Critical studies

Lecture 1 year 2    27^th September 2011

List of books

Practices of looking
Lisa Cartridge / Martina sturkon

Visual Communication

From Theory to Practice

KEY THEORIES

Communication Theory

Semiotics

Psychology
news values

Representation
effects theories 

(MEDIA MANIPLUATION)


Context
Influences – what had an impact on art and design?

Session on academic writing
Sessions on film theory

-       Start analysing more

Discussing the role of Art and design

Why do we have art and design?

It looks nice
aesthetically pleasing

Communication
Influence/effect  - advertising /pressure from celebs
status/importance

Advertising and making others aware

Identify

counter culture/ manufactured identity – emos

Comsumerist- society works by consumption
capitalists – the idea of capitals, / owning something, materialistic In

‘we need to move away from necessity to a culture of want ‘ froyds nephew 

INFLUENCES
V

Celebs

V
media

V
advertising
V

Peers

V
Internet
V
desire to conform

Think about how sophisticated advertising has become , public information adverts are now the most shocking as they have to compete with everything else.


Art and creativity are is the link between manufactures and consumers

Escapism- (pleasure)

Communication –(influence) > perpetuate, status quo
 V

     Challenge norms

V

Expression (catharsis)

Death

Love
Sex

God

Lecture 2 

‘Graphic design is the new fine art ‘ rick poyner 

         ( secular ) – expression/individual 

      v

commercial art – commission – wage – became a graphic designer 

Expression

Graphic design 

Commercial photography 

fashion 

interior design

Purpose

mechanism brief

     V 

client

     v 

profit 

self expression doesn’t work when set a brief from a client 

more about money

Damien Hurst- skull – message- people died to get these diamonds

Demand 

Fine art 

Fine art has a concept behind it

 ‘art is not expression it is communication’ 

no purpose – useless

expression

more personal

More freedom

Product- $$$ 

personal profit - $$$ 

if there is no client there it is more fine art rather than graphic design

Without the church wanting to use art to show the idea of  god,

when art became secular it wasn’t selling the idea  god it was selling something else 

[Graphic Design] is the new [fine art] 

                

 v                                                          v

  Job titles                                    (entropic)

Redundant                                    permanent 

 explicit                                       artists 

 more accessible                         implicit

                                                      

    <---------------------------------------->

      Pop art 

Graphic design is more important than fine art now 

Lecture 3 

The Shannon weaver mathematical model 1949

Eric speak man – you cannot not communicate

in terms of practice – colour of interior  , think about how we encode information and how its received.

the use of language  and non verbal language, ( body language)

 different levels within spoken language and how you receive the language also.

Using the same language but using a different font will mean others will read the language differently.

Starbucks cup

Information source – company
message – good quality coffee
transmitter – design of cup and logo
decoder- person who uses the cup

Information source-Cravendale milk
transmitter-

Channel-
receiver –

Destination -

Aberrant decoding –where its meant for one thing and it goes somewhere else

Lecture 4 

Lecture 5 

Semiotics

Paradigm – which signs (paradigmatic choice)

Hand over chest, ring signifies marriage

Syntagm  - in what order  (syntagmatic)
r
photographed her nude before her pregnancy

ed sheeran lyric – you need me man I don’t need you

syntagmatic – I need you man you don’t need me

paradigmatic – you hate me man I don’t hate you

syntagnatic – order of elements – burroughs cut-up

paradigmatic – choice of elements – exquisite corpse

‘adolf hilter went to __sweeden with ___beyonce_then started to have sex .Afterwards__hitler  felt _______gaggin  so they both tried eating ,instead.When they had finished , they both felt sleepy.’’

marylin Monroe went to ttuttan carmns tomb with Angelina jolie , marilyn Monroe started to swim , afterwards marilyn Monroe felt angry so they both started dog fisting afterwards they felt jealous.

‘’ nothing is a sign , unless it is interpreted as a sign’’ Ferdinand disosrca

its not inherited to the object we do it. Wether its before or after looking at the image

Semiotics for Beginners

Daniel Chandler

Introduction

If you go into a bookshop and ask them where to find a book on semiotics you are likely to meet with a blank look. Even worse, you might be asked to define what semiotics is - which would be a bit tricky if you were looking for a beginner's guide. It's worse still if you do know a bit about semiotics, because it can be hard to offer a simple definition which is of much use in the bookshop. If you've ever been in such a situation, you'll probably agree that it's wise not to ask. Semiotics could be anywhere. The shortest definition is that it is the study of signs. But that doesn't leave enquirers much wiser. 'What do you mean by a sign?' people usually ask next. The kinds of signs that are likely to spring immediately to mind are those which we routinely refer to as 'signs' in everyday life, such as road signs, pub signs and star signs. If you were to agree with them that semiotics can include the study of all these and more, people will probably assume that semiotics is about 'visual signs'. You would confirm their hunch if you said that signs can also be drawings, paintings and photographs, and by now they'd be keen to direct you to the art and photography sections. But if you are thick-skinned and tell them that it also includes words, sounds and 'body language' they may reasonably wonder what all these things have in common and how anyone could possibly study such disparate phenomena. If you get this far they've probably already 'read the signs' which suggest that you are either eccentric or insane and communication may have ceased. Assuming that you are not one of those annoying people who keeps everyone waiting with your awkward question, if you are searching for books on semiotics you could do worse than by starting off in the linguistics section.

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 for it 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 1983, 15-16; Saussure 1974, 16)

