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SEMIOTICS: THE BASICS
In the commercial application of semiotics to market research
(where consumer trends are of course a key concern) a distinction
has been made between three kinds of consumer codes: dominant
codes (the prevailing codes of the present day); residual codes (codes
in decline) and emergent codes (Alexander 2000). In structuralist
accounts, codes tend to be presented as if they evolve autonomously,
but socially oriented semioticians emphasize human agency: as Eco
puts it, ‘in exchanging messages and texts . . . people contribute to
the changing of codes’ (Eco 1976, 152; my emphasis). He adds that
there is ‘a dialectic between codes and messages, whereby the codes
control the emission of messages, but new messages can restructure
the codes’ (ibid., 161). For those in marketing, this comes as no
surprise.
In historical perspective, many of the codes of a new medium
evolve from those of related existing media (for instance, many
televisual techniques owe their origins to their use in film and photography).
New conventions are also developed to match the technical
potential of the medium and the uses to which it is put. Some codes
are unique to (or at least characteristic of) a specific medium or to
closely related media (e.g. ‘fade to black’ in film and television);
others are shared by (or similar in) several media (e.g. scene breaks);
and some are drawn from cultural practices which are not tied to a
medium (e.g. body language) (Monaco 1981, 146ff.). Some are more
specific to particular genres within a medium. Some are more broadly
linked either to the domain of science (‘logical codes’, suppressing
connotation and diversity of interpretation) or to that of the arts
(‘aesthetic codes’, celebrating connotation and diversity of interpretation),
though such differences are differences of degree rather than
of kind.
Whatever the nature of any ‘embedded’ ideology, it has been
claimed that as a consequence of their internalization of the codes
of the medium, ‘those born in the age of radio perceive the world
differently from those born into the age of television’ (Gumpert
and Cathcart 1985). Critics have objected to the degree of technological
determinism which is sometimes involved in such stances,
but this is not to suggest that our use of such tools and techniques
is without influence on our habits of mind. If this is so, the subtle