destination; therefore, the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author
Death of the author
A structuralist’s collection of essays about significance gained from hidden ideological structures from mass culture
These structures were necessary to maintain the interest of the ruling classes
Mythologies
A writer’s greatest fault is to pretend that language is a natural or clear medium that shows a fixed “truth”, hence every discourse is fictive
True
Signs are used to deliver information, appropriating the role of communication models
Semiotics must be examined in terms of its underlying culture or signification system
Culture is signification and communication established as do humanity and society.
Umberto Eco
Psychoanalytic methods in semiotics
Introduced the “mirror stage”
Jacques Lacan
A child’s identification with his own image
Mirror stage
Introduced deconstruction by 1) binary opposition and 2) logocentrism
Jacques Derrida
Semiotic analysis that involves breaking down text to see the smaller, implicit ideas attached within its structure in order to understand its significance
Deconstruction
Linguistic meaning is created rather than given
To defer and to differ: the misspelling highlights that its written form is not heard, and serves to further subvert the traditional privileging of speech over writing
Differance
Two opposing ideas that are given meaning due to their contradiction
Binary opposition
A kind of binary opposition that uses polarization to create an image that has deeper significance
Antithesis
A kind of binary opposition that places ideas side-by-side to emphasize their differences
Juxtaposition
Posits how the current social affairs or discourse shapes the signification system and how it becomes a basis for the truth
Studied how the construction of knowledge manipulates power (gahum), justified by the thinking that truth and knowledge are products of power
Michel Foucault
A written or spoken text that creates a system of knowledge
Discourse
The metaphor given to institutions’ process of asserting power over individuals’ thoughts
Used in MF’s work “Discipline and Punish”
Panopticon
MF’s 1975 essay describing the modern methods of controlling the status quo with power as a way to discipline
Discipline and Punish
MF explaining the history of the present’s (archeology’s) role in studying discourse
Archeology of Knowledge
Two works of MF that mention history as a way to mind-condition society
History was a manifestation of power made by the ruling classes, suggesting that the discourse was controlled by those with high power
Madness in Civilization and Order of Things
Visibility and articulability
An important crusader for reinventing orientalism as a western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the orient
Disclosed the anomalies surrounding the colonization of Europeans
Edward Said
Also known as the eastern world
A European invention that had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, and remarkable experiences
Oriental / Orient
A critique of the historical, cultural, and political views (mostly
negative) of the easterners imposed by the westerners
Saw the emergence of stereotypes imposed by Europeans
European culture gained its strength and identity by setting itself against the Orient as a sort of surrogate or even underground self
Instills a faulty impression of generalized ideas about the East
Orientalism
An exposition in celebration of Missouri’s departure from a colonizer which is a perfect demonstration of US Orientalism
Showed the difference between “them” and “us” by putting up Igorots on display to highlight the American achievement
1904 St. Louis Expo