Thus wrote the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a founder not only of linguistics but also of what is now more usually referred to as semiotics (in his Course in General Linguistics, 1916). Other than Saussure (the usual abbreviation), key figures in the early development of semiotics were the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (sic, pronounced 'purse') (1839-1914) and later Charles William Morris(1901-1979), who developed a behaviourist semiotics. Leading modern semiotic theorists include Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917-1992), Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), Christian Metz (1931-1993), Umberto Eco (b 1932) and Julia Kristeva (b 1941). A number of linguists other than Saussure have worked within a semiotic framework, such as Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1966) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). It is difficult to disentangle European semiotics from structuralism in its origins; major structuralists include not only Saussure but alsoClaude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908) in anthropology (who saw his subject as a branch of semiotics) and Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) in psychoanalysis. Structuralism is an analytical method which has been employed by many semioticians and which is based on Saussure's linguistic model. Structuralists seek to describe the overall organization of sign systems as 'languages' - as with Lévi-Strauss and myth, kinship rules and totemism, Lacan and the unconscious and Barthes and Greimas and the 'grammar' of narrative. They engage in a search for 'deep structures' underlying the 'surface features' of phenomena. However, contemporary social semiotics has moved beyond the structuralist concern with the internal relations of parts within a self-contained system, seeking to explore the use of signs in specific social situations.Modern semiotic theory is also sometimes allied with a Marxist approach which stresses the role of ideology. Semiotics began to become a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Roland Barthes. The translation into English of his popular essays in a collection entitled Mythologies (Barthes 1957), followed in the 1970s and 1980s by many of his other writings, greatly increased scholarly awareness of this approach. Writing in 1964, Barthes declared that '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 signification'(Barthes 1967, 9). The adoption of semiotics in Britain was influenced by its prominence in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham whilst the centre was under the direction of the neo-Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall (director 1969-79). Although semiotics may be less central now within cultural and media studies (at least in its earlier, more structuralist form), it remains essential for anyone in the field to understand it. What individual scholars have to assess, of course, is whether and how semiotics may be useful in shedding light on any aspect of their concerns. Note that Saussure's term, 'semiology' is sometimes used to refer to the Saussurean tradition, whilst 'semiotics' sometimes refers to the Peircean tradition, but that nowadays the term 'semiotics' is more likely to be used as an umbrella term to embrace the whole field (Nöth 1990, 14). Semiotics is not widely institutionalized as an academic discipline. It is a field of study involving many different theoretical stances and methodological tools. One of the broadest definitions is that of Umberto Eco, who states that 'semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign' (Eco 1976, 7). Semiotics involves the study not only of what we refer to as 'signs' in everyday speech, but of anything which 'stands for' something else. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. Whilst for the linguist Saussure, 'semiology' was 'a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life', for the philosopher Charles Peirce 'semiotic' was the 'formal doctrine of signs' which was closely related to Logic (Peirce 1931-58, 2.227). For him, 'a sign... is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.228). He declared that 'every thought is a sign' (Peirce 1931-58, 1.538; cf. 5.250ff, 5.283ff). Contemporary semioticians study signs not in isolation but as part of semiotic 'sign systems' (such as a medium or genre). They study how meanings are made: as such, being concerned not only with communication but also with the construction and maintenance of reality. Semiotics and that branch of linguistics known as semantics have a common concern with the meaning of signs, but John Sturrock argues that whereas semantics focuses on what words mean, semiotics is concerned with how signs mean (Sturrock 1986, 22). For C 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 (Morris 1938, 6-7).
Semiotics is often employed in the analysis of texts (although it is far more than just a mode of textual analysis). Here it should perhaps be noted that a 'text' can exist in any medium and may be verbal, non-verbal, or both, despite thelogocentric bias of this distinction. The term text usually refers to a message which has been recorded in some way (e.g. writing, audio- and video-recording) so that it is physically independent of its sender or receiver. A text is an assemblage of signs (such as words, images, sounds and/or gestures) constructed (and interpreted) with reference to the conventions associated with a genre and in a particular medium of communication. The term 'medium' is used in a variety of ways by different theorists, and may include such broad categories as speech and writing or print and broadcasting or relate to specific technical forms within the mass media (radio, television, newspapers, magazines, books, photographs, films and records) or the media of interpersonal communication (telephone, letter, fax, e-mail, video-conferencing, computer-based chat systems).Some theorists classify media according to the 'channels' involved (visual, auditory, tactile and so on) (Nöth 1995, 175). Human experience is inherently multisensory, and every representation of experience is subject to the constraints and affordances of the medium involved. Every medium is constrained by the channels which it utilizes. For instance, even in the very flexible medium of language 'words fail us' in attempting to represent some experiences, and we have no way at all of representing smell or touch with conventional media. Different media and genres provide different frameworks for representing experience, facilitating some forms of expression and inhibiting others. The differences between media lead Emile Benveniste to argue that the 'first principle' of semiotic systems is that they are not 'synonymous': 'we are not able to say "the same thing"' in systems based on different units (in Innis 1986, 235) in contrast to Hjelmslev, who asserted that 'in practice, language is a semiotic into which all other semiotics may be translated' (cited in Genosko 1994, 62). The everyday use of a medium by someone who knows how to use it typically passes unquestioned as unproblematic and 'neutral': this is hardly surprising since media evolve as a means of accomplishing purposes in which they are usually intended to be incidental. And the more frequently and fluently a medium is used, the more 'transparent' or 'invisible' to its users it tends to become. For most routine purposes, awareness of a medium may hamper its effectiveness as a means to an end. Indeed, it is typically when the medium acquires transparency that its potential to fulfil its primary function is greatest. The selectivity of any medium leads to its use having influences of which the user may not always be conscious, and which may not have been part of the purpose in using it. We can be so familiar with the medium that we are 'anaesthetized' to the mediation it involves: we 'don't know what we're missing'. Insofar as we are numbed to the processes involved we cannot be said to be exercising 'choices' in its use. In this way the means we use may modify our ends. Amongst the phenomena enhanced or reduced by media selectivity are the ends for which a medium was used. In some cases, our 'purposes' may be subtly (and perhaps invisibly), redefined by our use of a particular medium. This is the opposite of the pragmatic and rationalistic stance, according to which the means are chosen to suit the user's ends, and are entirely under the user's control. An awareness of this phenomenon of transformation by media has often led media theorists to argue deterministically that our technical means and systems always and inevitably become 'ends in themselves' (a common interpretation of Marshall McLuhan's famous aphorism, 'the medium is the message'), and has even led some to present media as wholly autonomous entities with 'purposes' (as opposed to functions) of their own. However, one need not adopt such extreme stances in acknowledging the transformations involved in processes of mediation. When we use a medium for any purpose, its use becomes part of that purpose. Travelling is an unavoidable part of getting somewhere; it may even become a primary goal. Travelling by one particular method of transport rather than another is part of the experience. So too with writing rather than speaking, or using a word processor rather than a pen. In using any medium, to some extent we serve its 'purposes' as well as it serving ours. When we engage with media we both act and are acted upon, use and are used. Where a medium has a variety of functions it may be impossible to choose to use it for only one of these functions in isolation. The making of meanings with such media must involve some degree of compromise. Complete identity between any specific purpose and the functionality of a medium is likely to be rare, although the degree of match may on most occasions be accepted as adequate. I am reminded here of an observation by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss that in the case of what he called bricolage, the process of creating something is not a matter of the calculated choice and use of whatever materials are technically best-adapted to a clearly predetermined purpose, but rather it involves a 'dialogue with the materials and means of execution' (Lévi-Strauss 1974, 29). In such a dialogue, the materials which are ready-to-hand may (as we say) 'suggest' adaptive courses of action, and the initial aim may be modified. Consequently, such acts of creation are not purely instrumental: the bricoleur '"speaks" not only with things... but also through the medium of things' (ibid., 21): the use of the medium can be expressive. The context of Lévi-Strauss's point was a discussion of 'mythical thought', but I would argue that bricolage can be involved in the use of any medium, for any purpose. The act of writing, for instance, may be shaped not only by the writer's conscious purposes but also by features of the media involved - such as the kind of language and writing tools used - as well as by the social and psychological processes of mediation involved. Any 'resistance' offered by the writer's materials can be an intrinsic part of the process of writing. However, not every writer acts or feels like a bricoleur. Individuals differ strikingly in their responses to the notion of media transformation. They range from those who insist that they are in total control of the media which they 'use' to those who experience a profound sense of being shaped by the media which 'use' them (Chandler 1995). Norman Fairclough comments on the importance of the differences between the various mass media in the channels and technologies they draw upon.
The press uses a visual channel, its language is written, and it draws upon technologies of photographic reproduction, graphic design, and printing. Radio, by contrast, uses an oral channel and spoken language and relies on technologies of sound recording and broadcasting, whilst television combines technologies of sound- and image-recording and broadcasting...These differences in channel and technology have significant wider implications in terms of the meaning potential of the different media. For instance, print is in an important sense less personal than radio or television. Radio begins to allow individuality and personality to be foregrounded through transmitting individual qualities of voice. Television takes the process much further by making people visually available, and not in the frozen modality of newspaper photographs, but in movement and action. (Fairclough 1995, 38-9)
Whilst technological determinists emphasize that semiotic ecologies are influenced by the fundamental design features of different media, it is important to recognize the importance of socio-cultural and historical factors in shaping how different media are used and their (ever-shifting) status within particular cultural contexts. For instance, many contemporary cultural theorists have remarked on the growth of the importance of visual media compared with linguistic media in contemporary society and the associated shifts in the communicative functions of such media. Thinking in 'ecological' terms about the interaction of different semiotic structures and languages led the Russian cultural semiotician Yuri Lotman to coin the term 'semiosphere' to refer to 'the whole semiotic space of the culture in question' (Lotman 1990, 124-125). The concept is related to ecologists' references to 'the biosphere' and perhaps to cultural theorists' references to the public and private spheres, but most reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin's notion (dating back to 1949) of the 'noosphere' - the domain in which mind is exercised. Whilst Lotman referred to such semiospheres as governing the functioning of languages within cultures, John Hartley comments that 'there is more than one level at which one might identify a semiosphere - at the level of a single national or linguistic culture, for instance, or of a larger unity such as "the West", right up to "the species"'; we might similarly characterize the semiosphere of a particular historical period (Hartley 1996, 106). This conception of a semiosphere may make semioticians seem territorially imperialistic to their critics, but it offers a more unified and dynamic vision of semiosis than the study of a specific medium as if each existed in a vacuum. There are, of course, other approaches to textual analysis apart from semiotics - notably rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis and 'content analysis'. In the field of media and communication studies content analysis is a prominent rival to semiotics as a method of textual analysis. Whereas semiotics is now closely associated with cultural studies, content analysis is well-established within the mainstream tradition of social science research. Whilst content analysis involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest 'content' of media texts, semiotics seeks to analyse media texts as structured wholes and investigates latent, connotative meanings. Semiotics is rarely quantitative, and often involves a rejection of such approaches. Just because an item occurs frequently in a text does not make it significant. The structuralist semiotician is more concerned with the relation of elements to each other. A social semiotician would also emphasize the importance of the significance which readers attach to the signs within a text. Whereas content analysis focuses on explicit content and tends to suggest that this represents a single, fixed meaning, semiotic studies focus on the system of rules governing the 'discourse' involved in media texts, stressing the role of semiotic context in shaping meaning. However, some researchers have combined semiotic analysis and content analysis (e.g. Glasgow University Media Group 1980; Leiss et al. 1990; McQuarrie & Mick 1992). Some commentators adopt C W Morris's definition of semiotics (in the spirit of Saussure) as 'the science of signs' (Morris 1938, 1-2). The term 'science' is misleading. As yet semiotics involves no widely-agreed theoretical assumptions, models or empirical methodologies. Semiotics has tended to be largely theoretical, many of its theorists seeking to establish its scope and general principles. Peirce and Saussure, for instance, were both concerned with the fundamental definition of the sign. Peirce developed elaborate logical taxonomies of types of signs. Subsequent semioticians have sought to identify and categorize the codes or conventions according to which signs are organized. Clearly there is a need to establish a firm theoretical foundation for a subject which is currently characterized by a host of competing theoretical assumptions. As for methodologies, Saussure's theories constituted a starting point for the development of various structuralist methodologies for analysing texts and social practices. These have been very widely employed in the analysis of a host of cultural phenomena. However, such methods are not universally accepted: socially-oriented theorists have criticized their exclusive focus on structure, and no alternative methodologies have as yet been widely adopted. Some semiotic research is empirically-oriented, applying and testing semiotic principles. Bob Hodge and David Tripp employed empirical methods in their classic study of Children and Television (Hodge & Tripp 1986). But there is at present little sense of semiotics as a unified enterprise building on cumulative research findings. Semiotics represents a range of studies in art, literature, anthropology and the mass media rather than an independent academic discipline. Those involved in semiotics include linguists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, literary, aesthetic and media theorists, psychoanalysts and educationalists. Beyond the most basic definition, there is considerable variation amongst leading semioticians as to what semiotics involves. It is not only concerned with (intentional) communication but also with our ascription of significance to anything in the world. Semiotics has changed over time, since semioticians have sought to remedy weaknesses in early semiotic approaches. Even with the most basic semiotic terms there are multiple definitions. Consequently, anyone attempting semiotic analysis would be wise to make clear which definitions are being applied and, if a particular semiotician's approach is being adopted, what its source is. There are two divergent traditions in semiotics stemming respectively from Saussure and Peirce. The work of Louis Hjelmslev, Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Julia Kristeva, Christian Metz and Jean Baudrillard (b 1929) follows in the 'semiological' tradition of Saussure whilst that of Charles W Morris, Ivor A Richards (1893-1979), Charles K Ogden (1989-1957) and Thomas Sebeok (b 1920) is in the 'semiotic' tradition of Peirce. The leading semiotician bridging these two traditions is the celebrated Italian author Umberto Eco, who as the author of the bestseller The Name of the Rose (novel 1980, film 1986) is probably the only semiotician whose film rights are of any value (Eco 1980). Saussure argued that 'nothing is more appropriate than the study of languages to bring out the nature of the semiological problem' (Saussure 1983, 16; Saussure 1974, 16). Semiotics draws heavily on linguistic concepts, partly because of the influence of Saussure and because linguistics is a more established discipline than the study of other sign systems. Structuralists adopted language as their model in exploring a much wider range of social phenomena: Lévi-Strauss for myth, kinship rules and totemism; Lacan for the unconscious; Barthes and Greimas for the 'grammar' of narrative. Julia Kristeva declared that 'what semiotics has discovered... is that the lawgoverning or, if one prefers, the major constraint affecting any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies; i.e. that it is articulated like a language' (cited in Hawkes 1977, 125). Saussure referred to language (his model beingspeech) as 'the most important' of all of the systems of signs (Saussure 1983, 15; Saussure 1974, 16). Language is almost unvariably regarded as the most powerful communication system by far. For instance, Marvin Harris observes that 'human languages are unique among communication systems in possessing semantic universality... A communication system that has semantic universality can convey information about all aspects, domains, properties, places, or events in the past, present or future, whether actual or possible, real or imaginary' (cited inWilden 1987, 138). Perhaps language is indeed fundamental: Emile Benveniste observed that 'language is the interpreting system of all other systems, linguistic and non-linguistic' (in Innis 1986, 239), whilst Claude Lévi-Strauss noted that 'language is the semiotic system par excellence; it cannot but signify, and exists only through signification' (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 48). Saussure saw linguistics as a branch of 'semiology':
Linguistics is only one branch of this general science [of semiology]. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics... As far as we are concerned... the linguistic problem is first and foremost semiological... If one wishes to discover the true nature of language systems, one must first consider what they have in common with all other systems of the same kind... In this way, light will be thrown not only upon the linguistic problem. By considering rites, customs etc. as signs, it will be possible, we believe, to see them in a new perspective. The need will be felt to consider them as semiological phenomena and to explain them in terms of the laws of semiology. (Saussure 1983, 16-17; Saussure 1974, 16-17)
Whilst Roland Barthes declared that 'perhaps we must invert Saussure's formulation and assert that semiology is a branch of linguistics', others have accepted Saussure's location of linguistics within semiotics (Barthes 1985, xi). Other than himself, Jean-Marie Floch instances Hjelmslev and Greimas (Floch 2000, 93). However, even if we theoretically locate linguistics within semiotics it is difficult to avoid adopting the linguistic model in exploring other sign systems. Semioticians commonly refer to films, television and radio programmes, advertising posters and so on as 'texts', and to 'reading television' (Fiske and Hartley 1978). Media such as television and film are regarded by some semioticians as being in some respects like 'languages'. The issue tends to revolve around whether film is closer to what we treat as 'reality' in the everyday world of our own experience or whether it has more in common with a symbolic system like writing. Some refer to the 'grammar' of media other than language. For James Monaco, 'film has no grammar', and he offers a useful critique of glib analogies between film techniques and the grammar of natural language (ibid., 129). There is a danger of trying to force all media into a linguistic framework. With regard to photography (though one might say the same for film and television), Victor Burgin insists that: 'There is no 'language' of photography, no single signifying system (as opposed to technical apparatus) upon which all photographs depend (in the sense in which all texts in English depend upon the English language); there is, rather, a heterogeneous complex of codes upon which photography may draw' (Burgin 1982b, 143). We will shortly examine Saussure's model of the sign, but before doing so it is important to understand something about the general framework within which he situated it. Saussure made what is now a famous distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech).Langue refers to the system of rules and conventions which is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users; parole refers to its use in particular instances. Applying the notion to semiotic systems in general rather than simply to language, the distinction is one between betweencode and message, structure and event or system and usage (in specific texts or contexts). According to the Saussurean distinction, in a semiotic system such as cinema, 'any specific film is the speech of that underlying system of cinema language' (Langholz Leymore 1975, 3). Saussure focused on langue rather than parole. To the traditional, Saussurean semiotician, what matters most are the underlying structures and rules of a semiotic system as a whole rather than specific performances or practices which are merely instances of its use. Saussure's approach was to study the system 'synchronically' if it were frozen in time (like a photograph) - rather than 'diachronically' - in terms of its evolution over time (like a film). Structuralist cultural theorists subsequently adopted this Saussurean priority, focusing on the functions of social and cultural phenomena within semiotic systems. Theorists differ over whether the system precedes and determines usage (structural determinism) or whether usage precedes and determines the system (social determinism) (although note that most structuralists argue that the system constrains rather than completely determines usage). The structuralist dichotomy between usage and system has been criticized for its rigidity, splitting process from product, subject from structure(Coward & Ellis 1977, 4, 14). The prioritization of structure over usage fails to account for changes in structure. Marxist theorists have been particularly critical of this. In the late 1920s, Valentin Volosinov (1884/5-1936) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) criticized Saussure's synchronic approach and his emphasis on internal relations within the system of language (Voloshinov 1973; Morris 1994). Volosinov reversed the Saussurean priority of langue over parole: 'The sign is part of organized social intercourse and cannot exist, as such, outside it, reverting to a mere physical artifact' (Voloshinov 1973, 21). The meaning of a sign is not in its relationship to other signs within the language system but rather in the social context of its use. Saussure was criticized for ignoring historicity (ibid., 61). The Prague school linguists Roman Jakobson and Yuri Tynyanov declared in 1927 that 'pure synchronism now proves to be an illusion', adding that 'every synchronic system has its past and its future as inseparable structural elements of the system' (cited in Voloshinov 1973, 166). Writing in 1929, Volosinov observed that 'there is no real moment in time when a synchronic system of language could be constructed... A synchronic system may be said to exist only from the point of view of the subjective consciousness of an individual speaker belonging to some particular language group at some particular moment of historical time' (Voloshinov 1973, 66). Whilst the French structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss applied a synchronic approach in the domain of anthropology, most contemporary semioticians have sought to reprioritize historicity and social context. Language is seldom treated as a static, closed and stable system which is inherited from preceding generations but as constantly changing. The sign, as Voloshinov put it, is 'an arena of the class struggle' (ibid., 23). Seeking to establish a wholeheartedly 'social semiotics', Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress declare that 'the social dimensions of semiotic systems are so intrinsic to their nature and function that the systems cannot be studied in isolation' (Hodge & Kress 1988, 1). Whilst Saussure may be hailed as a founder of semiotics, semiotics has become increasingly less Saussurean. Teresa de Lauretis describes the movement away from structuralist semiotics which began in the 1970s:
In the last decade or so, semiotics has undergone a shift of its theoretical gears: a shift away from the classification of sign systems - their basic units, their levels of structural organization - and towards the exploration of the modes of production of signs and meanings, the ways in which systems and codes are used, transformed or transgressed in social practice. While formerly the emphasis was on studying sign systems (language, literature, cinema, architecture, music, etc.), conceived of as mechanisms that generate messages, what is now being examined is the work performed through them. It is this work or activity which constitutes and/or transforms the codes, at the same time as it constitutes and transforms the individuals using the codes, performing the work; the individuals who are, therefore, the subjects of semiosis.'Semiosis', a term borrowed from Charles Sanders Peirce, is expanded by Eco to designate the process by which a culture produces signs and/or attributes meaning to signs. Although for Eco meaning production or semiosis is a social activity, he allows that subjective factors are involved in each individual act of semiosis. The notion then might be pertinent to the two main emphases of current, or poststructuralist, semiotic theory. One is a semiotics focused on the subjective aspects of signification and strongly influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, where meaning is construed as a subject-effect (the subject being an effect of the signifier). The other is a semiotics concerned to stress the social aspect of signification, its practical, aesthetic, or ideological use in interpersonal communication; there, meaning is construed as semantic value produced through culturally shared codes. (de Lauretis 1984, 167)
This text outlines some of the key concepts in semiotics, together with relevant critiques, beginning with the most fundamental concept of the sign itself. I hope it will prove to be a useful companion to the reader in finding their own path through the subject. But before launching on an exploration of this intriguing but demanding subject let us consider why we should bother: why should we study semiotics? This is a pressing question in part because the writings of semioticians have a reputation for being dense with jargon: Justin Lewis notes that 'its advocates have written in a style that ranges from the obscure to the incomprehensible' (Lewis 1991, 25); another critic wittily remarked that 'semiotics tells us things we already know in a language we will never understand' (Paddy Whannel, cited in Seiter 1992, 1). The semiotic establishment is a very exclusive club but, as David Sless remarks, 'semiotics is far too important an enterprise to be left to semioticians' (Sless 1986, 1). 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 and intellectually 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 disguise our 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 reveal whose 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.

