Visible Signs - David Crow (2010)

'An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts'

Key Terms
Key Notes & Quotes:

Chapter: Components

• 'It is this relationship between the components of the sign that enables us to turn signals, in whatever form they appear, into a message which we can understand' - p.14
• Three main areas of semiotics:
• The signs themselves 
• The way they are organised into systems 
• The context in which they appear
• Ferdinand de Saussure's model for a sign:
• The two fundamental elements that make up a sign = 
• Signifier - Word 
• Signified - Object it represents 
• I.e. 'dog' / 'chien' / 'perro' / 'hund' - word used to describe dog bears no relation to the thing it represents. The word 'dog' does not bite. 
• 'This divorce between meaning and form is called duality. p.17
• 'All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another' - p.18 
• The 'interpretant' is not fixed - meaning can vary depending on reader, their culture etc. p.23 
• Certain signs are deeply embedding in out visual language - can now improvise around this basic shape without losing meaning. p.26 Example:

Chapter: How Meaning is Formed

• Charles Sanders Peirce defined three catergories of signs:
• Icon: Resembles the sign e.g. photographs 
• Index: Direct link between sign and object e.g. smoke = index of fire/ traffic signs
• Symbol: Have no logical connection between sign and what it means. Relies on the readers understanding - learnt e.g. red cross = aid
• Saussure's are similar:
• Icon = 'Iconic' 
• Symbol = 'Arbitrary' 
• Things can be more than one sign catergory e.g. Traffic Signs:

• Icon - resembles traffic lights 
• Symbol - learnt meaning 
• Index - placement of sign next to road 
• 'Its meaning is part formed by where the sign is placed' p.32
• Peirce also identified 3 levels or properties: 
• Firstness: A sense of something - could be described as a feeling or mood
• Secondness:  The level of fact - Physical relation of one thing to another
• Thirdness: The mental level - Level of general rules. Brings the other two together in a relationship. Relates sign to object as a convention. p.32
• Semiosis - Peirce used the term to describe the transfer of meaning-  the act of signifying.  
• His view - Semiosis is not a one-way process with a fixed meaning. The meaning of a sign is affected by the reader - their background, culture, education, experiences etc. e.g. symbolic use of colour
• Weston Europe- Black = death/ mourning 
• China - White = death / mourning
• Unlimited Semiosis - interpretant resulting in our mind from first representamen can become a further sign and trigger and infinite chain of associations e.g. plane - sky - birds etc. p.34
• Metaphor (substituting) - an image in a sequence for another - transfers the characteristics of one object to another. Use of metaphor is common in advertising where a product is imbued with particular properties it is not readily associated with.
• Metonymn - similar to metaphor except it is used to represent a totality e.g. if we want to represent all children we might use an image of a child. 
• 'Where there is choice, there is meaning '. p.43

How Meaning is Formed 

• Roland Barthes identified structural relationships in the components of the sign - ideas centre on two levels of signification:
• Denotation - Physical reality of the object e.g. photograph of a child represents a child 
• Connotation - Things that alter how we read something - i.e. different film, lighting, frame changes the way we read the image of the child - grainy black and white brings ideas of nostalgia. 
• Connotation is arbitrary - meaning brought to image are based on rules or conventions that the reader has learnt.
• Convention - An agreement about now we should respond to a sign.
• Motivation - Is used to denote how much the signifier describes the signified e.g. 
• Photo of a child- highly motivated 
• Cartoon of a child- less motivated 
• 'The less a sign is motivated, the more important it is that the reader has learnt the conventions that help to decode the image' p.56
• Myths- Barthes believes that myths were the results of meaning generated by the groups in society who have control of the language and the media p.60 

Text and Image 

• For linguists, codes must be digital (composed of a fixed number of digits or units).
• Barthes questions whether is possible to have codes which are analogical. 
• Digital codes are paradigms - each of the units in a set are clearly different from each other e.g. the alphabet 
• Two basic characteristics:
• All units have something in common 
• Each unit is obviously different from the others in the set.    
• Digital codes- Paradigms where the units are different from each other 
• Analogue codes- Paradigms where the distinctions between the units are not clear, they operate on something more like a continuous scale e.g. music/ dance. p.71
• Advertising - 'should communicate the positive qualities of the product as clearly as possible to the chosen audience.' 
• Demonstrated by Frank Jenkins' 3 basic principles:
• Should be of interest and value to reader 
• Should be precise and straight to the point as quick as possible 
• Should be concise, say what it has to say in few words 
• Barthes - Text on an image consitutes a 'paristic message' - designed to quicken the reading with additional signifieds. 
• 'The addition of text can be a powerful method of altering or fixing the meaning of an image.' e.g. subtitles/ comic stripes p.74
• Anchorage - directs beholder through a number of possible readings of an image- through a 'floating chain of signifiers' - the text answers the question "what is it?"
• Relay - less common. Text is usually a snippet of dialogue and works in a complimentary way to the image (meanings that cannot be found in the images) e.g. comic strips.