Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
• scale of adoption: the overall scale of allusion/incorporation within the text; and
• structural unboundedness: to what extent the text is presented (or understood) as part of or
tied to a larger structure (e.g. as part of a genre, of a series, of a serial, of a magazine, of an
exhibition etc.) - factors which are often not under the control of the author of the text.
Confounding the realist agenda that 'art imitates life,' intertextuality suggests that art imitates art.
Oscar Wilde (typically) took this notion further, declaring provocatively that 'life imitates art'. Texts are
instrumental not only in the construction of other texts but in the construction of experiences. Much of
what we 'know' about the world is derived from what we have read in books, newspapers and
magazines, from what we have seen in the cinema and on television and from what we have heard
on the radio. Life is thus lived through texts and framed by texts to a greater extent than we are
normally aware of. As Scott Lash observes, 'We are living in a society in which our perception is
directed almost as often to representations as it is to "reality"' (Lash 1990, 24). Intertextuality blurs the
boundaries not only between texts but between texts and the world of lived experience. Indeed, we
may argue that we know no pre-textual experience. The world as we know it is merely its current
representation.
Criticisms of Semiotic Analysis
Other than as 'the study of signs' there is relatively little agreement amongst semioticians themselves
as to the scope and methodology of semiotics. Although Saussure had looked forward to the day
when semiotics would become part of the social sciences, semiotics is still a relatively loosely defined
critical practice rather than a unified, fully-fledged analytical method or theory. At worst, what passes
for 'semiotic analysis' is little more than a pretentious form of literary criticism applied beyond the
bounds of literature and based merely on subjective interpretation and grand assertions. This kind of
abuse has earned semiotics an unenviable reputation in some quarters as the last refuge for
academic charlatans. Criticisms of structuralist semiotics have led some theorists to abandon
semiotics altogether, whilst others have sought to merge it with new perspectives. It is difficult to offer
a critique of a shifting target which changes its form so fluidly as it moves.
Semiotics is often criticized as 'imperialistic', since some semioticians appear to regard it as
concerned with, and applicable to, anything and everything, trespassing on almost every academic
discipline. John Sturrock comments that the 'dramatic extension of the semiotic field, to include the
whole of culture, is looked on by those suspicious of it as a kind of intellectual terrorism, overfilling our
lives with meanings' (Sturrock 1986, 89). Semiotic analysis is just one of many techniques which may
be used to explore sign practices. Signs in various media are not alike - different types may need to
be studied in different ways. As with any other process of mediation, semiotics suits some purposes
better than others. Semiotics does not, for instance, lend itself to quantification, a function to which
content analysis is far better adapted (which is not to suggest that the two techniques are
incompatible, as many semioticians seem to assume). The empirical testing of semiotic claims
requires other methods. Semiotic approaches make certain kinds of questions easier to ask than
others: they do not in themselves shed light on how people in particular social contexts actually
interpret texts, which may require ethnographic and phenomenological approaches (see McQuarrie &
Mick 1992).