69249454-chandler-semiotics

PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT 215
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approach. Semiotic denaturalization has the potential to show
ideology at work and to demonstrate that ‘reality’ can be challenged.
In this respect, although Saussure excluded the social and therefore
the political, his concept of arbitrariness can be seen as having
inspired Barthes and his more socially oriented followers.
As we have seen, the Saussurean legacy was a focus on synchronic
rather than diachronic analysis. Synchronic analysis studies
a phenomenon as if it were frozen at one moment in time; diachronic
analysis focuses on change over time. The synchronic approach
underplays the dynamic nature of sign systems (for instance, television
conventions change fairly rapidly compared to conventions for
written English). It can also underplay dynamic changes in the cultural
myths which signification both alludes to and helps to shape.
Structuralist semiotics in a purely Saussurean mode ignores process
and historicity – unlike historical theories like Marxism. However,
once again we should beware of reducing even structuralist semiotics
to its Saussurean form. As we have already noted, even other structuralists
such as Jakobson rejected the Saussurean splitting of synchronic
from diachronic analysis while Lévi-Strauss’s approach did
at least allow for structural transformation.
Semiotics is invaluable if we wish to look beyond the manifest
content of texts. Structuralist semioticians seek to look behind
or beneath the surface of the observed in order to discover underlying
organizational relations. The more obvious the structural
organization of a text or code may seem to be, the more difficult it
may be to see beyond such surface features, but searching for what
is hidden beneath the obvious can lead to fruitful insights. The quest
for underlying structures has, however, led some critics to argue that
the focus on underlying structures which characterizes the structural
formalism of theorists such as Propp, Greimas and Lévi-Strauss tends
to over-emphasize the similarities between texts and to deny their
distinctive features (e.g. Coward and Ellis 1977, 5). This is particularly
vexatious for literary critics, for whom issues of stylistic
difference are a central concern. Some semiotic analysis has been
criticized as nothing more than an abstract and ‘arid formalism’. In
Saussurean semiotics the focus was on langue rather than parole,
on formal systems rather than on social practices. Lévi-Strauss is