Semiotics for Beginners

Daniel Chandler

Syntagmatic Analysis

Saussure, of course, emphasized the theoretical importance of the relationship of signs to each other. He also noted that 'normally we do not express ourselves by using single linguistic signs, but groups of signs, organised in complexes which themselves are signs' (Saussure 1983, 127;Saussure 1974, 128). However, in practice he treated the individual word as the primary example of the sign. Thinking and communication depend on discourse rather than isolated signs. Saussure's focus on the language system rather than on its use meant that discourse was neglected within his framework. The linking together of signs was conceived solely in terms of the grammatical possibilities which the system offered. This is a key feature of the Saussurean framework which led some theorists to abandon semiotics altogether in favour of a focus on 'discourse' whilst leading others to seek to reformulate a more socially-oriented semiotics (e.g. Hodge & Kress 1988). However, this is not to suggest that structural analysis is worthless. Analysts still engage in formal studies of narrative, film and television editing and so on which are based on structuralist principles. It remains important for anyone interested in the analysis of texts to be aware of what these principles are. Structuralists study texts as syntagmatic structures. The syntagmatic analysis of a text (whether it is verbal or non-verbal) involves studying its structure and the relationships between its parts. Structuralist semioticians seek to identify elementary constituent segments within the text - its syntagms. The study of syntagmatic relations reveals the conventions or 'rules of combination' underlying the production and interpretation of texts (such as the grammar of a language). The use of one syntagmatic structure rather than another within a text influences meaning. Before discussing narrative, perhaps the most widespread form of syntagmatic structure and one which dominates structuralist semiotic studies, it is worth reminding ourselves that there are other syntagmatic forms. Whilst narrative is based on sequential (and causal) relationships (e.g. in film and television narrative sequences), there are also syntagmatic forms based on spatial relationships (e.g. montage in posters and photographs, which works through juxtaposition) and on conceptual relationships (such as in exposition or argument). The distinctions between the modes of narrative, description, exposition and argument are not clear-cut (Brooks & Warren 1972, 44). Many texts contain more than one type of syntagmatic structure, though one may be dominant. Exposition relies on the conceptual structure of argument or description. A useful discussion of the syntagmatic structure of argument (in relation to the mass media) can be found in Tolson (1996). Briefly, the structure of an argument is both serial and hierarchical. It involves three basic elements:
• a proposition or series of propositions;
• evidence;
• justifications.
  (Tolson 1996, 29-33)
The conventions of expository prose in English have been listed as follows: 'A clearly defined topic, introduction, body which explicates all but nothing more than the stated topic, paragraphs which chain from one to the next, and a conclusion which tells the reader what has been discussed... no digression... is permitted on the grounds that it would violate unity' (R B Kaplan & S Ostler, cited by Swales 1990, 65). Such structural conventions are associated by some theorists with 'masculine' rather than 'feminine' modes of discourse (Goodman 1990; Easthope 1990). Masculine modes are held to involve clearly observable linear structures with 'tight', orderly and logical arguments leading to 'the main point' without backtracking or side-tracking. They can be seen as 'defensive' structures which seek to guard the author against academic criticism. As such these structures tend to support 'masculine' modes of discourse and to exclude 'women's ways of knowing'. Even without tying such conventions to gender bias it is clear that they facilitate certain modes of discourse and frustrate others. One of the features which Anthony Easthope characterizes as stereotypically 'masculine' is a concern for seamless textual unity (Easthope 1990). Formal writing in general tends to have less obvious 'loose ends' than does casual discourse. Whilst, for the existentialist at least, there are always loose ends in the interpretation of experience, in most expository writing 'loose-ends' are considered to be 'out of place': stylistic seamlessness, unity and coherence are expected. A writing teacher asserts that 'in a finished work... the flimsy scaffolding is taken away'(Murray 1978, 90-1). Another author, drawing attention to this, remarks: 'the seams do not (I hope) show' (Smith 1982, 2). Seamlessness has a particularly high priority in science: 'the scientific article is expected to be a finished and polished piece of work' (Hagstrom 1965, 31). A cohesive structure reinforces a sense of the argument as 'coherent'. The tidiness of academic texts may also misleadingly suggest the enduring nature of the positions which they represent. The basic three-part structure of introduction, main body and conclusion is satirized in the sardonic advice: 'First say what you're going to say, then say it, then say what you've already said.' Whilst this formulation masks the inexplicitness of academic writing, it highlights its structural closure. Structural closure suggests that 'the matter is closed' - that the text is 'finished'. Seamlessness and sequential structures reinforce an impression of the ground having been covered, of all the questions having been answered, of nothing important having been left out. Though it is a lie, closure suggests mastery of the material through its control of form. As David Lodge puts it, 'scholarly discourse aspires to the condition of monologue inasmuch as it tries to say the last word on a given subject, to affirm its mastery over all previous words on that subject' (Lodge 1987, 96). Of course, despite the occasional comment in reviews that a text is 'an exhaustive treatment' of its subject, no text can say everything that could be said; there is no first or last word on any subject. But competent academic writers typically learn to create an illusion of completeness which amounts to an attempt to prevent the reader from 'but-ing' in. Conventional academic textual structures frame the issues and guide the reader towards the author's resolution of them. Academic discourse uses univocal textual closure as a way of both controlling the reader and subordinating the topic to the author's purposes. Such closed textual structures can be seen as reflecting authorial attempts to create worlds whose completeness, order and clarity demand our recognition of them as somehow more absolute, more objective, more 'real', than the dynamic flux of everyday experience. Academic authors first fragment that which is experienced as seamless, and then, in conforming to various conventions in the use of the printed word, seek to give an impression of the seamlessness of their creations. The drive towards formal seamlessness suggests an imitation of the existential seamlessness, and hence 'authenticity', of lived experience. In any expository writing, literary seamlessness may mask weaknesses or 'gaps' in the argument; it also masks the authorial manipulation involved in constructing an apparently 'natural' flow of words and ideas. For instance, the orderliness of the scientific paper offers a misleadingly tidy picture of the process of scientific inquiry. Representation always seems tidier than reality. Seamlessness in writing is a Classical and 'realist' convention which may seem to suggest 'objectivity': whereas Romantic craftsmanship typically features the marks of the maker and may even employ 'alienation' - deliberately drawing attention to the making. Robert Merton argued for the reform of scientific writing, suggesting that 'if true art consists in concealing all signs of art [the Classical convention], true science consists in revealing its scaffolding as well as its finished structure' (Merton 1968, 70). Such 'visible architecture' has similarly been commended in the practice of historians (Megill & McCloskey 1987, 235). As the linguist Edward Sapir famously remarked, 'all grammars leak' (Sapir 1971, 38). Those who would learn from semiotics should search for structural leaks, seams and scaffolding as signs of the making of any representation, and also for what has been denied, hidden or excluded so that the text may seem to tell 'the whole truth'. Theorists often assert that, unlike verbal language, the visual image is not suited to exposition (e.g. Peirce 1931-58, 2.291; Gombrich 1982, 138, 175). Syntagms are often logocentrically defined purely as sequential or temporal 'chains'. But spatial relations are also syntagmatic. Whilst most obviously associated with art and photography, they are no less structurally important alongside temporal syntagms in media such as television, cinema and the World Wide Web. Unlike sequential syntagmatic relations, which are essentially about before and after, spatial syntagmatic relations include:
• above/below,
• in front/behind,
• close/distant,
• left/right (which can also have sequential significance),
• north/south/east/west, and
• inside/outside (or centre/periphery).
Such structural relationships are not semantically neutral. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have shown how fundamental 'orientational metaphors' are routinely linked to key concepts in a culture (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Chapter 4). Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen identify three key spatial dimensions in visual texts: left/right, top/bottom and centre/margin (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996; Kress & van Leeuwen 1998). The horizontal and vertical axes are not neutral dimensions of pictorial representation. Since writing and reading in European cultures proceed primarily along a horizontal axis from left to right (as in English but unlike, for instance, Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese), the 'default' for reading a picture within such reading/writing cultures (unless attention is diverted by some salient features) is likely to be generally in the same direction. This is especially likely where pictures are embedded in written text, as in the case of magazines and newspapers. There is thus a potential sequential significance in the left-hand and right-hand elements of a visual image - a sense of 'before' and 'after'. Kress and van Leeuwen relate the left-hand and right-hand elements to the linguistic concept of 'the Given' and 'the New'. They argue that on those occasions when pictures make significant use of the horizontal axis, positioning some elements left of centre and others right of centre, then the left-hand side is 'the side of the "already given", something the reader is assumed to know already', a familiar, well-established and agreed-upon point of departure - something which is commonsensical, assumed and self-evident, whilst the right-hand side is the side of the New. 'For something to be New means that it is presented as something which is not yet known, or perhaps not yet agreed upon by the viewer, hence as something to which the viewer must pay special attention' - something more surprising, problematic or contestable (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 186-192;Kress & van Leeuwen 1998, 189-193). The concepts of the Given and the New owe their origin to Hallidayan linguistics (Halliday 1994). The vertical compositional axis also carries connotations. Arguing for the fundamental significance of orientational metaphors in framing experience, Lakoff and Johnson observe that (in English usage) up has come to be associated with more and down with less. They outline further associations:
• up is associated with goodness, virtue, happiness, consciousness, health, life, the future, high status, having control or power, and with rationality,
  whilst
• down is associated with badness, depravity, sickness, death, low status, being subject to control or power, and with emotion
  (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Chapter 4).
For one signifier to be located 'higher' than another is consequently not simply a spatial relationship but also an evaluative one in relation to the signifieds for which they stand. Erving Goffman’s slim volume Gender Advertisements (1979) concerned the depictions of male and female figures in magazine advertisements. Although it was unsystematic and only some of his observations have been supported in subsequent empirical studies, it is widely celebrated as a classic of visual sociology. Probably the most relevant of his observations in the context of these notes was that ‘men tend to be located higher than women’ in these ads, symbolically reflecting the routine subordination of women to men in society (Goffman 1979, 43). Offering their own speculative mapping of the connotations of top and bottom, Kress and van Leeuwen argue that where an image is structured along a vertical axis, the upper and lower sections represent an opposition between 'the Ideal' and 'the Real' respectively. They suggest that the lower section in pictorial layouts tends to be more 'down-to-earth', concerned with practical or factual details, whilst the upper part tends to be concerned with abstract or generalized possibilities (a polarisation between respectively 'particular/general', 'local/global' etc.). In many Western printed advertisements, for instance, 'the upper section tends to... show us "what might be"; the lower section tends to be more informative and practical, showing us "what is"' (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 193-201; Kress & van Leeuwen 1998, 193-195). The third key spatial dimension discussed by Kress and van Leeuwen is that of centre and margin. The composition of some visual images is based primarily not on a left-right or top-bottom structure but on a dominant centre and a periphery. 'For something to be presented as Centre means that it is presented as the nucleus of the information on which all the other elements are in some sense subservient. The Margins are these ancillary, dependent elements' (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 206; Kress & van Leeuwen 1998, 196-198). This is related to the fundamental perceptual distinction between figure and ground (see Langholz Leymore 1975, 37ff in relation to advertisements). Selective perception involves 'foregrounding' some features and 'backgrounding' others. We owe the concept of 'figure' and 'ground' in perception to the Gestalt psychologists: notably Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967) and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941). Confronted by a visual image, we seem to need to separate a dominant shape (a 'figure' with a definite contour) from what our current concerns relegate to 'background' (or 'ground'). In visual images, the figure tends to be located centrally. In one particular visual form - that of visual advertisements in print - relationships can be investigated, for instance, between key elements ofcontent such as product, props, setting and actors (Millum 1975, 88ff; see also Langholz Leymore 1975, 64ff and Leiss et al. 1990, 230ff), and between key aspects of form such as headline, illustration, copy and logo/slogan (Millum 1975, 83). Turning from spatial to sequential syntagms brings us to narrative (which, as noted, may even underlie left/right spatial structures). Some critics claim that differences between narratives and non-narratives relate to differences among media, instancing individual drawings, paintings and photographs as non-narrative forms; others claim that narrative is a 'deep structure' independent of the medium (Stern 1998, 5).Narrative theory (or narratology) is a major interdisciplinary field in its own right, and is not necessarily framed within a semiotic perspective, although 'the analysis of narrative is an important branch of semiotics' (Culler 1981, 186). Semiotic narratology is concerned with narrative in any mode - literary or non-literary, fictional or non-fictional, verbal or visual - but tends to focus on minimal narrative units and the 'grammar of the plot' (some theorists refer to 'story grammars'). It follows in the tradition of the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp and the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Christian Metz observed that 'a narrative has a beginning and an ending, a fact that simultaneously distinguishes it from the rest of the world'(Metz 1974, 17). There are no 'events' in the world - narrative form is needed to create an event. Perhaps the most basic narrative syntagm is a linear temporal model composed of three phases - equilibrium-disruption-equilibrium - a 'chain' of events corresponding to the beginning, middle and end of a story (or, as Philip Larkin put it, describing the formula of the classic novel: 'a beginning, a muddle and an end'; my emphasis). In the orderly Aristotelian narrative form, causation and goals turn story (chronological events) into plot: events at the beginning cause those in the middle, and events in the middle cause those at the end. This is the basic formula for classic Hollywood movies in which the storyline is given priority over everything else. The film-maker Jean-Luc Godard declared that he liked a film to have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order; in 'classical' (realist) narrative, events are always in that order, providing continuity and closure. Roland Barthes argued that narrative is basically translatable - 'international, transhistorical, transcultural' (Barthes 1977, 79) and Barbara Stern comments that 'plots can be actualized in any medium capable of communicating two time orders (film, dance, opera, comic strips, interactive media, and so forth) and can be transposed from one medium to another' (Stern 1998, 9). Some theorists argue that the translatability of narrative makes it unlike other codes and such commentators grant narrative the privileged status of a 'metacode'. Andrew Tolson notes that insofar as they are formulaic, 'narratives reduce the unique or the unusual to familiar and regular patterns of expectation' (Tolson 1996, 43). They provide structure and coherence. In this respect they are similar to schemas for familiar events in everyday life. Of course, what constitutes an 'event' is itself a construction: 'reality' cannot be reduced objectively to discrete temporal units; what counts as an 'event' is determined by the purposes of the interpreter. However, turning experience into narratives seems to be a fundamental feature of the human drive to make meaning. Some theorists have argued that 'human beings are fundamentally story-tellers who experience themselves and their lives in narrative terms' (Burr 1995, 137). Coherence is no guarantee of referential correspondence. The narrative form itself has a content of its own; the medium has a message. Narrative is such an automatic choice for representing events that it seems unproblematic and 'natural'. Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress argue that the use of a familiar narrative structure serves 'to naturalize the content of the narrative itself' (Hodge & Kress 1988, 230). Where narratives end in a return to predictable equilibrium this is referred to as narrative closure. Closure is often effected as the resolution of an opposition. Structural closure is regarded by many theorists as reinforcing a preferred reading, or in Hodge and Kress's terms, reinforcing the status quo. According to theorists applying the principles of Jacques Lacan, conventional narrative (in dominant forms of literature, cinema and so on) also plays a part in the constitution of the subject. Whilst narrative appears to demonstrate unity and coherence within the text, the subject participates in the sense of closure (in part through identification with characters). 'The coherence of narrative reciprocally reinscribes the coherence of the subject', returning the subject to the pre-linguistic realm of the Imaginary where the self had greater fixity and less fluidity than in the Symbolic realm of verbal language (Nichols 1981, 78). The writing style of professional historians has traditionally involved a variant of the nineteenth-century 'realist' novelist's omniscient narrator and fluent narrative. Historians have only fragmentary 'sources', but 'the style exerts pressure to produce a whole and continuous story, sustaining the impression of omniscience, leaping over evidential voids' (Megill & McCloskey 1987, 226). Narrative may imply continuity where there is none. Foucault's poststructuralist history of ideas is radical in insisting instead on 'ruptures', 'discontinuities' and 'disjunctions'(Foucault 1970). Reflecting on his explorations of historiography in his book entitled The Content of the Form, Hayden White observes that 'narrative is not merely a neutral discursive form... but rather entails ontological and epistemic choices with distinct ideological and even specifically political implications' (White 1987, ix). He adds that 'real life can never be truthfully represented as having the kind of formal coherency met with in the conventional, well-made or fabulistic story' (ibid.). The structuralist semiotician's inductive search for underlying structural patterns highlights the similarities between what may initially seem to be very different narratives. As Barthes notes, for the structuralist analyst 'the first task is to divide up narrative and... define the smallest narrative units... Meaning must be the criterion of the unit: it is the functional nature of certain segments of the story that makes them units - hence the name "functions" immediately attributed to these first units' (Barthes 1977, 88). In a highly influential book, The Morphology of the Folktale, Vladimir Propp interpreted a hundred fairy tales in terms of around 30 'functions'. 'Function is understood as an act of character defined from the point of view of its significance for the course of the action' (Propp 1928, 21). Such functions are basic units of action. The folktales analysed by Propp were all based on the same basic formula:
The basic tale begins with either injury to a victim, or the lack of some important object. Thus, at the very beginning, the end result is given: it will consist in the retribution for the injury or the acquisition of the thing lacked. The hero, if he is not himself personally involved, is sent for, at which two key events take place.He meets a donor (a toad, a hag, a bearded old man, etc.), who after testing him for the appropriate reaction (for some courtesy, for instance) supplies him with a magical agent (ring, horse, cloak, lion) which enables him to pass victoriously through his ordeal. Then of course, he meets the villain, engaging him in the decisive combat. Yet, paradoxically enough, this episode, which would seem to be the central one, is not irreplaceable. There is an alternative track, in which the hero finds himself before a series of tasks or labours which, with the help of his agent, he is ultimately able to solve properly... The latter part of the tale is little more than a series of retarding devices: the pursuit of the hero on his way home, the possible intrusion of a false hero, the unmasking of the latter, with the ultimate transfiguration, marriage and/or coronation of the hero himself. (Jameson 1972, 65-6)
As Barthes notes, structuralists avoid defining human agents in terms of 'psychological essences', and participants are defined by analysts not in terms of 'what they are' as 'characters' but in terms of 'what they do' (Barthes 1977, 106). Propp listed seven roles: the villain, the donor, thehelper, the sought-for-person (and her father), the dispatcher, the hero and the false hero and schematized the various 'functions' within the story as follows:

