Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
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<strong>Semiotics</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Beginners</strong> <strong>by</strong> <strong>Daniel</strong> <strong>Chandler</strong><br />
regard as an idealist reduction of referential content and of material substance and practices to abstract systems.<br />
As also <strong>for</strong> structuralists, the 'meaning of a text' was immanent - it lay within it: the text itself told you everything<br />
you needed to know. The <strong>for</strong>malists did not relate meaning to authorial intentions. Formalism evolved into<br />
structuralism in the late 1920s and 1930s. 'New Criticism' - a <strong>for</strong>malist school of literary criticism which was not<br />
directly related to Russian <strong>for</strong>malism - flourished in Britain and the USA from the 1930s to the 1950s (see<br />
Intentional Fallacy and Affective Fallacy). An explicitly semiotic <strong>for</strong>m of Russian <strong>for</strong>malism emerged in the 1960s.<br />
See also: Copenhagen school, Denaturalization, Form and content, Form and substance, Idealism, Moscow<br />
school, Poetic function, Prague school, Structuralism, Tartu school<br />
• Formality of address: Modes of address differ in their <strong>for</strong>mality or social distance. Following Edward T Hall, a<br />
distinction is often made between 'intimate', 'personal', 'social' and 'public' (or 'impersonal') modes of address. In<br />
camerawork this is reflected in shot sizes - close-ups signifying intimate or personal modes, medium shots a<br />
social mode and long shots an impersonal mode. See also: Modes of address<br />
• Formation, discursive: See Discourse<br />
• Foundationalism: See Priorism<br />
• Functionalism: Functionalism in the broadest sense is a perspective on society and culture which emphasizes the<br />
interdependent functions of all of the parts in relation to the whole system. It was established <strong>by</strong> the sociologists<br />
Herbert Spencer and Émile Durkheim and was later adopted <strong>by</strong> the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and the<br />
sociologists Talcott Parsons and Robert K Merton. It has been criticized <strong>for</strong> failing to account <strong>for</strong> conflict and<br />
change. In linguistics functionalism is the view that the structure of language is determined <strong>by</strong> the functions that it<br />
serves. Consequently, functionalist linguists focus on the function of linguistic <strong>for</strong>ms. Linguists within this tradition<br />
include the Russian <strong>for</strong>malists (including Propp, Volosinov and Bakhtin), the Prague school linguists (including<br />
Jakobson), Louis Hjelmslev, André Martinet, Sapir and Whorf, M A K Halliday and Teun van Dijk. Functionalism<br />
has been criticized <strong>for</strong> neglecting social change and as being ahistorical. It is closely allied with structuralism<br />
which has been criticized <strong>for</strong> being functionalist in its emphasis on internal structures at the expense of social<br />
relations. See also: Formalism, Functions of a sign, Prague school, Structuralism<br />
• Functions of signs: In Jakobson's model of linguistic communication the dominance of any one of six factors<br />
within an utterance reflects a different linguistic function. referential: oriented towards the context; expressive:<br />
oriented towards the addresser; conative: oriented towards the addressee; phatic: oriented towards the contact;<br />
metalingual: oriented towards the code; poetic: oriented towards the message. In any given situation one of these<br />
factors is 'dominant', and this dominant function influences the general character of the 'message'. See also:<br />
Conative function, Expressive function, Functionalism, Metalingual function, Phatic function, Poetic function,<br />
Referential function<br />
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z<br />
• Genre: Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular<br />
conventions of <strong>for</strong>m and content which are shared <strong>by</strong> the texts which are regarded as belonging to them.<br />
However, an individual text within a genre rarely if ever has all of the characteristic features of the genre and texts<br />
often exhibit the conventions of more than one genre. Semiotic redefinitions of genre tend to focus on the way in<br />
which the <strong>for</strong>mal features of texts within the genre draw on shared codes and function to 'position' readers using<br />
particular modes of address. Postmodernist theorists tend to blur distinctions between genres. See also: Codes,<br />
Intertextuality, Modes of address<br />
• Givens: See Priorism<br />
• Glossematics: See Copenhagen school<br />
• 'Grammar' of a medium: Some semioticians refer to the 'grammar' of media other than language, in particular in<br />
relation to visual media, whilst others have challenged this application of a linguistic model to media which move<br />
beyond the verbal. See also: Language of a medium, Medium, Syntagmatic analysis<br />
• Grammar of the plot: See Narratology<br />
• Graphocentrism: Graphocentrism or scriptism is a typically unconscious interpretative bias in which writing is<br />
privileged over speech. Biases in favour of the written or printed word are closely associated with the ranking of<br />
sight above sound, the eye above the ear, which has been called 'ocularcentrism'. See also: Channel,<br />
Logocentrism, Phonocentrism<br />
• Grande syntagmatique: This was the term <strong>by</strong> which Metz referred to his elaborate scheme <strong>for</strong> describing<br />
syntagmatic categories <strong>for</strong> narrative film. See also: Filmic codes, Syntagm