Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
Learning these codes involves adopting the values, assumptions and 'world-views' which are built into
them without normally being aware of their intervention in the construction of reality. The existence of
such codes in relation to the interpretation of texts is more obvious when we examine texts which
have been produced within and for a different culture, such as advertisements produced indigenously
in a different country from our own for the domestic market in that country. Interpreting such texts in
the manner intended may require 'cultural competency' relevant to the specific cultural context of that
text's production, even where the text is largely visual (Scott 1994a; Scott 1994b; McQuarrie & Mick,
1999).
John Sturrock argues that:
The fact that a sign must be conventional in order to qualify as a sign does not mean that
everyone we use signs to has to be party to the convention in question. Just as we may use
the signs of our native language to other natives who do not know these particular signs and
so do not understand them, so we may elaborate conventions which hold between ourselves
and only one other person or even with ourselves alone. 'Secret' languages are no different
from language in general; they merely function as what are sometimes called 'restricted
codes'... Only those already acquainted with the code can receive messages in it successfully.
(Sturrock 1986, 81, 87)
Understanding a sign involves applying the rules of an appropriate code which is familiar to the
interpreter. This is a process which Peirce referred to as abduction (a form of inference along with
deduction and induction) (see Mick 1986, 199 and Hervey 1982, 19-20). On encountering a signifier
we may hypothesise that it is an instance of a familiar rule, and then infer what it signifies from
applying that rule (Eco 1976, 131). David Mick offers a useful example. Someone who is confronted
by an advertisement showing a woman serving her family three nutritionally balanced meals per day
can infer that this woman is a good mother by instantiating the culturally acquired rule that all women
who do this are good mothers (Mick 1986, 199). As Mick notes, abduction is particularly powerful if
the inference is made about someone or something about whom or which little more is known (such
as a new neighbour or a fictional character in an advertisement).
The synchronic perspective of structuralist semioticians tends to give the impression that codes are
static. But codes have origins and they do evolve, and studying their evolution is a legitimate semiotic
endeavour. Guiraud argues that there is a gradual process of 'codification' whereby systems of
implicit interpretation acquire the status of codes (ibid., 41). Codes are dynamic systems which
change over time, and are thus historically as well as socio-culturally situated. Codification is a
process whereby conventions are established. For instance, Metz shows how in Hollywood cinema
the white hat became codified as the signifier of a 'good' cowboy; eventually this convention became
over-used and was abandoned (Metz 1974). For useful surveys of changing conventions in cinema
see Carey 1974, Carey 1982 and Salt 1983. William Leiss and his colleagues offer an excellent
history of the codes of magazine advertising (Leiss et al. 1990, Chapter 9).
In historical perspective, many of the codes of a new medium evolve from those of related existing
media (for instance, many televisual techniques owe their origins to their use in film and
photography). New conventions also develop to match the technical potential of the medium and the
uses to which it is put. Some codes are unique to (or at least characteristic of) a specific medium or to
closely-related media (e.g. 'fade to black' in film and television); others are shared by (or similar in)