Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

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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).
Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler The duration of the gaze is also culturally variable: in 'contact cultures' such as those of the Arabs, Latin Americans and southern Europeans, people look more than the British or white Americans, while black Americans look less (ibid., 158). In contact cultures too little gaze is seen as insincere, dishonest or impolite whilst in non-contact cultures too much gaze ('staring') is seen as threatening, disrespectful and insulting (Argyle 1988, 165; Argyle 1983, 95). Within the bounds of the cultural conventions, people who avoid one's gaze may be seen as nervous, tense, evasive and lacking in confidence whilst people who look a lot may tend to be seen as friendly and self-confident (Argyle 1983, 93). Such codes may sometimes be deliberately violated. In the USA in the 1960s, bigoted white Americans employed a sustained 'hate stare' directed against blacks which was designed to depersonalize the victims (Goffman 1969). Codes of looking are particularly important in relation to gender differentiation. One woman reported to a male friend: ‘One of the things I really envy about men is the right to look’. She pointed out that in public places, ‘men could look freely at women, but women could only glance back surreptitiously’ (Dyer 1992, 103). Brian Pranger (1990) reports on his investigation of 'the gay gaze': Gay men are able to subtly communicate their shared worldview by a special gaze that seems to be unique to them... Most gay men develop a canny ability to instantly discern from the returned look of another man whether or not he is gay. The gay gaze is not only lingering, but also a visual probing... Almost everyone I interviewed said that they could tell who was gay by the presence or absence of this look. (in Higgins 1993, 235-6) Just as with codes of looking, there are 'codes of touching' which vary from culture to culture. A study by Barnlund in 1975 depicted the various parts of the body which informants in the USA and Japan reported had been touched by opposite-sex friends, same-sex friends, their mother and their father (Barnlund 1975, cited in Argyle 1988, 217-18). The resulting body-maps show major differences in cultural norms in this regard, with body areas available for touch being far more restricted in Japan than in the United States. An earlier study of American students showed differences in the patterns for males and females in the amount of touching of different areas of the body by the various others (Jourard 1966, cited in Argyle 1983, 37). The students reported that they had been touched most by their mothers and by friends of the opposite sex; their fathers seldom touched more than their hands. Social codes also govern the frequency of physical contact. Jourard also reported the following contacts per hour in different cities: San Juan (Puerto Rico) 180; Paris 110; Gainesville (Florida) 2; London 0 (cited in Argyle 1969, 93). We will allude to the related work of Edward T Hall on the topic of proximity when we discuss 'modes of address'. Codes are variable not only between different cultures and social groups but also historically. It would be interesting to know, for instance, whether the frequency of touching in various cities around the
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