M405 

Semiotics, Structuralism,

Post-structuralism

Semiotics.  It is far too important a subject for me to ignore. Unlike Joseph Campbell who wrote an entire book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, without once mentioning the absence of females. [i]

Semiotics is the study of signs, the modern version of which was founded almost simultaneously by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand Saussure (1857-1913) and American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914).  Initially it concerned the study of signs in language and the way in which meaning is conveyed through words.  It focuses on the underlying system of language and the way in which the elements of language relate to each other, rather than examining the use of language in terms of the meanings of individual words and their cultural contexts.  This analysis of the underlying system is a structuralist approach.  Saussure and Peirce each developed their own terminology, Saussure introducing the concept of a 'sign' consisting of the signifier and signified; the signifier being the spoken or written word/material, and the signified being the concept to which the signifier refers. The signified is not the object in the real world, nor does the signifier refer to the real world object, as one might initially expect.  For example the words dog or happiness do not refer to 'real' dogs or happiness in the world, but to our mental concepts of them, and this led to the 'structuralist' realisation that 'the true nature of things may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in relationships which we construct, and then perceive, between them.' [ii]  The relationships between most signs and signifiers was seen by Saussure as arbitrary (excepting onomatopoeia), and reliant merely on learnt social and cultural conventions, the signs themselves having no intrinsic meaning.  The Peircian model was conceptually similar but used a three-part terminology where the 'representamen' was approximately equivalent to the sign, the 'interpretant' being equivalent to the sense made out of the sign, and the 'object' or 'referent' being the concept or object to which the sign refers, sometimes called the 'ground'.  More useful than these difficult distinctions is the Peircian division of signs into 'iconic', 'indexical' and 'symbolic' which stressed the fact that some signs are more or less arbitrary in nature than others.  An 'iconic' signifier resembles or imitates the signified, 'recognisably looking, sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it' possessing some of its qualities, as for example the portrait, onomatopoeia, recorded sounds from nature etc.  "Indexical" signs indicate or point or are otherwise directly connected in some way to the signified, physically or causally; as in thunder, footprints, the pointing finger, odours and flavours or directional signposts.  The 'symbolic' signifier is fundamentally arbitrary or conventional, and the relationship of meaning and signifier must be learned, as in language, numbers, traffic lights, or flags. [iii]

A further useful concept to have evolved from semiotics, primarily through the influence of the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson (1896 – 1982, was the theory that we only understand something when it is contrasted against something else.[iv]  And further, that these binary contrasts are hierarchical, one of the pair being a 'marked' and the other an 'unmarked' term.  'Male' for example is understood against 'female' with male being the normalised term and female being marked and therefore secondary. [v]  This structuralist approach was applied to language, literature and other fields, and examined the underlying structure of meanings and the way that elements related to each other.   Psychologists, anthropologists and other social scientists, in addition to linguists, searched for basic elements that operated as common building blocks for multiple cultural elements across the human race.  The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 -) for example researched patterns of kinship and modes of exchange in human cultures, and the common 'unconscious foundations' of myths. [vi]  Vladimir Propp (1895 – 1970), Roman Jakobson, Algirdas Greimas (1917 – 1992) and others examined myths, fairytales and other narratives searching for a limited number of basic narratives common to all. [vii]  Subsequent researchers have investigated all aspects of human culture using structuralist principles, studying anything which 'stands for' something else.  Umberto Eco has defined semiotics as the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie and if something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth; it cannot, in fact, be used to tell at all. [viii]

Later theorists objected to a purely structuralist model however, because it took no account of human freedom and choice, the ability of people to act or effect political or cultural change, or the effect of varied cultural and historical contexts. Structuralist approaches implied that meaning in language was pre-existent and static and that the meaning of a text can be obtained by close reading of the author’s words/production.  It ignored the possibility for cultural 'ontological reciprocity' or emergent interaction.  The terms post-structuralism and deconstruction were increasingly used, and writers such as Foucault, Barthes and Derrida focused on the multilayered nature of signs, the ambiguity of language, and the shifting of meanings through cultural and contextual variables. [ix]  The text no longer consisted of a single meaning determined by the author, but of multiple meanings constructed by readers.  The self was no longer thought to be a stable identity but to consist of conflicting roles and knowledge, and contextual effects.  The belief that there were definite truths in the world was replaced by the need to study assumptions and knowledge systems that produced multiple truths according to context.  Meaning becomes relative and is destabilised.

The postmodern and poststructuralist understanding is that we are born into a culture which moulds our understanding of the world and ourselves; that this is not a fixed set of rules but merely a structural architecture from which to begin, and which is constantly in flux as we interact with the world.  It is also understood that we perceive each other’s cultures from very different points of view.  As Lacan remarked You do not see me from where I see you. [x] Our varied lived contexts destabilise ideas of truth and authority.  God is dead, the author is dead, and even the individual is merely a culturally contextual virtual image.