Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
in such a way that their representations are taken to be reflections of everyday reality. Such
structuralist framings of positioning reflect a stance of textual determinism which has been challenged
by contemporary social semioticians who tend to emphasise the 'polysemic' nature of texts (their
plurality of meanings) together with the diversity of their use and interpretation by different audiences
('multiaccentuality'). However, a distinction may be appropriate here between message and code.
Whilst resistance at the level of the message is always possible, resistance at the level of the code is
generally much more difficult when the code is a dominant one. The familiarity of the codes in 'realist'
texts (especially photographic and filmic texts) leads us to routinely 'suspend our disbelief' in the form
(even if not necessarily in the manifest content). Recognition of the familiar (in the guise of the
'natural') repeatedly confirms our conventional ways of seeing and thus reinforces our sense of self
whilst at the same time invisibly contributing to its construction. 'When we say "I see (what the image
means)" this act simultaneously installs us in a place of knowledge and slips us into place as subject
to this meaning... All the viewer need do is fall into place as subject' (Nichols 1981, 38). Falling into
place in a realist text is a pleasurable experience which few would wish to disrupt with reflective
analysis (which would throw the security of our sense of self into question). Thus we freely submit to
the ideological processes which construct our sense of ourselves as free-thinking individuals.
A primary textual code involved in the construction of the subject is that of genre. Genres are
ostensibly 'neutral', functioning to make form (the conventions of the genre) more 'transparent' to
those familiar with the genre, foregrounding the distinctive content of individual texts. Certainly genre
provides an important frame of reference which helps readers to identify, select and interpret texts (as
well as helping writers to compose economically within the medium). However, a genre can also be
seen as embodying certain values and ideological assumptions and as seeking to establish a
particular worldview. Changes in genre conventions may both reflect and help to shape the dominant
ideological climate of the time. Some Marxist commentators see genre as an instrument of social
control which reproduces the dominant ideology. Within this perspective, the genre is seen as
positioning the audience in order to naturalize the reassuringly conservative ideologies which are
typically embedded in the text. Certainly, genres are far from being ideologically neutral. Different
genres produce different positionings of the subject which are reflected in their modes of address.
Tony Thwaites and his colleagues note that in many television crime dramas in the tradition of The
Saint, Hart to Hart, and Murder, She Wrote,
Genteel or well-to-do private investigators work for the wealthy, solving crimes committed by
characters whose social traits and behaviour patterns often type them as members of a
'criminal class'... The villains receive their just rewards not so much because they break the
law, but because they are entirely distinct from the law-abiding bourgeoisie. This TV genre
thus reproduces a hegemonic ideology about the individual in a class society. (Thwaites et al.
1994, 158).
Thus, over and above the specific 'content' of the individual text, generic frameworks can be seen as
involved in the construction of their readers.
Saussure emphasized that the language system is a 'given' which precedes its users and is beyond
human control. Developing this stance, post-Saussurean structuralist theorists have argued that
contrary to the notion that semiotic systems are instrumental tools which are fully subject to the
control of 'the individual', the subject is constructed by the semiotic system of language, ideology, and
myth. Such structural determinism and autonomy is reflected, for instance, in Lévi-Strauss's