Saussure was the set structure for semiotics he set the ball rolling and many people developed his ideas to the understaning of semiotics in the modern day. Saussure's structure was based on two factors: signifiers and the signified.
Signifiers-Is the actually image, physical apperance or sound.
Signified- Is what the sign reffers to or suggests.
When I was learning my GCSE's I studied a different understanding of semiotics, this was:Roland Barthes devoloped theory that there was two ways of reading signs.
Denotation and connotation, Denotation basically means, say what you see, whatever you see on the screen. Connotation is the sign on the screen and what perception you and others have of it. For example if there was fire, there are many different objects or feelings that fire connotates. It could connotate danger, corruption, death, torture. But on the other hand it could connotate warmth or a source of light.
Semiotics is a very complex subject because the perception of one sign could be completly different to the percetion of that same sign from a different culture. The study of semiotics demonstrates that human interaction makes fixed meaning impossible because of the diverse cultural world we live in.
An example could be a traffic light and how the different lights can be perceived in different ways. The red light means stop the amber light means slow down to stop, or get ready to go and the green light means go. But although this sounds simple, think of people from different cultures or people with different morals and desires. A person may see an amber light as a sign to speed up, if not they will have to wait for an extra minute. These people understand the initial intentions of the amber light and they know what they should do but some people may just choose not to follow them.
Another example could be in this picture for instance.This picture to me connotes simply
a pair of feet. However many cultures in Asia and Thiland would see this picture as being very offensive as they are offended if you show them the soles of your bare feet.For more research on semiotics and some examples of the theory of semiotics applied within films follow the links bellow.
Research:
Research:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/the_book.html
No comments:
Post a Comment