Semiotics Flashcards
(40 cards)
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