background information, quote, semiotics, semiotics in media, signs, signifier and signified

2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION…
• Roland Barthes was born on the 12 November 1915 and died
on the 26 March 1980.
• He was one of the earliest structuralist or poststructuralist
theorists of culture. His work pioneered ideas of structure and
signification which have come to underpin cultural studies and
critical theory today. He was also an early instance of
marginal criticism.
• Barthes is one of the leading theorists of semiotics, the study
of signs.

3. “A garment, an automobile, a dish of cooked food, a
gesture, a film, a piece of music, an advertising image, a
piece of furniture, a newspaper headline—these indeed
appear to be heterogeneous objects. What might they
have in common? This at least: all are signs…this car
tells me the social status of its owner, this garment tells
me quite precisely the degree of its wearer's conformism
or eccentricity.” - Roland Barthes

4. SEMIOTICS …
• Our actions and thoughts – what we do automatically, are often
governed by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions,
and dependent upon our ability to interpret them instinctively and
instantly.
• For instance, when we see the different colours of a traffic light, we
automatically know how to react to them. We know this without even
thinking about it. But this is a sign which has been established by
cultural convention over a long period of time and which we learn as
children, and requires a deal of unconscious cultural knowledge to
understand its meaning.
• Everyone is a semiotician, because everyone is constantly
unconsciously interpreting the meaning of signs around them, and
signs don’t only need to be visual – they can be aural or sonic signs
too, such as the sound of a police siren, usually heard before the
vehicle is seen.

5. SEMIOTICS IN MEDIA…
• Semiotics is the study of signs. A sign in this context, refers to
something which conveys meaning – for example, a written or
spoken word, a symbol or a myth.
• The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols
as a significant part of communications.
• As with many semioticists, one of Barthes’s main themes was
the importance of avoiding the confusion of culture with
nature, or the naturalisation of social phenomena.

6. SIGNS
• There are three types of signs in the study of semiotics:
1) Iconic signs – icons are signs where meaning is based on similarity of
appearance.
2) Indexical signs –Indexical signs have a cause-and-effect relationship
between the sign and the meaning of the sign. There is a direct link
between the two.
3) Symbolic signs – these signs have an arbitrary or conventional link.

7. SIGNIFIER AND SIGNIFIED…
• In each case, the sign can be
broken into two parts, the
signifier and the signified. The
signifier is the thing, item, or
code that we ‘read’ – so, a
drawing, a word, a photo etc.
• Each signifier has a signified,
the idea or meaning being
expressed by that signifier.
Only together do they form a
sign. There is often no
intrinsic or direct relationship
between a signifier and a
signified
Example…
• If we take the spoken word
‘cool’ as a signifier, what
might be the signified? In
one context or situation,
cool might refer to
temperature. But in
another, it might refer to
something as ‘stylish’ or
‘popular’. The relationship
between signifier and
signified can change over
time and in different
contexts.