1	Initial Situation	Members of family of hero introduced.
2	Absentation	One of the members absents himself from home.
3	Interdiction	An interdiction is addressed to the hero.
4	Violation	An interdiction is violated.
5	Reconnaissance	The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance.
6	Delivery	The villain receives information about his victim.
7	Trickery	The villain attempts to deceive the victim.
8	Complicity	The victim submits to deception, unwittingly helps his enemy.
9	Villainy	The villain causes harm or injury to members of the family.
10	Lack	One member of a family lacks something or wants something.
11	Mediation	Misfortune is known. Hero is dispatched.
12	Counteraction	Seekers decide to agree on counteraction.
13	Departure	The hero leaves home.
14	1st function of donor	Hero is tested, receives magical agent donor or helper.
15	Hero's Reaction	Hero reacts to action of the future donor.
16	Receipt of Magic Agent	Hero acquires the use of magical agent.
17	Spatial Transference	Hero is led to object of search.
18	Struggle	Hero and villain join in direct combat.
19	Branding	Hero is branded.
20	Victory	Villain is defeated
21	Liquidation	Initial misfortune or lack is liquidated.
22	Return	The hero returns.
23	Pursuit	A chase: the hero is pursued.
24	Rescue	Rescue of hero from pursuit.
25	Unrecognized	The hero, unrecognized, arrives home or in another arrival country.
26	Unfounded claims	A false hero presents unfounded claims.
27	Difficult task	A difficult task is proposed to the hero.
28	Solution	The task is resolved.
29	Recognition	The hero is recognized.
30	Exposure	The false hero or villain is exposed.
31	Transfiguration	The hero is given a new appearance.
32	Punishment	The villain is punished.
33	Wedding	The hero is married and ascends the throne.

This form of analysis downplays the specificity of individual texts in the interests of establishing how texts mean rather than what a particular text means. It is by definition, a 'reductive' strategy, and some literary theorists argue that there is a danger that in applying it, 'Russian folk tales become indistinguishable from the latest episode of The Sweeney, from Star Wars or from a Raymond Chandler novel' (Woollacott 1982, 96). Even Barthes noted that 'the first analysts of narrative were attempting... to see all the world's stories... within a single structure' and that this was a task which was 'ultimately undesirable, for the text thereby loses its difference' (Barthes 1974, 3). Difference is, after all, what identifies both the sign and the text. Despite this objection, Fredric Jameson suggests that the method has redeeming features. For instance, the notion of a grammar of plots allows us to see 'the work of a generation or a period in terms of a given model (or basic plot paradigm), which is then varied and articulated in as many ways possible until it is somehow exhausted and replaced by a new one' (Jameson 1972, 124). Unlike Propp, both Lévi-Strauss and Greimas based their interpretations of narrative structure on underlying oppositions. Lévi-Strauss saw the myths of a culture as variations on a limited number of basic themes built upon oppositions related to nature versus culture. Any myth could be reduced to a fundamental structure. He wrote that 'a compilation of known tales and myths would fill an imposing number of volumes. But they can be reduced to a small number of simple types if we abstract from among the diversity of characters a few elementary functions' (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 203-204). Myths help people to make sense of the world in which they live. Lévi-Strauss saw myths as a kind of a message from our ancestors about humankind and our relationship to nature, in particular, how we became separated from other animals. However, the meaning was not to be found in any individual narrative but in the patterns underlying the myths of a given culture. Myths make sense only as part of a system. Edmund Leach makes this clearer by relating it to information theory (Leach 1970, 59). If we imagine that we are shouting a message to someone almost out of earshot, we may need to shout the message many times with changes of wording so as to include sufficient 'redundancy' to overcome the interference of various kinds of 'noise'. Some of the versions heard will lack some of the elements originally included, but by collating the different versions the message becomes clearer. Another way of looking at it is to see each mythical narrative as a different instrumental part in a musical score, and it is this elusive 'score' which Lévi-Strauss pursues. He treated the form of myths as a kind of language. He reported that his initial method of analysing the structure of myths into 'gross constituent units' or 'mythemes' involved 'breaking down its story into the shortest possible sentences' (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 211). This approach was based on an analogy with the 'morpheme', which is the smallest meaningful unit in linguistics. In order to explain the structure of a myth, Lévi-Strauss classified each mytheme in terms of its 'function' within the myth and finally related the various kinds of function to each other. He saw the possible combinations of mythemes as being governed by a kind of underlying universal grammar which was part of the deep structure of the mind itself. 'The study of myths is to Lévi-Strauss what the study of dreams was to Freud: the "royal road" to the unconscious' (Wiseman & Groves 2000, 134). A good example of the Lévi-Straussean method is provided by Victor Larrucia in his own analysis of the story of 'Little Red Riding-Hood' (originating in the late seventeenth century in a tale by Perrault) (Larrucia 1975). According to this method the narrative is summarized in several columns, each corresponding to some unifying function or theme. The original sequence (indicated by numbers) is preserved when the table is read row-by-row.

1 Grandmother's illness causes mother to make Grandmother food	2 Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) obeys mother and goes off to wood	3 LRRH meets (Wolf as) friend and talks
4 Woodcutter's presence causes Wolf to speak to LRRH	5 LRRH obeys Wolf and takes long road to Grandmother's	6 Grandmother admits (Wolf as) LRRH	7 Wolf eats Grandmother
		8 LRRH meets (Wolf as) Grandmother
	9 LRRH obeys Grandmother and gets into bed	10 LRRH questions (Wolf as) Grandmother	11 Wolf eats LRRH

Rather than offering any commentators' suggestions as to what themes these columns represent, I leave it to readers to speculate for themselves. Suggestions can be found in the references (Larrucia 1975; Silverman & Torode 1980, 314ff). The Lithuanian structuralist semiotician Algirdas Greimas proposed a grammar of narrative which could generate any known narrative structure (Greimas 1983; Greimas 1987). As a result of a 'semiotic reduction' of Propp's seven roles he identified three types of narrative syntagms: syntagms performanciels - tasks and struggles; syntagms contractuels - the establishment or breaking of contracts; syntagms disjonctionnels - departures and arrivals (Greimas 1987; Culler 1975, 213; Hawkes 1977, 94). Greimas claimed that three basic binary oppositions underlie all narrative themes, actions and character types (which he collectively calls 'actants'), namely: subject/object (Propp's hero and sought-for-person), sender/receiver (Propp's dispatcher and hero - again) andhelper/opponent (conflations of Propp's helper and donor, plus the villain and the false hero) - note that Greimas argues that the hero is bothsubject and receiver. The subject is the one who seeks; the object is that which is sought. The sender sends the object and the receiver is its destination. The helper assists the action and the opponent blocks it. He extrapolates from the subject-verb-object sentence structure, proposing a fundamental, underlying 'actantial model' as the basis of story structures. He argues that in traditional syntax, 'functions' are the roles played by words - the subject being the one performing the action and the object being 'the one who suffers it' (Jameson 1972, 124). Terence Hawkes summarizes Greimas's model: a narrative sequence employs 'two actants whose relationship must be either oppositional or its reverse; and on the surface level this relationship will therefore generate fundamental actions of disjunction and conjunction, separation and union, struggle and reconciliation etc. The movement from one to the other, involving the transfer on the surface of some entity - a quality, an object - from one actant to the other, constitutes the essence of the narrative' (Hawkes 1977, 90). For Greimas, stories thus share a common 'grammar'. However, critics such as Jonathan Culler have not always been convinced of the validity of Greimas's methodology or of the workability or usefulness of his model (Culler 1975, 213-214, 223-224). Like Greimas, in his book Grammaire du Décaméron (1969), the Bulgarian Tzvetan Todorov also offered a 'grammar' of narrative - in this case based on the stories of Boccaccio's The Decameron (1353). For Todorov the basic syntactic units of narrative consist of propositions (such as X makes love to Y) which can be organized into sequences. A proposition is formed by the combination of character (noun) with an attribute(adjective) or an action (verb). In The Decameron, attributes consisted of states, internal properties and external conditions; there were three basic actions ('to modify a situation', 'to transgress' and 'to punish'). Sequences were based on temporal relations, logical relations and spatial relations. Each story within The Decameron constituted a kind of extended sentence, combining these units in various ways (Hawkes 1977, 95-99). In a more popular context, Umberto Eco also focused on a finite corpus based on a single author - deriving a basic narrative scheme in relation to the James Bond novels (one could do much the same with the films):
• M moves and gives a task to Bond.
• The villain moves and appears to Bond.
• Bond moves and gives a first check to the villain or the villain gives first check to Bond.
• Woman moves and shows herself to Bond.
• Bond consumes woman: possesses her or begins her seduction.
• The villain captures Bond.
• The villain tortures Bond.
• Bond conquers the villain.
• Bond convalescing enjoys woman, whom he then loses.
(Eco 1966, 52) Unlike Propp and Greimas, Eco goes beyond the reductive formalism of structural analysis, making links with the broader context of literary and ideological discourses (Woollacott 1982, 96-7). Syntagmatic analysis can be applied not only to verbal texts but also to audio-visual ones. In film and television, a syntagmatic analysis would involve an analysis of how each frame, shot, scene or sequence related to the others (these are the standard levels of analysis in film theory). At the lowest level is the individual frame. Since films are projected at a rate of 24 frames a second, the viewer is never conscious of individual frames, but significant frames can be isolated by the analyst. At the next level up, a shot is a 'single take' - an unedited sequence of frames which may include camera movement. A shot is terminated by a cut (or other transition). A scene consists of more than one shot set in a single place and time. A sequence spans more than one place and or/time but it is a logical or thematic sequence (having 'dramatic unity'). The linguistic model often leads semioticians to a search for units of analysis in audio-visual media which are analogous to those used in linguistics. In the semiotics of film, crude equivalents with written language are sometimes postulated: such as the frame as morpheme (or word), the shot as sentence, the scene as paragraph, and the sequence as chapter (suggested equivalences vary amongst commentators) (see Lapsley & Westlake 1988, 39ff). For members of the Glasgow University Media Group the basic unit of analysis was the shot, delimited by cuts and with allowance made for camera movement within the shot and for the accompanying soundtrack (Davis & Walton 1983b, 43). Shots can be broken into smaller meaningful units (above the level of the frame), but theorists disagree about what these might be. Above the level of the sequence, other narrative units can also be posited. Christian Metz offered elaborate syntagmatic categories for narrative film (Metz 1974, Chapter 5) For Metz, these syntagms were analogous to sentences in verbal language, and he argued that there were eight key filmic syntagms which were based on ways of ordering narrative space and time.
• The autonomous shot (e.g. establishing shot, insert)
• The parallel syntagm (montage of motifs)
• The bracketing syntagm (montage of brief shots)
• The descriptive syntagm (sequence describing one moment)
• The alternating syntagm (two sequences alternating)
• The scene (shots implying temporal continuity)
• The episodic sequence (organized discontinuity of shots)
• The ordinary sequence (temporal with some compression)
However, Metz's 'grande syntagmatique' has not proved an easy system to apply to some films. In their study of children's understanding of television, Hodge and Tripp (1986, 20) divide syntagms into four kinds, based on syntagms existing in the same time (synchronic), different times (diachronic), same space (syntopic), and different space (diatopic).
• Synchronic/syntopic (one place, one time: one shot)
• Diachronic/syntopic (same place sequence over time)
• Synchronic/diatopic (different places at same time)
• Diachronic/diatopic (shots related only by theme)
They add that whilst these are all continuous syntagms (single shots or successive shots), there are also discontinuous syntagms (related shots separated by others). Beyond the fourfold distinction between frames, shots, scenes and sequences, the interpretative frameworks of film theorists differ considerably. In this sense at least, there is no cinematic 'language'.

