69249454-chandler-semiotics

MODELS OF THE SIGN 55
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edition of the Course) and this perspective became widely accepted
from around the 1970s. More recently, studies have shown that
material objects can themselves function directly as signs (more
strictly, of course, as signifiers), not only in the form of ‘status
symbols’ (such as expensive cars) but also (in the case of particular
objects in their homes which individuals regard as having some
special importance for them) as part of the repertoire of signs upon
which people draw in developing and maintaining their sense of
personal and social identity (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton
1981, Chalfen 1987). People attach ‘symbolic values’ to television
sets, furniture and photograph albums which are not determined by
the utilitarian functions of such mundane objects (see also Leeds-
Hurwitz 1993, Chapter 6). The groundwork for such thinking had
already been laid within structuralism. Lévi-Strauss had explored
‘the logic of the concrete’ – observing, for instance, that animals are
‘good to think [with]’ and that identity can be expressed through the
manipulation of existing things (Lévi-Strauss 1962). Elsewhere, I
have explored the notion that personal homepages on the web function
as manipulable objects with which their authors can think about
identity (Chandler 2006).
Jay David Bolter argues that ‘signs are always anchored in a
medium. Signs may be more or less dependent upon the characteristics
of one medium – they may transfer more or less well to other
media – but there is no such thing as a sign without a medium’ (Bolter
1991, 195–6). The sign as such may not be a material entity, but it
has a material dimension – the signifier (or sign vehicle). Robert
Hodge and David Tripp insist that, ‘fundamental to all semiotic analysis
is the fact that any system of signs (semiotic code) is carried
by a material medium which has its own principles of structure’
(Hodge and Tripp 1986, 17). Furthermore, some media draw on
several interacting sign-systems: television and film, for example,
utilize verbal, visual, auditory and locomotive signs. The medium is
not ‘neutral’; each medium has its own affordances and constraints
and, as Umberto Eco notes, each is already ‘charged with cultural
signification’ (Eco 1976, 267). For instance, photographic and audiovisual
media are almost invariably regarded as more real than other