69249454-chandler-semiotics

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SEMIOTICS: THE BASICS
TEXTUAL CODES
• scientific codes, including mathematics;
• aesthetic codes within the various expressive arts (poetry,
drama, painting, sculpture, music, etc.) including classicism,
romanticism, realism;
• genre, rhetorical and stylistic codes: exposition, argument,
description and narration and so on;
• mass media codes including photographic, televisual, filmic,
radio, newspaper and magazine codes, both technical and
conventional (including format).
INTERPRETIVE CODES
• perceptual codes: e.g. of visual perception (Hall 1973, 132;
Nichols 1981, 11ff.; Eco 1982) (note that this code does
not assume intentional communication);
• ideological codes: more broadly, these include codes for
‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ texts – dominant (or ‘hegemonic’),
negotiated or oppositional (Hall 1980; Morley
1980). More specifically, we may list the ‘-isms’, such as
individualism, liberalism, feminism, racism, materialism,
capitalism, progressivism, conservatism, socialism, objectivism
and populism; (note, however, that all codes can be
seen as ideological).
These three types of codes correspond broadly to three key kinds of
knowledge required by interpreters of a text, namely knowledge of:
1. the world (social knowledge);
2. the medium and the genre (textual knowledge);
3. the relationship between (1) and (2) (modality judgements).
The ‘tightness’ of semiotic codes themselves varies from the rulebound
closure of logical codes (such as computer codes) to the interpretive
looseness of poetic codes. Some theorists question whether
some of the looser systems constitute codes at all (e.g. Guiraud 1975,
24, 41, 43–4, 65; Corner 1980).