Semiotics for Beginners

Daniel Chandler

Paradigms and Syntagms

Semiotics is probably best-known as an approach to textual analysis, and in this form it is characterized by a concern with structural analysis. Structuralist semiotic analysis involves identifying the constituent units in a semiotic system (such as a text or socio-cultural practice) and the structural relationships between them (oppositions, correlations and logical relations). Saussure was 'concerned exclusively with three sorts of systemic relationships: that between a signifier and a signified; those between a sign and all of the other elements of its system; and those between a sign and the elements which surround it within a concrete signifying instance' (Silverman 1983, 10). He emphasized that meaning arises from the differences between signifiers; these differences are of two kinds: syntagmatic(concerning positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution). Saussure called the latter associativerelations (Saussure 1983, 121; Saussure 1974, 122). but Roman Jakobson's term is now used. The distinction is a key one in structuralist semiotic analysis. These two dimensions are often presented as 'axes', where the horizontal axis is the syntagmatic and the vertical axis is the paradigmatic. The plane of the syntagm is that of the combination of 'this-and-this-and-this' (as in the sentence, 'the man cried') whilst the plane of the paradigm is that of the selection of 'this-or-this-or-this' (e.g. the replacement of the last word in the same sentence with 'died' or 'sang'). Whilst syntagmatic relations are possibilities of combination, paradigmatic relations are functional contrasts - they involve differentiation. Temporally, syntagmatic relations refer intratextually to other signifiers co-present within the text, whilst paradigmatic relations refer intertextually to signifiers which are absent from the text (Saussure 1983, 122; Saussure 1974, 123). The 'value' of a sign is determined by both its paradigmatic and its syntagmatic relations. Syntagms and paradigms provide a structural context within which signs make sense; they are the structural forms through which signs are organized intocodes. Paradigmatic relationships can operate on the level of the signifier, the signified or both (Saussure 1983, 121-124; Saussure 1974, 123-126;Silverman 1983, 10; Harris 1987, 124). A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers or signifieds which are all members of some defining category, but in which each is significantly different. In natural language there are grammatical paradigms such as verbs or nouns. 'Paradigmatic relations are those which belong to the same set by virtue of a function they share... A sign enters into paradigmatic relations with all the signs which can also occur in the same context but not at the same time' (Langholz Leymore 1975, 8). In a given context, one member of the paradigm set is structurally replaceable with another. 'Signs are in paradigmatic relation when the choice of one excludes the choice of another' (Silverman & Torode 1980, 255). The use of one signifier (e.g. a particular word or a garment) rather than another from the same paradigm set (e.g. respectively, adjectives or hats) shapes the preferred meaning of a text. Paradigmatic relations can thus be seen as 'contrastive'. Note that the significance of the differences between even apparently synonymous signifiers is at the heart of Whorfian theories about language. Saussure's notion of 'associative' relations was broader and less formal than what is normally meant by 'paradigmatic' relations. He referred to 'mental association' and included perceived similarities in form (e.g. homophones) or meaning (e.g. synonyms). Such similarities were diverse and ranged from strong to slight, and might refer to only part of a word (such as a shared prefix or suffix). He noted that there was no end (or commonly agreed order) to such associations (Saussure 1983, 121-124; Saussure 1974, 123-126). In film and television, paradigms include ways of changing shot (such as cut, fade, dissolve and wipe). The medium or genre are also paradigms, and particular media texts derive meaning from the ways in which the medium and genre used differs from the alternatives. The aphorism of Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) that 'the medium is the message' can thus be seen as reflecting a semiotic concern: to a semioticianthe medium is not 'neutral'. A syntagm is an orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole within a text - sometimes, following Saussure, called a 'chain'. Such combinations are made within a framework of syntactic rules and conventions (both explicit and inexplicit). In language, a sentence, for instance, is a syntagm of words; so too are paragraphs and chapters. 'There are always larger units, composed of smaller units, with a relation of interdependence holding between both' (Saussure 1983, 127; Saussure 1974, 128): syntagms can contain other syntagms. A printed advertisement is a syntagm of visual signifiers. Syntagmatic relations are the various ways in which elements within the same text may be related to each other. Syntagms are created by the linking of signifiers from paradigm sets which are chosen on the basis of whether they are conventionally regarded as appropriate or may be required by some rule system (e.g. grammar). Synatagmatic relations highlight the importance of part-whole relationships: Saussure stressed that 'the whole depends on the parts, and the parts depend on the whole' (Saussure 1983, 126; Saussure 1974, 128). Syntagms are often defined as 'sequential' (and thus temporal - as in speech and music), but they can represent spatial relationships. Saussure himself (who emphasized 'auditory signifiers' which 'are presented one after another' and 'form a chain') noted that visual signifiers (he instanced nautical flags) 'can exploit more than one dimension simultaneously' (Saussure 1983, 70; Saussure 1974, 70). Spatial syntagmatic relations are found in drawing, painting and photography. Many semiotic systems - such as drama, cinema, television and the world wide web - include both spatial and temporal syntagms. Thwaites et al. argue that within a genre, whilst the syntagmatic dimension is the textual structure, the paradigmatic dimension can be as broad as the choice of subject matter (Thwaites et al. 1994, 95). In this framing, form is a syntagmatic dimension whilst content is a paradigmatic dimension. However, form is also subject to paradigmatic choices and content to syntagmatic arrangement. Jonathan Culler offers an example of the syntagmatic relations and paradigmatic contrasts involved in Western menus:
In the food system... one defines on the syntagmatic axis the combinations of courses which can make up meals of various sorts; and each course or slot can be filled by one of a number of dishes which are in paradigmatic contrast with one another (one wouldn't combine roast beef and lamb chops in a single meal; they would be alternatives on any menu). These dishes which are alternative to one another often bear different meanings in that they connote varying degrees of luxury, elegance, etc. (Culler 1985, 104).

Roland Barthes (1967) outlined the paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements of the 'garment system' in similar terms. The paradigmatic elements are the items which cannot be worn at the same time on the same part of the body (such as hats, trousers, shoes). The syntagmatic dimension is the juxtaposition of different elements at the same time in a complete ensemble from hat to shoes.

Expanding on an example offered by David Lodge, Susan Spiggle explains in more detail how this might apply to a girl wearing a tee-shirt, jeans and sandals:
1. She selects signs from three paradigms (i.e. sets of possible signs - upper body garments, lower body garments, and footwear). Each paradigm contains a possible set of pieces from which she can choose only one. From the upper-body-garment paradigm (including blouses, tee-shirts, tunics, sweaters), she selects one. These items share a similar structure, function, and/or other attribute with others in the set: they are related to one another on the basis of similarity. She further selects items related by similarity from the lower-body-garment and footwear paradigms. A socially defined, shared classification system or code shapes her selections.2. She combines the selected signs through rules (i.e., tee-shirts go with sandals, not high heels), sending a message through the ensemble - the syntagm. Selection requires her to perceive similarity and opposition among signs within the set (the paradigm), classifying them as items having the same function or structure, only one of which she needs. She can substitute, or select, a blouse for the tee-shirt - conveying a different message. The combination, tee-shirt–jeans–sandals, requires her to know the 'rules by which garments are acceptably combined... The combination... is, in short, a kind of sentence' (Lodge 1977, 74). The tee-shirt–jeans–sandals syntagm conveys a different meaning (sends a different message) at the beach than at a formal occasion. (Spiggle 1998, 159)
In the case of film, our interpretation of an individual shot depends on both paradigmatic analysis (comparing it, not necessarily consciously, with the use of alternative kinds of shot) and syntagmatic analysis (comparing it with preceding and following shots). The same shot used within another sequence of shots could have quite a different preferred reading. Actually, filmic syntagms are not confined to such temporal syntagms (which are manifested in montage: the sequencing of shots) but include the spatial syntagms found also in still photography (in mise-en-scène: the composition of individual frames). Both syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis treat signs as part of a system - exploring their functions within codes and sub-codes - a topic to which we will return. Although we will discuss syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations separately, it should be emphasized that the semiotic analysis of a text or corpus has to tackle the system as a whole, and that the two dimensions cannot be considered in isolation. The description of any semiotic system involves specifying both the membership of all of the relevant paradigmatic sets and also the possible combinations of one set with another in well-formed syntagms. For the analyst, according to Saussure (who was, of course, focusing on the language system as a whole), 'the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements'; one cannot try to construct the system by working upwards from the constituent elements (Saussure 1983, 112; Saussure 1974, 113). However, Roland Barthes argued that 'an important part of the semiological undertaking' was to divide texts 'into minimal significant units... then to group these units into paradigmatic classes, and finally to classify the syntagmatic relations which link these units' (Barthes 1967, 48; cf.Langholz Leymore 1975, 21 and Lévi-Strauss 1972, 211). In practice, the analyst is likely to need to move back and forth between these two approaches as the analysis proceeds.

Semiotics for Beginners

Daniel Chandler

Paradigmatic Analysis

Whereas syntagmatic analysis studies the 'surface structure' of a text, paradigmatic analysis seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing sets of signifiers) which underlie the manifest content of texts. This aspect of structural analysis involves a consideration of the positive or negative connotations of each signifier (revealed through the use of one signifier rather than another), and the existence of 'underlying' thematic paradigms (e.g. binary oppositions such as public/private). 'Paradigmatic relations' are the oppositions and contrasts between the signifiers that belong to the same set from which those used in the text were drawn. Semioticians often focus on the issue of why a particular signifier rather than a workable alternative was used in a specific context: on what they often refer to as 'absences'. Saussure noted that a characteristic of what he called 'associative' relations - what would now be called paradigmatic relations - was that (in contrast to syntagmatic relations) such relations held 'in absentia' - in the absence from a specific text of alternative signifiers from the same paradigm (Saussure 1983, 122; Saussure 1974, 123). He also argued that signs take their value within the linguistic system from what they are not (Saussure 1983, 115; Saussure 1974, 117). We have popular sayings in English concerning two kinds of absences: we refer to 'what goes without saying' and 'what is conspicuous by its absence'. What 'goes without saying' reflects what it is assumed that you 'take for granted' as 'obvious'. In relation to the coverage of an issue (such as in 'factual' genres) this is a profoundly ideological absence which helps to 'position' the text's readers, the implication being that 'people like us already agree what we think about issues like that'. As for the second kind of absence, an item which is present in the text may flout conventional expectations, making the conventional item 'conspicuous by its absence' and the unexpected item 'a statement'. This applies no less to cultural practices. If a man wears a suit at his office it says very little other than that he is conforming to a norm. But if one day he arrives in jeans and a tee-shirt, this will be interpreted as 'making a statement'. Analysing textual absences can help to reveal whose interests are served by their omission. Such analysis pays particular attention to the issue of which questions are left unasked. Paradigmatic analysis involves comparing and contrasting each of the signifiers present in the text with absent signifiers which in similar circumstances might have been chosen, and considering the significance of the choices made. It can be applied at any semiotic level, from the choice of a particular word, image or sound to the level of the choice of style, genre or medium. The use of one signifier rather than another from the same paradigm is based on factors such as technical constraints, code (e.g. genre), convention, connotation, style, rhetorical purpose and the limitations of the individual's own repertoire. The analysis of paradigmatic relations helps to define the 'value' of specific items in a text. Some semioticians refer to the 'commutation test' which can be used in order to identify distinctive signifiers and to define their significance - determining whether a change on the level of the signifier leads to a change on the level of the signified. Its origins lie in a linguistic test of substitution applied by the Prague Structuralists (including Roman Jakobson). In order to identity within a language its phonemes and their 'distinctive features' (for example, voiced/unvoiced; nazalized/not nazalized), linguists experimented with changes in the phonetic structure of a word in order to see at what point it became a different word. The original commutation test has evolved into a rather more subjective form of textual analysis. Roland Barthes refers to using the commutation test to divide texts into minimal significant units, before grouping these units into paradigmatic classes (Barthes 1967, 48). To apply this test a particular signifier in a text is selected. Then alternatives to this signifier are considered. The effects of each substitution are considered in terms of how this might affect the sense made of the sign. This might involve imagining the use of a close-up rather than a mid-shot, a subtitution in age, sex, class or ethnicity, substituting objects, a different caption for a photograph, etc. It could also involve swapping over two of the existing signifiers, changing their original relationship. The influence of the substitution on the meaning can help to suggest the contribution of the original signifier and also to identify syntagmatic units (Barthes 1967, III 2.3; Barthes 1985, 19-20). The commutation test can identify the sets (paradigms) and codes to which the signifiers used belong. For instance, if changing the setting used in an advertisement contributes to changing the meaning then 'setting' is one of the paradigms; the paradigm set for the setting would consist of all of those alternative signifiers which could have been used and which would have shifted the meaning. Arriving at a party in a Nissan Micra 'says something different' from arriving in an Alfa Romeo. Wearing jeans to a job interview will be interpreted differently from 'power dressing'. The commutation test may involve any of four basic transformations, some of which involve the modification of the syntagm. However, the consideration of an alternative syntagm can itself be seen as a paradigmatic substitution.
• Paradigmatic transformations
  • substitution;
  • transposition;
• Syntagmatic transformations
  • addition;
  • deletion.
These four basic tranformational processes were noted as features of perception and recall (Allport & Postman 1945; Newcomb 1952: 88-96). They correspond exactly to the four general categories to which Quintilian (circa 35-100 AD) assigned the rhetorical figures (or tropes) as 'deviations' from 'literal' language (Nöth 1990, 341). Structuralists emphasize the importance of relations of paradigmatic opposition. The primary analytical method employed by many semioticians involves the identification of binary or polar semantic oppositions (e.g. us/them, public/private) in texts or signifying practices. Such a quest is based on a form of 'dualism'. Note that the slanting line linking and separating the two terms in such pairings is sometimes referred to by semioticians as 'the bar', a term employed by Jacques Lacan (Lacan 1977, 149). Dualism seems to be deeply-rooted in the development of human categorization. Jakobson and Halle observe that 'the binary opposition is a child's first logical operation' (Jakobson & Halle 1956, 60). Whilst there are no opposites in 'nature', the binary oppositions which we employ in our cultural practices help to generate order out of the dynamic complexity of experience. At the most basic level of individual survival humans share with other animals the need to distinguish between 'own species and other, dominance and submission, sexual availability or lack of availability, what is edible and what is not' (Leach 1970, 39). The range of human distinctions is far more extensive than those which they share with other animals since it is supported by the elaborate system of categorization which language facilitates. The British anthropologist Sir Edmund Leach reflects that 'a speechless ape presumably has some sort of feelings for the opposition "I"/"Other", perhaps even for its expanded version "We"/"They", but the still more grandiose "Natural"/"Supernatural" ("Man"/"God") could only occur within a linguistic frame... The recognition of a distinction Natural/Supernatural (Real/Imaginary) is a basic marker of humanity' (Leach 1982, 108-9). People have believed in the fundamental character of binary oppositions since at least classical times. For instance, in his Metaphysics Aristotle advanced as primary oppositions: form/matter, natural/unnatural,active/passive, whole/part, unity/variety, before/after and being/not-being. But it is not in isolation that the rhetorical power of such oppositions resides, but in their articulation in relation to other oppositions. In Aristotle's Physics the four elements of earth, air, fire and water were said to be opposed in pairs. For more than two thousand years oppositional patterns based on these four elements were widely accepted as the fundamental structure underlying surface reality. The elements of such frameworks appeared in various combinations, their shifting forms driven in part by the tensions inherent within such schemes. The theory of the elements continued to enjoy widespread influence until the time of scientists such as Robert Boyle (1627-91).

