Hello, my name's Tom and welcome back to my channel where I talk a little bit
about theatre, a little bit about being a
PhD student and a little bit about those
two things taped together. Today, another
episode of What The Theory in which
we're looking at semiotics. Now, I've had
a few people ask me in the comments of
some of my other videos to talk a little
bit about this some concepts surrounding
post-modernism, maybe to do some What The Theory videos around those. It's
certainly a term which is quite often
misunderstood and misused in popular
discourse, however, I thought it may be a
little bit presumptuous to just try and
jump straight in with postmodernism and
poststructuralism before we have a real
understanding of what modernism and
structuralism might be. So, today, we're
going to begin that journey towards maybe looking at postmodernism by having a
little look at semiotics. I'm always
really keen to respond to suggestions
and comments that people leave so, if you have anything you'd particularly like me
to do a What The Theory video about then
please do let me know down below and, if
you'd like to see those, then please do
click on that subscribe button
wherever that is. So, here we go, with
another episode of What The Theory?
Semiotics is, in short, the study of
signs and, in the humanities, like those
things that stand by the sides of roads,
we used the term sign to talk about
something which stands in for something
else.
Examples of signs are many and multitude.
For example, we might describe words as
being signs because, when I write down
the word dog and show it to you, it
allows me to communicate the idea of a dog to you without me having to go out,
find a dog and show it to you and point
to it. A picture of a dog, whether a crude
hand-drawn image on a piece of paper or
a very realistic photograph, is also a
sign, because it's evoking the idea of a
dog without there actually being a dog
present. We could also describe physical
actions as being signs so, for example, if
I was to use my years of experience in
the theatre to mime being a dog by
barking maybe sticking out my tongue, we
could also describe that as a sign. And
it doesn't just work for concrete nouns
but abstract ones too. If I were to try
and describe the complex feelings of
anger that build up in me every time I
see you, I might use the words "I hate you"
to describe that either by saying them
or writing them down on paper. As such,
I'm able to describe to you those
feelings that I'm feeling without having
to make sure you're feeling them as well.
Although, you might if I say that I hate
you. Me throwing a punch at you could
also be quite a clear sign that I hate
you as well. Finally, we can also point to
some examples of signs which exist in
nature. For example, if we see smoke
rising from a forest it's a pretty good
sign that there is some fire happening
within that forest somewhere.
Likewise, if there's puddles on the floor
that's a pretty clear sign that it has
been raining. Now, the granddaddy of
modern semiotics is Ferdinand de Saussure who, in 1916 had a volume of work
posthumously published called the Course in General Linguistics. In it, he
introduces this concept of the sign and
suggests that it has two elements to it,
the signifier and the signified. So, the
signifier is the thing that does the
standing in for something else: the word
dog, either written down or said for
example, the words I hate you or that
punch (which I'm definitely not going to
throw at you).
By the way, depending on who is watching
this, I probably don't actually hate you,
I'm not even really sure why I chose
hate as an example there. The signified is
the thing or idea that the person trying
to communicate is trying to evoke. So, for
example, a four-legged animal which wags
its tail and barks which we often call a
dog or that complex a mixture of
emotions that we commonly describe as
hate. Now, this may seem very very
pedantic but Saussure lays it out in writing
in order to communicate the idea that
there's often no inherent link between
the signifier and the signified. Saussure
was primarily a linguist and so he was
interested in how the use of the letters
D O G to mean dog don't actually have any
natural link to that animal other than
the fact that, as a society, we've decided
that when when we put the letters D O and
G, and the sound dog, together that that's
what it will mean. Saussure is also very
keen on this idea that, when I use the
word dog, I'm not referring to a specific
dog but to more the concept of dogginess.
Even when I'm trying to explain to you
what kind of animal my new pet Fido is,
I'm actually trying to communicate to you
the idea of dogginess in order to
describe what animal that is rather than
to evoke the idea of my specific dog
Fido. Now, many of Saussure's ideas of
semiotics are very bound up in looking
at linguistics, and so the american
semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce
looked to develop these ideas further,
particularly to how we can look to use
these concepts outside of written or
spoken language. So, rather than
suggesting that the signifier never has
a link to the signified (which, once we
begin to look beyond language, becomes
slightly more contestable), Peirce
suggested that there is actually a
number of different ways in which
signifiers sometimes link to the signified.
Although later in his career he was to
expand upon these greatly (and then also
retract that expansion), Pierce puts out
that there are mainly three different
kinds of sign: an icon, an index and a
symbol. An icon is anything with a
physical resemblance to the idea or
thing that it's trying to evoke. My
drawing of a dog, for example, or photograph of a dog has an inherent link to a
dog itself as it physically resembles
that thing. An index is a sign which has
a link to the thing that is being evoked
by direct relation. So, to look back at my
earlier examples of smoke coming from
fire and puddles coming from rain, both
of those are good examples of indexes
because we know that there is a causal
link between the presence of puddles or
rising smoke and fire and rain. We can
also use the term index to describe
signs which require a direct link in
order to make complete sense. The word "me",
for example, doesn't mean an awful lot
until we know who's saying it. When I say
the word me it means something different from
when you say the word me. Finally, we have
a symbol. A symbol is something which has
no relation between the signifier and
signified other than the fact that we
have decided as a society that those two
things should be linked. Language is a
great example of this. For example, if
there was some text in front of me in
Mandarin I wouldn't be able to
understand it without having the
existing context of what each of those
characters means. Another example which
is often used to explain symbols is that
of traffic lights. There's no inherent
link between the idea of red and the
fact that we should stop and the color
green and the fact that we should go
other than, as a society, over many many
years, we've decided that they should
mean that. At first glance,
semiotics can feel a little bit like
theorizing for theorizing sake. It can feel
like we're taking something relatively
obvious and making it academic just for
the sake of sounding clever. Whenever
we're examining society and culture,
however, we're primarily looking at
things which are standing in for
something else.
And we're also often looking at that
idea of how we communicate and so
understanding how meaning is made
through communication is really
important. And being able to distinguish
between what signs and what meanings
have a direct link to the thing they're
referring to and which are purely
socially constructed becomes a really
useful concept particularly with those
signs which don't have an inherently
to the thing which they're referring to.
There's often a deep politics to why one
thing might come to mean another as well
as the fact that, in an increasingly
mediated age, we often see a growing gap
between a sign and the thing that it's
referring to. And, by extension, this leads
to an increasing number of possible ways
of decoding the same sign depending on
what culture we were brought up in or
what our specific context is.
Understanding signs, then, is fundamental
for understanding how and why meaning
gets made the way it does. Thank you very
much for watching this episode of What
The Theory, I hope it's been an
interesting and useful introduction to
ideas around semiotics.
I would suggest going away and doing
some reading as well, I did some
simplification when I was looking at the
words of Charles Sanders Peirce and
using some of the terminology from Saussure,
so I'd look there if you're looking to
use the specific language that Charles
Sanders Peirce uses. But thank you
very much for watching once again, if you
have enjoyed, then please do consider
giving the video a big thumbs up that
would be wonderful and I will see you
soon with another episode of What The
Theory.
