SEMIOTICShttp://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html“It is... possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeîon, “sign”). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready forit in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge.” (Saussure) Important Figures in Semiotics Ferdinand de Saussure (founder of linguistics and semiotics) (1857-1913) Charles Sanders Peirce (American philosopher; say his name “purse”) (1839-1914) Roland Barthes (semiotic theorist) (1915-1980) Umberto Eco (author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, among others) (1932- ) Julia Kristeva (1941- ) Claude Lévi-Strauss (anthropologist) (1908-1990) Jacques Lacan (psychoanalyst) (1901-1981)Definitions of SemioticsEco: semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a signBarthes: semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of significationSaussure: semiology is a science which studies the role of signs as part of social lifeCharles Peirce: “semiotic” was the “formal doctrine of signs” which was closely related to Logic. For him, “a sign... is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity.” He declared that “every thought is a sign”John Sturrock: whereas semantics focuses on what words mean, semiotics is concerned with how signs meanC. W. Morris (deriving this threefold classification from Peirce): semiotics embraced semantics, along with the other traditional branches of linguistics:  semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for;  syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs;  pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters For Morris, semiotics is the umbrella under which semantics, syntax, and pragmatics exist.Semiotics is important because it can help us not to take “reality” for granted as something having a purely objective existence which is independent of human interpretation. It teaches us that reality is a system of signs. Studying semiotics can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and of the roles played by ourselves and others in constructing it. It can help us to realize that information or meaning is not “contained” in the world or in books, computers or audio-visual media. Meaning is not “transmitted” to us - we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware. Becoming aware of such codes is both inherently fascinating andintellectually empowering. We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized. Through the study of semiotics we become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and disguiseour task in “reading” them. Living in a world of increasingly visual signs, we need to learn that even the most “realistic” signs are not what they appear to be. By making more explicit the codes by which signs are interpreted we may perform the valuable semiotic function of “denaturalizing” signs. In defining realities signs serve ideological functions. Deconstructing and contesting the realities of signs can revealwhose realities are privileged and whose are suppressed. The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings which we inhabit.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 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. Semioticians do not always make explicit the limitations of their techniques, and semiotics is sometimes uncritically presented as a general-purpose tool. 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). 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. 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 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” 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 formsStrengths of Semiotic Analysis Semiotics provides us with a potentially unifying conceptual framework and a set of methods and terms for use across the full range of signifying practices, which include gesture, posture, dress, writing, speech, photography, film,