Element	Quality	Humour	Body fluid	Organ	Season	Cardinal point	Zodiac signs	Planet
air	hot and moist	sanguine (active and enthusiastic)	blood	heart	spring	South	Gemini, Libra, Aquarius	Jupiter
fire	hot and dry	choleric (irritable and changeable)	yellow bile	liver	summer	East	Aries, Leo, Sagittarius	Mars
earth	cold and dry	melancholic (sad and brooding)	black bile	spleen	autumn	North	Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn	Saturn
water	cold and moist	phlegmatic (apathetic and sluggish)	phlegm	brain	winter	West	Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces	Venus

Lyons comments that 'binary opposition is one of the most important principles governing the structure of languages' (Lyons 1977, 271). Saussure, of course, emphasized the differences between signs rather than their similarities. Opposites (or antonyms) clearly have a very practical function compared with synonyms: that of sorting. Roman Jakobson built on Saussure's work, proposing that linguistic units are bound together by a system of binary oppositions. Such oppositions are essential to the generation of meaning: the meaning of 'dark' is relative to the meaning of 'light'; 'form' is inconceivable except in relation to 'content'. It is an open question whether our tendency to think in opposites is determined by the prominence of oppositions in language or whether language merely reflects a universal human characteristic. The various conventionally-linked terms with which we are familiar within a culture might more appropriately be described as paired 'contrasts', since they are not always direct 'opposites' (although their use often involves polarization). Distinctions can be made between various types of 'oppositions', perhaps the most important being the following:
• oppositions (logical 'contradictories'): mutually exclusive terms (e.g. alive/dead, where 'not alive' can only be 'dead');
• antonyms (logical 'contraries'): terms which are comparatively graded on the same implicit dimension (e.g. good/bad, where 'not good' is not necessarily 'bad') (Lyons 1977, 270ff; Langholz Leymore 1975, 7; Barthes 1985, 162ff).
This is basically a distinction between digital and analogue oppositions: digital differences are either/or; analogue distinctions are 'more-or-less'. We may note here that most of the oppositions in English are 'morphologically related' - that is, one term is a negative which is formed by the addition of a prefix such as un- or -in (e.g. formal/informal). Despite this, most of the commonly used oppositions in English (and in many other languages) are apparently morphologically unrelated (e.g. good/bad) (and thus more arbitrary). In English, most morphologically unrelated oppositions are comparative (gradable) and many morphologically related oppositions are not, but there many exceptions to this pattern - including terms which may be paired with another which is either morphologically related or unrelated (e.g. friendly/unfriendly andfriendly/hostile). Positive and negative terms can be distinguished even in morphologically unrelated oppositions (such as good/bad) by such cues as their most common sequence - a point to which we will return (Lyons 1977, 275-277). There is no logical necessity for morphologically unrelated oppositions, as Syme explains to Winston in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell in 1949:
It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives... It isn't only the synonyms: there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. (Orwell 1989, 54).
John Lyons suggests that the reason why we tend to use morphologically unrelated forms in comparative oppositions is to emphasize the semantic distinction involved: '"good" and "bad" are more obviously different lexemes than "friendly" and "unfriendly"' (Lyons 1977, 277). He adds that 'gradable opposites manifest the property of polarity more strikingly than do other opposites' (ibid., 279). Furthermore, in everyday discourse we frequently treat comparative terms as if they were discrete categories (ibid., 278). For whatever reasons we seem to favour categorization which is 'black and white'. It is a feature of culture that binary oppositions come to seem 'natural' to members of a culture. Many pairings of concepts (such asmale/female and mind/body) are familiar to members of a culture and may seem commonsensical distinctions for everyday communicational purposes even if they may be regarded as 'false dichotomies' in critical contexts. Rudyard Kipling satirized the apparently universal tendency to divide the people we know directly or indirectly into 'Us' and 'Them' ('We and They', Kipling 1977, 289-290):
All nice people, like us, are We And everyone else is They: But if you cross over the sea, Instead of over the way, You may end by (think of it!) Looking on We As only a sort of They! 
The opposition of self/other (or subject/object) is psychologically fundamental. The neo-Freudian psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote in 1957 (in 'The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious') that 'the unconscious is structured like a language' (cf. Lacan 1977, 159, 298). The mind imposes some degree of constancy on the dynamic flux of experience by defining 'the Self' in relation to 'the Other'. Initially, in the primal realm of 'the Real' (where there is no absence, loss or lack), the infant has no centre of identity and experiences no clear boundaries between itself and the external world. The child emerges from the Real and enters 'the Imaginary' at the age of about six- to eighteen-months, before the acquisition of speech. This is a private psychic realm in which the construction of the Self as subject is initiated. In the realm of visual images, we find our sense of self reflected back by an Other with whom we identify. For Lacan, this does not reflect a dichotomy between Self and Other, because not only is Self always defined in terms of Other, but paradoxically, Self is Other. He describes a defining moment in the Imaginary which he calls 'the mirror phase', when seeing one's mirror image (and being told by one's mother, 'That's you!') induces a strongly-defined illusion of a coherent and self-governing personal identity. This marks the child's emergence from a matriarchal state of 'nature' into the patriarchal order of culture. As the child gains mastery within the pre-existing 'Symbolic order' (the public domain of verbal language), language (which can be mentally manipulated) helps to foster the individual's sense of a conscious Self residing in an 'internal world' which is distinct from 'the world outside'. However, a degree of individuality and autonomy is surrendered to the constraints of linguistic conventions, and the Self becomes a more fluid and ambiguous relational signifier rather than a relatively fixed entity. Subjectivity is dynamically constructed through discourse. Emile Benveniste argued that 'language is possible only because each speaker sets himself up as a subject by referring to himself as "I" in his discourse. Because of this, "I" posits another person, the one who, being as he is completely exterior to "me", becomes my echo to whom I say "you" and who says "you" to me'... Neither of these terms can be considered without the other; they are complementary... and at the same time they are reversible' (Benveniste 1971, 225). The entry into the Symbolic order may be illustrated with Freud's description (in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920) of the fort-da game played by his grandson at the age of about eighteen months. The child was alternately throwing away and pulling back a cotton-reel, whilst attempting to say the words 'fort!' (gone away!) and 'da!' (there it is!) - thus creating the shortest possible narrative form. According to Freud this represented a symbolization of the mother leaving and returning. It turns a paradigmatic substitution into an elementary syntagm and demonstrates the lure of repetition and difference. Its focus on absence/presence has made it a favourite of post-structuralist theorists such as Lacan and Derrida. It can stand for anything which we have lost or fear losing, and for the pleasure or hope of its recovery. It is thus symbolic of the loss of (amongst other things) the imagined oneness of being in the Imaginary. Romantics may (at least retrospectively) identify with a childhood sense of growing separation from that which can be described. They tend to echo the poet Shelley (1815) in a vision of primal experience as a mystical sense of oneness, of being within a universal continuum: 'Let us recollect our senses as children. What a distinct and intense apprehension we had of the world and of ourselves... We less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt from ourselves. They seemed as it were to constitute one mass' (Forman 1880, 261). The Romantic sense of loss in mediation is perhaps most powerfully represented in Rousseau's interpretation of our use of tools as involving the loss of a primal unity with the world. Such Romantic visions emphasize the unity of the knower and the known. Childhood or primal experience is portrayed by Romantics as virtually 'unmediated'. And yet all but the most naive epistemology suggests that our experience of the world is unavoidably mediated. Indeed, without the separation of Self from Other there would be no 'me' who could hark back to a pre-lapsarian myth of oneness. 'Male' and 'female' are not 'opposites', and yet cultural myths routinely encourage us to treat them as such. Guy Cook offers a simple example of how images of masculinity and femininity can be generated through a series of binary oppositions in a literary text (Cook 1992, 115). He instances two consecutive speeches from the beginning of a scene in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

JULIET:	Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day;
	It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
	That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
	Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.
	Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
ROMEO:	It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
	No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
	Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east;
	Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
	Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
	I must be gone and live or stay and die.
	(Romeo and Juliet III, v)

Cook notes the following gendered oppositions:

Female	Juliet	question	stays	night	garden	nightingale	death	sleeping	hollow
Male	Romeo	answer	goes	day	mountain tops	lark	life	waking	candles

Such oppositions tend to retreat to transparency in reading or watching the play. The gendered character of the echoes and parallels is consequently quite surprising when the text is submitted to this kind of analysis. And yet these oppositions do not seem to be purely analytical constructions. Indeed, we may also note that Juliet emphasizes sound whilst Romeo relies on vision (yet another stereotypically gendered association). Through the endless repetition of such subtle patterns - in countless variations - mythologies such as that of heterosexual romance are generated and sustained. Paired signifiers are seen by structuralist theorists as part of the 'deep [or 'hidden'] structure' of texts, shaping the preferred reading. Such linkages seem to become aligned in some texts and codes so that additional 'vertical' relationships (such as male/mind, female/body) acquire apparent links of their own - as feminists and queer theorists have noted (Silverman 1983, 36; Grosz 1993, 195; Chaplin 1994, 11; Butler 1999, 17). As Kaja Silverman notes, 'a cultural code is a conceptual system which is organized around key oppositions and equations, in which a term like "woman" is defined in opposition to a term like "man", and in which each term is aligned with a cluster of symbolic attributes' (Silverman 1983, 36). This notion can be traced to Claude Lévi-Strauss's discussion of analogical relationships which generate systems of meaning within classification systems. Structuralist theorists such as Lévi-Strauss have argued that binary oppositions form the basis of underlying 'classificatory systems' within cultures - constituting fundamental organizing metaphors and metonyms. He saw certain key binary oppositions as the invariants or universals of the human mind, cutting across cultural distinctions. Lévi-Strauss wrote:
If, as we believe to be the case, the unconscious activity of the mind consists in imposing form upon content, and if these forms are fundamentally the same for all minds - ancient and modern, primitive and civilized (as the study of the symbolic function, expressed in language, so strikingly indicates) - it is necessary and sufficient to grasp the unconscious structure underlying each institution and each custom, in order to obtain a principle of interpretation valid for other institutions and other customs, provided of course that the analysis is carried far enough. (Lévi-Strauss 1972, 21)
Lévi-Strauss undertook synchronic studies of systems of cultural practices, seeking to identify underlying semantic oppositions in relation to such phenomena as myths, totemism and kinship rules. Individual myths and cultural practices defy interpretation, making sense only as a part of a system of differences and oppositions expressing fundamental reflections on the relationship of nature and culture. This is expressed in terms of the relations between humankind and various other phenomena, such as: animals, plants, supernatural beings, heavenly bodies, forms of food and so on. Certain binary distinctions based on the form of human body are universal and seem fundamental - notablymale/female and right/left. 'Such natural pairs are invariably loaded with cultural significance - they are made into the prototype symbols of the good and the bad, the permitted and the forbidden' (Leach 1970, 44). Lévi-Strauss argues that within a culture 'analogical thought' leads to some oppositions (such as edible/inedible) being perceived as metaphorically resembling the 'similar differences' of other oppositions (such asnative/foreign) (Lévi-Strauss 1974). Lévi-Strauss reported three stages in his analytical method:
(1) define the phenomenon under study as a relation between two or more terms, real or supposed; (2) construct a table of possible permutations between these terms; (3) take this table as the general object of analysis which, at this level only, can yield necessary connections, the empirical phenomenon considered at the beginning being only one possible combination among others, the complete system of which must be reconstructed beforehand. (Lévi-Strauss 1964, 16)
For Lévi-Strauss, myths represent a dreamlike working-over of a fundamental dilemma or contradiction within a culture which can be expressed in the form of a pair of oppositions. The development of the myth constitutes a repeated reframing of this tension through layers of paired opposites which are transformations of the primary pair. These layers begin with classifications based on physical perception and become increasingly more generalized. Claude Lévi-Strauss has demonstrated how cooking transforms Nature into Culture: South American myths oppose the raw to the cooked (Lévi-Strauss 1970). He comments on his theorizing: 'In order to construct this system of myths about cooking, we found ourselves obliged to use oppositions between terms all more or less drawn from sensory qualities: raw and cooked, fresh and rotten, and so forth. Now we find that the second step in our analysis reveals terms still opposed in pairs, but whose nature is different to the degree that they involve not so much a logic of qualities as one of forms: empty and full, container and contents, internal and external, included and excluded, etc.' (cited in Jameson 1972, 118-119). In a major review of the anthropological literature, Lévi-Strauss famously and provocatively declared that 'exchange, as a total phenomenon, is from the first a total exchange, comprising food, manufactured objects and that most precious category of goods, women' (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 60-1). We have referred already to his reflections on the significance of our preparation of food. His observations on the social phenomenon of exchange are distinctive because he argued that exogamy (marrying outside the group) and more generally 'the relations between the sexes' are a form of communication (ibid., 493-4). Language, economics and sexuality - thus arguably the basis of all communication - draw on three fundamental oppositions: addressor/addressee; buyer/seller; masculine/feminine (Coward & Ellis 1977, 58). As Lévi-Strauss noted, social exchanges involve the exchange of 'social values' (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 62). The production of subject positions in relation to these key oppositions can be seen as a primary mechanism for the reproduction of society and its values. Lévi-Strauss even turned his attention to the textual codes of literature in what is probably the most famous structuralist textual analysis of all. In collaboration with the linguist Roman Jakobson, he undertook an analysis of the sonnet 'Les Chats' by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). This involved a detailed outline of the oppositions of parts of speech, poetic forms, semantic features and so on (Lane 1970, 202-221). Since this is such a frequently-cited analysis, the poem and an English rendering are reproduced here for the reader's convenience. The commentators helpfully note, by the way, that L'Érèbe is a 'shady region bordering on Hell' and that Erebus is 'brother of the night' (Lane 1970, 213).

Les chats	Cats
Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères	Fervent lovers and austere savants
Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,	Cherish alike, in their mature season,
Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,	Cats powerful and gentle, pride of the house,
Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.	Like them they feel the cold, like them are sedentary.
Amis de la science et de la volupté,	Friends of science and of sensuality,
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres;	They seek silence and the horror of the dark;
L'Érèbe les eût pris pour ses courriers funèbres,	Erebus would take them for his funereal couriers,
S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.	If they'd to servitude incline their pride.
Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes	They take on when dreaming the noble postures
Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,	Of great sphinxes stretched out in the depths of solitude,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;	Seeming to sleep in a dream without end;
Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,	Their fecund loins are full of magic sparks,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,	And particles of gold, as well as fine sand,
Étoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques.	Vaguely star their mystic pupils.

