Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
butch masculine palone girl, young woman
drag clothes, to dress polari
eek face riah hair
speak, chat, speech,
language
fantabulosa excellent trade casual sex
lally leg troll go, walk, wander
latty
house, home,
accommodation
varda see, look, a look
Social differentiation is observable not only from linguistic codes, but from a host of non-verbal codes.
A survey of non-verbal codes is not manageable here, and the interested reader should consult some
of the classic texts and specialist guides to the literature (e.g. Hall 1959; Hall 1966; Argyle 1969;
Birdwhistell 1971; Argyle 1983; Argyle 1988). In the context of the present text a few examples must
suffice to illustrate the importance of non-verbal codes.
Social conventions for 'appropriate' dress are explictly referred to as 'dress codes'. In some
institutions, such as in many business organizations and schools, a formal dress code is made
explicit as a set of rules (a practice which sometimes leads to subversive challenges). Particular
formal occasions - such as weddings, funerals, banquets and so on - involve strong expectations
concerning 'appropriate' dress. In other contexts, the wearer has greater choice of what to wear, and
their clothes seem to 'say more about them' than about an occasion at which they are present or the
institution for which they work. The way that we dress can serve as a marker of social background
and subcultural allegiances. This is particularly apparent in youth subcultures. For instance, in Britain
in the 1950s 'Teddy boys' or 'Teds' wore drape jackets with moleskin or satin collars, drainpipe
trousers, crêpe-soled suede shoes and bootlace ties; the hairstyle was a greased 'D-A', often with
sideburns and a quiff. Subsequent British youth subcultures such as mods and rockers, skinheads
and hippies, punks and goths have also had distinctive clothes, hairstyles and musical tastes. Two
classic studies of postwar British youth subcultures are Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson's Resistance
through Rituals and Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Hall & Jefferson 1976;
Hebdige 1979). Marcel Danesi has offered a more recent semiotic account of the social codes of
youth subcultures in Canada (Danesi 1994b).
Non-verbal codes which regulate a 'sensory regime' are of particular interest. Within particular cultural
contexts there are, for instance, largely inexplicit 'codes of looking' which regulate how people may
look at other people (including taboos on certain kinds of looking). Such codes tend to retreat to
transparency when the cultural context is one's own. 'Children are instructed to "look at me", not to
stare at strangers, and not to look at certain parts of the body... People have to look in order to be
polite, but not to look at the wrong people or in the wrong place, e.g. at deformed people' (Argyle
1988, 158). In Luo in Kenya one should not look at one's mother-in-law; in Nigeria one should not
look at a high-status person; amongst some South American Indians during conversation one should
not look at the other person; in Japan one should look at the neck, not the face; and so on (Argyle
1983, 95).