Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
'the illusion that the represented participants do not know they are being looked at, and in which the
represented participants must pretend that they are not being watched' (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996,
126).
Additionally, the mode of address varies in its formality or social distance. Kress and van Leeuwen
distinguish between 'intimate', 'personal', 'social' and 'public' (or 'impersonal') modes of address
(Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 130-135). In relation to language, formality is quite closely tied to
explicitness, so that intimate language tends to be minimally explicit and maximally dependent on
non-verbal cues, whilst public language tends to reverse these features (especially in print). In usage
related also to directness of address, social distance can also established through the use of loaded
quasi-synonyms to reflect ideological distinctions of 'us' from 'them', as in 'I am a patriot; you are a
nationalist; they are xenophobes'.
In visual representation, social distance is related in
part to apparent proximity. In camerawork, degrees of
formality are reflected in shot sizes - close-ups
signifying intimate or personal modes, medium shots a
social mode and long shots an impersonal mode (Kress
& van Leeuwen 1996, 130-135; see also Deacon et al.
1999, 190-94 and Tuchman 1978, 116-20). In visual
media, the represented physical distance between the
observed and the observer often reflects attempts to
encourage feelings of emotional involvement or critical detachment in the viewer. The cultural
variability of the degree of formality signified by different zones of proximity was highlighted in relation
to face-to-face interaction in an influential book by Edward T Hall - The Hidden Dimension (Hall
1966). Proximity is not the only marker of social distance in the visual media: angles of view are also
significant. High angles (looking down on a depicted person from above) are widely interpreted as
making that person look small and insignificant, and low angles (looking up at them from below) are
said to make them look powerful and superior (Messaris 1997, 34-5; Messaris 1994, 158; Kress &
van Leeuwen 1996, 146). The interplay of these techniques is important. In the three photographs
shown here of Michelangelo's David (1501-4, Accademia, Florence), whilst all of the shots are taken
from below this gigantic figure, the close-up from below seems to me to emphasize the power of the
figure in contrast to the mid-shot, in which - despite the musculature - David seems somewhat softer
and more vulnerable. The closer we are the more we look upwards. Power is signified most strongly
by a low angle which is also a close-up - as if, as we get closer, we become more vulnerable.
Note that whilst the significations such as those listed in relation to photographic and filmic modes of
address may represent the currently dominant, conventional or 'default' linkages of signifiers and
signifieds, no programmatic decoding based on a 'dictionary' of one-to-one correspondences is
possible - in analogue codes in particular there is a sliding relationship between signifiers and
signifieds which the codes of the particular textual systems in which they are employed may function
to anchor in various ways (Nichols 1981, 108).
Textual codes construct possible reading positions for the addresser and addressee. Building upon
Jakobson's model Thwaites et al. define 'the functions of address' in terms of the construction of such
subjects and of relationships between them.