In a headnote to the paper, Lévi-Strauss notes that the poem consisted of 'superimposed levels: phonology, phonetics, syntax, prosody, semantics etc.' (Lane 1970, 202). The authors demonstrate that 'the different levels on which we touched blend, complement each other or combine' (ibid., 217). For instance, they note a link between the grammatical and semantic levels: 'All beings in the sonnet are masculine but the cats and their alter ego, les grands sphinx, are of an androgynous nature. This very ambiguity is emphasized throughout the sonnet by the paradoxical choice of feminine substantives [nouns] for so-called masculine rhymes' (ibid., 221). Here is a breakdown of the rhyme scheme which, together with the text, may assist interested readers to note patterns for themselves.

Line	Rhyme word	English equivalent	Rhyme scheme	Rhyme form	Grammatical function	Singular/plural form
1	austères	austere	a	feminine	adjective	plural
2	saison	season	B	masculine	noun f	singular
3	maison	house	B	masculine	noun f	singular
4	sédentaires	sedentary	a	feminine	adjective	plural
5	volupté	sensuality	C	masculine	noun f	singular
6	ténèbres	dark(ness)	d	feminine	noun f	plural
7	funèbres	funereal	d	feminine	adjective	plural
8	fierté	pride	C	masculine	noun f	singular
9	attitudes	postures	e	feminine	noun f	plural
10	solitudes	emptiness	e	feminine	noun f	plural
11	fin	end	F	masculine	noun f	singular
12	magiques	magic(al)	g	feminine	adjective	plural
13	fin	fine	F	masculine	adjective	singular
14	mystiques	mystic(al)	g	feminine	adjective	plural

We have already noted the asssociation of feminine nouns with masculine rhymes. In reflecting on patterns in this rhyme scheme, the reader may also notice, as Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson pointed out, the curious circumstance that in this sonnet 'all the substantives [nouns] are feminine' and that 'all feminine rhymes are plural' (Lane 1970, 205, 220). The authors argue that 'for Baudelaire, the image of the cat is closely linked to that of the woman', citing the association of 'puissants et doux' with women in other poetry. Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson emphasize the importance of binary oppositions. At the semantic level, other than what they see as 'the oscillation between male and female' in the poem, they argue that another key opposition is animate/inanimate. At a linguistic level a fundamental opposition is metaphor/metonymy. Again, readers may care to identify such oppositions for themselves. The authors argue that the poem seeks to 'resolve' the oppositions which it generates at various levels (ibid., 218-9). Whilst widely-cited, this analysis is also understandably criticized as arid by those whom structuralism leaves cold. Being an archetypical structuralist analysis, it confines itself to structural relations within the text (Riffaterre 1970). More broadly, aesthetic 'movements' can be interpreted in terms of paradigms of characteristic oppositions. Each movement can be loosely identified in terms of a primary focus of interest: for instance, realism tends to be primarily oriented towards the world, neo-classicismtowards the text and romanticism towards the author (which is not to suggest, of course, that such goals have not been shared by othermovements). Such broad goals generate and reflect associated values. Within a particular movement, various oppositions constitute a palette of possibilities for critical theorists within the movement. For instance, the codes of romanticism are built upon various implicit or explicit articulations of such oppositions as: expressive/instrumental, feeling/thought, emotion/reason, spontaneity/deliberation,passion/calculation, inspiration/effort, genius/method, intensity/reflection, intuition/judgement, impulse/intention,unconsciousness/design, creativity/construction, originality/conventionality, creation/imitation, imagination/learning, dynamism/order,sincerity/facticity, natural/artificial and organic/mechanical. The alignment of some of these pairs generates further associations: for instance, an alignment of spontaneity/deliberation with sincerity/facticity equates spontaneity with sincerity. More indirectly, it may also associate their opposites, so that deliberation reflects insincerity or untruthfulness. Romantic literary theorists often proclaimed spontaneity in expressive writing to be a mark of sincerity, of truth to feeling - even when this ran counter to their own compositional practices (Chandler 1995, 49ff). Even within 'the same' aesthetic movement, various theorists construct their own frameworks, as is illustrated in Abrams' study of romantic literary theory (Abrams 1971). Each opposition (or combination of oppositions) involves an implicit contrast with the priorities and values of another aesthetic movement: thus (in accord with the Saussurean principle of negative differentiation) an aesthetic movement is defined by what it is not. The evolution of aesthetic movements can be seen as the working-out of tensions between such oppositions. Similarly, within textual analysis, it has been argued that the structure of particular texts (or myths) works to position the reader to privilege one set of values and meanings over the other. Sometimes such oppositions may appear to be resolved in favour of dominant ideologies but poststructuralists argue that tensions between them always remain unresolved. One aesthetic movement, that of Surrealism, can be seen as centrally concerned with the resolution of opposites. Charles Forceville argues that:
One of the central tenets of Surrealism was that ultimately all opposites (feeling vs. reason; beauty vs. ugliness; substance vs. spirit, etc.) are merely apparent opposites. In the last resort each two 'antitheses' are aspects of a deeper unity, and the Surrealists saw it as their task to show this unity. From this point of view, it is hardly surprising that metaphor, with its crucial characteristic of rendering one thing in terms of another, could play an important role in bridging the seemingly irreconcilable opposites. (Forceville 1996, 59)
As we shall see shortly, this Surrealist mission has much in common with poststructuralist goals. Paradigmatic analysis has also been applied to popular culture. Exploring a basic opposition of wilderness/civilization, Jim Kitses analysed the film genre of the western in relation to a series of oppositions: individual/community; nature/culture; law/gun sheep/cattle (Kitses 1970). John Fiske makes considerable analytical use of such oppositions in relation to mass media texts (Fiske 1987). Umberto Eco analysed theJames Bond novels in terms of a series of oppositions: Bond/villain; West/Soviet Union; anglo-saxon/other countries; ideals/cupidity;chance/planning; excess/moderation; perversion/innocence; loyalty/disloyalty (Eco 1966). Binary oppositions can be traced even in visual images. Jean-Marie Floch compares and contrasts the logos of the two major computer companies, IBM and Apple, revealing their differences to be based on a series of associated binary oppositions, the most obvious of which are listed here (Floch 2000, 41). The contrast could hardly involve a clearer opposition. Appropriately, Apple's logo seems to be defined purely in opposition to the more established/establishment image of IBM.

	IBM	Apple
Structure	repetition	non repetition
	disconnected lines	joined lines
Colour	monochromatic	polychromatic
	cold	warm
Forms	substance ('bold')	outline
	straight	curved

A past chairman of the Apple Products division is quoted as saying, 'Our logo is a great mystery: it is a symbol of pleasure and knowledge, partially eaten away and displaying the colours of the rainbow, but not in the proper order. We couldn't wish for a more fitting logo: pleasure, knowledge, hope and anarchy' (Floch 2000, 54). Clearly, the bitten apple refers both to the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden and to the association of IBM with the east coast and 'the Big Apple' of New York. The psychedelic mixed-up rainbow (green, yellow, orange, red, violet and blue) signifies the west coast hippie era of the 1960s, with its associations of idealism and 'doing your own thing'. Thus, despite representing a binary opposition to the IBM logo, the multi-coloured Apple logo seeks to signify a rejection of the binarism reflected in the 'black-and-white' (or rather monochrome) linearity of IBM's logo. Competing companies clearly need to establish distinct identities, and such identities are typically reflected in their logos. This example may tempt the reader to compare the visual identities of other competing corporations. Oppositions are rarely equally weighted. The Russian linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson introduced the theory of markedness: 'Every single constituent of any linguistic system is built on an opposition of two logical contradictories: the presence of an attribute ("markedness") in contraposition to its absence ("unmarkedness")' (cited in Lechte 1994, 62). The concept of markedness can be applied to the poles of a paradigmatic opposition: paired signs consist of an 'unmarked' and a 'marked' form. This applies, as we shall see, both at the level of the signifier and at the level of the signified. The 'marked' signifier is distinguished by some special semiotic feature (Nöth 1990, 76). In relation to linguistic signifiers, two characteristic features of marked forms are commonly identified: these relate to formal features and generic function. The more 'complex' form is marked, which typically involves both of the following features:
• Formal marking. In morphologically related oppositions, marking is based on the presence or absence of some particular formal feature. The marked signifier is formed by adding a distinctive feature to the unmarked signifier (for instance, the marked form 'unhappy' is formed by adding the prefix un- to the unmarked signifier 'happy') (Greenberg 1966; Clark & Clark, 1977; Lyons 1977, 305ff).
• Distributional marking. Formally marked terms show a tendency to be more restricted in the range of contexts in which they occur(Lyons 1977, 306-307).
In English, linguistically unmarked forms include the present tense of verbs and the singular form of nouns. The active voice is normally unmarked, although in the restricted genre of traditional academic writing the passive voice is still often the unmarked form. The markedness of linguistic signs includes semantic marking: a marked or unmarked status applies not only to signifiers but also tosignifieds. According to 'the binary thesis' 'a signified's content is determined by a series of binary contrasts in which one term is marked and the other unmarked' (Holdcroft 1991, 127). With morphologically related pairings there is an obvious relation between formal and semantic marking, and John Lyons suggests that distributional marking in oppositions is probably determined by semantic marking (Lyons 1977, 307). One form of semantic marking relates to specificity. The unmarked term is often used as a generic term whilst the marked term is used in a more specific sense. General references to humanity used to use the term 'Man' (which in this sense was not intended to be sex-specific), and of course the word 'he' has long been used generically. In English the female category is generally marked in relation to the male, a point not lost on feminist theorists (Clark & Clark 1977, 524). Lyons notes, however, that it is not always the female term which is marked - he refers to several farmyard animals as exceptions - bull, cock, ram and drake - suggesting that this is perhaps because such animals are normally reared in smaller numbers (Lyons 1977, 308). Where terms are paired the pairing is rarely symmetrical but rather hierarchical. With apologies to George Orwell we might coin the phrase that 'all signifieds are equal, but some are more equal than others'. With many of the familiarly paired terms, the two signifieds are accorded different values. The unmarked term is primary, being given precedence and priority, whilst the marked term is treated as secondary or even suppressed and excluded as an 'absent signifier'. When morphological cues (such as un- or -in) are lacking, the 'preferred sequence' or most common order of paired terms usually distinguishes the first as a semantically positive term and the second as a negative one (Lyons 1977, 276;Malkiel 1968). 'Term B' is referred to by some theorists as being produced as an 'effect' of 'Term A'. The unmarked term is presented as fundamental and originative whilst the marked term 'is conceived in relation to it' as derivative, dependent, subordinate, supplemental or ancillary (Culler 1985, 112; Adams 1989, 142). This framing ignores the fact that the unmarked term is logically and structurally dependent on the marked term to lend it substance. Even the arch-structuralist Lévi-Strauss acknowledged that 'the very notion of opposition implies that the two forms were originally conceived of as complementary terms, forming a part of the same classification' (in Lane 1970, 202). Derrida demonstrated that within the oppositional logic of binarism neither of the terms (or concepts) makes sense without the other. This is what he calls 'the logic of supplementarity': the 'secondary' term which is represented as 'marginal' and external is in fact constitutive of the 'primary' term and essential to it (Derrida 1976). The unmarked term is defined by what it seeks to exclude. Consequently, the boundaries of foundational oppositions, seemingly 'absolute', have to be policed because 'transgressions' are inevitable (Eagleton 1983, 133). In the pairing of oppositions or contraries, Term B is defined relationally rather than substantively. The linguistic marking of signifiers in many of these pairings is referred to as 'privative' - consisting of suffixes or prefixes signifying lack or absence - e.g. non-, un- or -less. In such cases, Term B is defined by negation - being everything that Term A is not. For example, when we refer to 'non-verbal communication', the very labeldefines such a mode of communication only in negative relation to 'verbal communication'. Indeed, the unmarked term is not merely neutral but implicitly positive in contrast to the negative connotations of the marked term. For the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan the marked term in the pairing of men/women is negatively defined within 'the symbolic order' in terms of the absence or lack of a privileged signifier associated with control and power - the phallus (though see feminist critiques of Lacan's phallocentrism, e.g. Lovell 1983, 44-45). The association of the marked term with absence and lack is of course problematized by those who have noted the irony that the dependence of Term A on Term B can be seen as reflecting a lack on the part of the unmarked term (Fuss 1991, 3). The unmarked form is typically dominant (e.g. statistically within a text or corpus) and therefore seems to be 'neutral', 'normal' and 'natural'. It is thus 'transparent' - drawing no attention to its invisibly privileged status, whilst the deviance of the marked form is salient. Where it is not totally excluded, the 'marked' form is foregrounded - presented as 'different'; it is 'out of the ordinary' - an extraordinary deviational 'special case' which is something other than the standard or default form of the unmarked term (Nöth 1990, 76; Culler 1989, 271). Unmarked/markedmay thus be read as norm/deviation. It is notable that empirical studies have demonstrated that cognitive processing is more difficult with marked terms than with unmarked terms (Clark & Clark 1977). Marked forms take longer to recognize and process and more errors are made with these forms.

high I N C I D E N C E low	90%+*
	indoor/outdoor
	up/down
	yes/no
	East/West
	open/closed
	wet/dry
	question/answer
	true/false
	major/minor	80%+*
	hot/cold	on/off
	reader/writer	public/private
	before/after	male/female
	love/hate	high/low
	top/bottom	parent/child	70%+*
	good/bad	internal/external	black/white
	cause/effect	gain/loss	mind/body	60%+*
	front/back	human/animal	left/right	adult/child
	primary/secondary	past/present	positive/negative	urban/rural
	birth/death	gay/straight	art/science	product/process
	presence/absence	more/less	active/passive	horizontal/vertical
	problem/solution	above/below	light/dark	physical/mental
	win/lose	inner/outer	product/system	hard/soft
	acceptance/rejection	thought/feeling	sex/gender	fast/slow
	inclusion/exclusion	life/death	static/dynamic	quantity/quality
	success/failure	subject/object	liberal/conservative	foreground/background
	human/machine	producer/consumer	higher/lower	similarity/difference
	right/wrong	work/play	teacher/learner	temporary/permanent
	nature/nurture	good/evil	war/peace	nature/culture
	theory/practice	masculine/feminine	body/soul	poetry/prose
	near/far	health/illness	fact/fiction	part/whole	50%+*
	self/other	comedy/tragedy	form/content	married/single	new/old
	figure/ground	insider/outsider	form/function	strong/weak	large/small
	rich/poor	happy/sad	simple/complex	subjective/objective	local/global
	fact/opinion	superior/inferior	original/copy	dead/alive	them/us
	system/use	present/absent	means/ends	shallow/deep	system/process
	hero/villain	clean/dirty	appearance/reality	competition/cooperation	young/old
	fact/value	natural/artificial	competence/performance	live/recorded	majority/minority
	text/context	speaker/listener	one/many	head/heart	foreign/domestic
	raw/cooked	classical/romantic	speech/writing	formal/casual	structure/process
	substance/style	type/token	straight/curved	structure/agency	order/chaos
	base/superstructure	nature/technology	signifier/signified	message/medium	concrete/abstract
	knowledge/ignorance	rights/obligations	central/peripheral	form/meaning	words/actions
	fact/fantasy	reason/emotion	wild/domestic	words/deeds	beautiful/ugly
	knower/known	sacred/profane	stability/change	fact/theory	individual/society
	literal/metaphorical	maker/user	realism/idealism	words/things	strange/familiar
	<-–– more marked         MARKEDNESS          less marked –––>

