Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
Whereas Saussure had insisted that language is 'a form, not a substance', Hjelmslev's framework
allows us to analyse texts according to their various dimensions and to grant to each of these the
potential for signification. Such a matrix provides a useful framework for the systematic analysis of
texts, broadens the notion of what constitutes a sign, and reminds us that the materiality of the sign
may in itself signify.
From an explicitly social semiotic perspective, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen adapt a
linguistic model from Michael Halliday and insist that any semiotic system has three essential
metafunctions:
� the ideational metafunction - 'to represent, in a referential or pseudo-referential sense, aspects
of the experiential world outside its particular system of signs';
� the interpersonal metafunction - 'to project the relations between the producer of a sign... and
the receiver/reproducer of that sign'; and
� the textual metafunction - 'to form texts, complexes of signs which cohere both internally and
within the context in and for which they were produced'. (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996, 40-41)
Specific semiotic systems are called codes.
Modality and Representation
Whilst semiotics is often encountered in the form of textual analysis, it also involves philosophical
theorising on the role of signs in the construction of reality. Semiotics involves studying
representations and the processes involved in representational practices, and to semioticians, 'reality'
always involves representation.
To semioticians, a defining feature of signs is that they are treated by their users as 'standing for' or
representing other things. Jonathan Swift's satirical account of the fictional academicians of Lagago
highlights the inadequacies of the commonsense notion that signs stand directly for physical things in
the world around us.
A Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever... was urged as a great Advantage in
Point of Health as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is in some Degree
a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortning of our
Lives. An Expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for Things, it
would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to
express the particular Business they are to discourse on. And this Invention would certainly
have taken Place, to the great Ease as well as Health of the Subject, if the Women in
conjunction with the Vulgar and Illiterate had not threatned to raise a Rebellion, unless they
might be allowed the Liberty to speak with their Tongues, after the manner of their Ancestors;
such constant irreconcilable Enemies to Science are the common People. However, many of
the most Learned and Wise adhere to the New Scheme of expressing themselves by Things,
which hath only this Inconvenience attending it, that if a Man's Business be very great, and of
various kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater bundle of Things upon his
Back, unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him. I have often beheld two