Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

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Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler dimensions into two. For those who do not, this little experiment may be quite surprising. We are routinely anaesthetized to a psychological mechanism called 'perceptual constancy' which stabilizes the relative shifts in the apparent shapes and sizes of people and objects in the world around us as we change our visual viewpoints in relation to them. Without mechanisms such as categorization and perceptual constancy the world would be no more than what William James called a 'great blooming and buzzing confusion' (James 1890, 488). Perceptual constancy ensures that 'the variability of the everyday world becomes translated by reference to less variable codes. The environment becomes a text to be read like any other text' (Nichols 1981, 26): Key differences between 'bracketed' perception and everyday perception may be summarized as follows (Nichols 1981, 13, 20): Bracketed Perception Normal Perception A bounded visual space, oval, approximately 180° laterally, 150° vertically Clarity of focus at only one point with a gradient of increasing vagueness toward the margin (clarity of focus corresponds to the space whose light falls upon the fovea) Parallel lines appear to converge: the lateral sides of a rectangular surface extending away from the viewer appear to converge If the head is moved, the shapes of objects appear to be deformed The visual space appears to lack depth A world of patterns and sensation, of surfaces, edges and gradients Unbounded visual space Clarity of focus throughout Parallel lines extend without converging: the sides of a rectangular surface extending away from the viewer remain parallel If the head is moved, shapes remain constant Visual space is never wholly depthless A world of familiar objects and meaning The conventions of codes represent a social dimension in semiotics: a code is a set of practices familiar to users of the medium operating within a broad cultural framework. Indeed, as Stuart Hall puts it, 'there is no intelligible discourse without the operation of a code' (Hall 1980, 131). Society itself depends on the existence of such signifying systems. Codes are not simply 'conventions' of communication but rather procedural systems of related conventions which operate in certain domains. Codes organize signs into meaningful systems which correlate signifiers and signifieds. Codes transcend single texts, linking them together in an interpretative framework. Stephen Heath notes that 'while every code is a system, not every system is a code' (Heath 1981, 130). He adds that 'a code is distinguished by its coherence, its homogeneity,
Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler its systematicity, in the face of the heterogeneity of the message, articulated across several codes' (ibid., p.129). Codes are interpretive frameworks which are used by both producers and interpreters of texts. In creating texts we select and combine signs in relation to the codes with which we are familiar 'in order to limit... the range of possible meanings they are likely to generate when read by others' (Turner 1992, 17). Codes help to simplify phenomena in order to make it easier to communicate experiences (Gombrich 1982, 35). In reading texts, we interpret signs with reference to what seem to be appropriate codes. Usually the appropriate codes are obvious, 'overdetermined' by all sorts of contextual cues. Signs within texts can be seen as embodying cues to the codes which are appropriate for interpreting them. The medium employed clearly influences the choice of codes. Pierre Guiraud notes that 'the frame of a painting or the cover of a book highlights the nature of the code; the title of a work of art refers to the code adopted much more often than to the content of the message' (Guiraud 1975, 9). In this sense we routinely 'judge a book by its cover'. We can typically identify a text as a poem simply by the way in which it is set out on the page. The use of what is sometimes called 'scholarly apparatus' (such as introductions, acknowledgements, section headings, tables, diagrams, notes, references, bibliographies, appendices and indexes) - is what makes academic texts immediately identifiable as such to readers. Such cueing is part of the metalingual function of signs. With familiar codes we are rarely conscious of our acts of interpretation, but occasionally a text requires us to work a little harder - for instance, by pinning down the most appropriate signified for a key signifier (as in jokes based on word play) - before we can identify the relevant codes for making sense of the text as a whole. Even with adequate English vocabulary and grammar, think what sense an inter-planetary visitor to Earth might make of a notice such as 'Dogs must be carried on the escalator'. Does it mean that you must carry a dog if you go on the escalator? Is it forbidden to use it without one? Terry Eagleton comments: To understand this notice I need to do a great deal more than simply read its words one after the other. I need to know, for example, that these words belong to what might be called a 'code of reference' - that the sign is not just a decorative piece of language there to entertain travellers, but is to be taken as referring to the behaviour of actual dogs and passengers on actual escalators. I must mobilize my general social knowledge to recognize that the sign has been placed there by the authorities, that these authorities have the power to penalize offenders, that I as a member of the public am being implicitly addressed, none of which is evident in the words themselves. I have to rely, in other words, upon certain social codes and contexts to understand the notice properly. But I also need to bring these into interaction with certain codes or conventions of reading - conventions which tell me that by 'the escalator' is meant this escalator and not one in Paraguay, that 'must be carried' means 'must be carried now', and so on. I must recognize that the 'genre' of the sign is such as to make it highly improbable that... [certain ambiguities are] actually intended [such as that you must carry a dog on the escalator]... I understand the notice, then, by interpreting it in terms of certain codes which seem appropriate (Eagleton 1983, 78). Without realizing it, in understanding even the simplest texts we draw on a repertoire of textual and social codes. Literary texts tend to make greater demands. Eagleton argues that:
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Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

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