Markedness of some explicit oppositions in online texts retrieved using Infoseek, Sept. 2000  *Dominant order as % of total occurrences of both forms On the limited evidence from frequency counts of explicit verbal pairings in written text, I would suggest that whilst it is very common for one term in such pairings to be marked, in some instances there is not a clearly marked term. For instance, in general usage there seems to be no inbuilt preference for one term in a pairing such as old/young (one is just as likely to encounter young/old). Furthermore, the extent to which a term is marked is variable. Some terms seem to be far more clearly marked than others: frequency counts based on texts on the World-Wide Web suggest that in the pairing public/private, for instance, private is very clearly the marked term (accorded secondary status). How strongly a term is marked also depends on contextual frameworks such as genres and sociolects, and in some contexts a pairing may be very deliberately and explicitly reversed when an interest group seeks to challenge the ideological priorities which the markedness may be taken to reflect. Not all of the pairs listed will seem to be 'the right way round' to everyone - you may find it interesting to identify which ones seem counter-intuitive to you and to speculate as to why this seems so. However 'natural' familiar dichotomies and their markedness may seem, their historical origins or phases of dominance can often be traced. For instance, perhaps the most influential dualism in the history of Western civilization can be attributed primarily to the philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) who divided reality into two distinct ontological substances - mind and body. This distinction insists on the separation of an external or 'real' world from an internal or 'mental' one, the first being material and the second non-material. It created the poles ofobjectivity and subjectivity and fostered the illusion that 'I' can be distinguished from my body. Furthermore, Descartes' rationalist declaration that 'I think, therefore I am' encouraged the privileging of mind over body. He presented the subject as an autonomous individual with an ontological status prior to social structures (a notion rejected by poststructural theorists). He established the enduring assumption of the independence of the knower from the known. Cartesian dualism also underpins a host of associated and aligned dichotomies such asreason/emotion, male/female, true/false, fact/fiction, public/private, self/other and human/animal. Indeed, many feminist theorists lay a great deal of blame at Descartes' door for the orchestration of the ontological framework of patriarchal discourse. One of the most influential of theorists who have sought to study the ways in which reality is constructed and maintained within discourse by such dominant frameworks is the French historian of ideas, Michel Foucault, who focused on the analysis of 'discursive formations' in specific historical and socio-cultural contexts (Foucault 1970; Foucault 1974). The strategy of 'deconstruction' which was adopted by the post-structuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida (1976) sought to challenge the phonocentric privileging of speech over writing in western culture and to demonstrate the instability of this opposition (Derrida 1976; Derrida 1978). Derrida also challenged the privileging of the signified over the signifier, seeing it as a perpetuation of the traditional opposition of matter and spirit or substance and thought. He noted that within such discourse the material form is always subordinated to the less materialform. Derrida sought to blur the distinction between signifier and signified, insisting that 'the signified always already functions as a signifier'(Derrida 1976, 7). He similarly challenged other loaded oppositions such as presence over absence, nature over culture, masculine over feminine and literal over metaphorical. Other 'critical theorists' have similarly sought to 'valorize term B' in the semiotic analysis of textual representations, though most are content with simply reversing the valorization rather than more radically seeking to destabilize the oppositional framework. This strategy is reflected in the way in which some activists in minority groups have hijacked the dominant language of the majority - as in the case of a campaign against homophobia which was launched by the Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK in September 1999 under the slogan 'It's prejudice that's queer'. The posters used neatly inverted heterosexist notions by substituting homophobia forhomosexuality: 'I can't stand homophobes, especially when they flaunt it'; 'My son is homophobic, but I hope it's just a phase'; and 'homophobes shouldn't be left alone with kids'. This strategy of ironic reversal had been foreshadowed in the wittily subversive formulation that 'we don't yet know what causes heterosexuality' (found in gay webpages). Following on from Derrida's deconstruction of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress have offered a useful visual mapping of Saussure's model of semiotics in terms of its own explicit oppositions. The diagram shown below is based on theirs. The leftmost terms represent those which were privileged by Saussure whilst those on the right represent those which he marginalizes in theCourse. Seeking to revalorize those terms which Saussure had devalorized, Hodge and Kress build their own more explicitly social andmaterialist framework for semiotics on 'the contents of Saussure's rubbish bin'. Their agenda for an 'alternative semiotics' is based on:

culture, society and politics as intrinsic to semiotics; other semiotic systems alongside verbal language; parole, the act of speaking, and concrete signifying practices in other codes; diachrony, time, history, process and change; the processes of signification, the transactions between signifying systems and structures of reference; structures of the signified; the material nature of signs.(Hodge & Kress 1988, 17)

The concept of markedness can be applied more broadly than simply to paradigmatic pairings of words or concepts. Whether in textual or social practices, the choice of a marked form 'makes a statement'. Where a text deviates from conventional expectations it is 'marked'. Conventional, or 'over-coded' text (which follows a fairly predictable formula) is unmarked whereas unconventional or 'under-coded' text is marked. Marked or under-coded text requires the interpreter to do more interpretative work. The existence of marked forms is not simply a structural feature of semiotic systems. Kathryn Woodward argues that 'it is through the marking out of... differences that social order is produced and maintained' (Woodward 1997, 33). Unmarked forms reflect the naturalization of dominant cultural values. The French feminist Hélène Cixous has emphasized the gendered character of binary oppositions, which are consistently weighted in favour of the male (cited in Woodward 1997, 36 and Allen 2000, 152). As Trevor Millum notes:
The standards by which mankind in general and societies and individuals in particular have estimated the values of male and female are not neutral, but, as Simnel puts it, 'in themselves essentially masculine'. To be male is to be in some way normal, to be female is to be different, to depart from the norm, to be abnormal. (Millum 1975, 71)
Applying the concept of marked forms to mass media genres, Merris Griffiths, then one of my own research students, examined the production and editing styles of television advertisements for toys. Her findings showed that the style of advertisements aimed primarily at boys had far more in common with those aimed at a mixed audience than with those aimed at girls, making 'girls' advertisements' the marked category in commercials for toys. Notably, the girls' ads had significantly longer shots, significantly more dissolves (fade out/fade in of shot over shot), less long shots and more close-ups, less low shots, more level shots and less overhead shots. The gender-differentiated use of production features which characterized these children’s commercials reflected a series of binary oppositions - fast vs. slow, abrupt vs. gradual, excited vs. calm, active vs. passive, detached vs. involved. Their close association in such ads led them to line up consistently together as ‘masculine’ vs. ‘feminine’ qualities. The 'relative autonomy' of formal features in commercials seems likely to function as a constant symbolic reaffirmation of the broader cultural stereotypes which associate such qualities with gender - especially when accompanied by gender-stereotyped content. Readers may care to reflect on the way in which 'dark goods' and 'light goods' have traditionally been sold in high-street electrical shops. Dark goods such as televisions, video-recorders, camcorders and sound-systems were primarily targetted at men and the sales staff focused on technical specifications. Light goods such as refrigerators, washing-machines and cookers were targetted at women and the sales staff focused on appearance. The extent to which this particular pattern still survives in your own locality may be checked by some investigative 'window-shopping'. 'Binarism' has been defined as 'the passion of those who tend to see everything as divided into two categories' (Hervey 1982, 24). There is a delightfully ironic quip (variously attributed) that 'The world is divided into those who divide people into two types, and those who don't'. The interpretive usefulness of simple dichotomies is often challenged on the basis that life and (perhaps by a misleading 'realist' analogy) texts are 'seamless webs' and thus better described in terms of continua. But it is useful to remind ourselves that any interpretive framework cuts up its material into manageable chunks. The test of its appropriateness can surely only be assessed in terms of whether it advances our understanding of the phenomenon in question. The structuralist semiotician Algirdas Greimas introduced the semiotic square (which he adapted from the 'logical square' of scholastic philosophy) as a means of analysing paired concepts more fully (Greimas 1987, xiv, 49). The semiotic square is intended to map the logical conjunctions and disjunctions relating key semantic features in a text. Fredric Jameson notes that 'the entire mechanism... is capable of generating at least ten conceivable positions out of a rudimentary binary opposition' (in Greimas 1987, xiv). Whilst this suggests that the possibilities for signification in a semiotic system are richer than the either/or of binary logic, but that they are nevertheless subject to 'semiotic constraints' - 'deep structures' providing basic axes of signification. The symbols S1, S2, Not S1 and Not S2 represent positions within the system which may be occupied by concrete or abstract notions. The double-headed arrows represent bilateral relationships. The upper corners of the Greimasian square represent an opposition between S1 andS2 (e.g. white and black). The lower corners represent positions which are not accounted for in simple binary oppositions: Not S2 and Not S1(e.g. non-white and non-black). Not S1 consists of more than simply S2 (e.g. that which is not white is not necessarily black). In the horizontal relationships represent an opposition between each of the left-hand terms (S1 and Not S2) and its paired right-hand term (Not S1 and S2). The terms at the top (S1, S2) represent 'presences', whilst their companion terms (Not S1 and Not S2) represent 'absences'. The vertical relationships of 'implication' offer us an alternative conceptual synthesis of S1 with Not S2 and of S2 with Not S1 (e.g. of white with not-black or of black with not-white). Greimas refers to the relationships between the four positions as: contrariety or opposition (S1/S2);complementarity or implication (S1/Not S2 and S2/Not S1); and contradiction (S1/Not S1 and S2/Not S2). Varda Langholz Leymore offers an illustrative example of the linked terms 'beautiful' and 'ugly'. In the semiotic square the four related terms (clockwise) would be 'beautiful', 'ugly', 'not beautiful' and 'not ugly'. The initial pair is not simply a binary opposition because 'something which is not beautiful is not necessarily ugly and vice versa a thing which is not ugly is not necessarily beautiful' (Langholz Leymore 1975, 29). The same framework can be productively applied to many other paired terms, such as 'thin' and 'fat'.

	Occupying a position within such as framework invests a sign with meanings. The semiotic square can be used to highlight 'hidden' underlying themes in a text or practice. Using a slightly adapted version of the square shown here, Fredric Jameson outlines how it might be applied to Charles Dickens' novel, Hard Times.

In Hard Times we witness the confrontation of what amount to two antagonistic intellectual systems: Mr Gradgrind's utilitarianism ('Facts! Facts!') and that world of anti-facts symbolized by Sissy Jupe and the circus, or in other words, imagination. The novel is primarily the education of the educator, the conversion of Mr Gradgrind from his inhuman system to the opposing one. It is thus a series of lessons administered to Mr Gradgrind, and we may sort these lessons into two groups and see them as the symbolic answers to two kinds of questions. It is as though the plot of the novel, seeking now to generate the terms Not S1 and Not S2, were little more than a series of attempts to visualize the solutions to these riddles: What happens if you negate or deny imagination? What would happen if, on the contrary, you negated facts? Little by little the products of Mr Gradgrind's system show us the various forms which the negation of the negation, which the denial of Imagination, may take: his son Tom (theft), his daughter Louisa (adultery, or at least projected adultery), his model pupil Blitzer (delation, and in general the death of the spirit). Thus the absent fourth term comes to the centre of the stage; the plot is nothing but an attempt to give it imaginative being, to work through faulty solutions and unacceptable hypotheses until an adequate embodiment has been realized in terms of the narrative material. With this discovery (Mr Gradgrind's education, Louisa's belated experience of family love), the semantic rectangle is completed and the novel comes to an end. (Jameson 1972, 167-168)
In his foreword to an English translation of a book by Greimas, Jameson reflects on his own use of the technique. He suggests that the analyst should begin by provisionally listing all of the entities to be coordinated and that even apparently marginal entities should be on this initial list. He notes that even the order of the terms in the primary opposition is crucial: we have already seen how the first term in such pairings is typically privileged. He adds that ' the four primary terms... need to be conceived polysemically, each one carrying within it its own range of synonyms... such that... each of the four primary terms threatens to yawn open into its own fourfold system' (in Greimas 1987, xv-xvi). Jameson suggests that Not S2, the negation of the negation, 'is always the most critical position and the one that remains open or empty for the longest time, for its identification completes the process and in that sense constitutes the most creative act of the construction' (ibid., xvi). Using the earlier example of aesthetic movements and their dominant focuses, the reader might find it interesting to apply the semiotic square to these. To recap, it was suggested that realism tends to be primarily oriented towards the world, neo-classicism towards the text and romanticism towards the author. We may assign the concepts of world, text and author to three corners of the square - a fourth term is conspicuous by its absence. Jameson's caveats about the order and formulation of terms may be useful here. Turning to other contexts, in relation to children's toys Dan Fleming offers an accessible application of the semiotic square (Fleming 1996, 147ff). Gilles Marion has used the Greimasian square to suggest four purposes in communicating through clothing: wanting to be seen; not wanting to be seen; wanting not to be seen; and not wanting not to be seen (cited in draft publication by David Mick). Most recently, Jean-Marie Floch has used the grid to illustrate an interesting exploration of the 'consumption values' represented by Habitat and Ikea furniture(Floch 2000, 116-144). However, the Greimasian analysis of texts in terms of the semiotic square has been criticized as easily leading toreductionist and programmatic decodings. Worse still, some theorists seem to use the square as little more than an objective-looking framework which gives the appearance of coherence and grand theory to loose argument and highly subjective opinions. Critics of structuralist analysis note that binary oppositions need not only to be related to one another and interpreted, but also to be contextualised in terms of the social systems which give rise to texts (Buxton 1990, 12). Those who use this structuralist approach sometimes claim to be analysing the 'latent meaning' in a text: what it is 'really' about. Unfortunately, such approaches typically understate the subjectivity of the interpreter's framework. Illuminating as they may sometimes be, any inexplicit oppositions which are identified are in the mind of the interpreter rather than contained within the text itself (Culler 1975; Adams 1989, 139). Yet another objection is that 'the question of whether categories like sacred/profane and happiness/misery are psychologically real in any meaningful sense is not posed and the internal logic of structuralism would suggest it need not be posed' (Young 1990, 184).

Lecture 6