Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

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: