Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

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Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler There is a 1999 Greek language translation online by Professor Maria Constantopoulou of the Athens University of Economics and Business, to whom I am deeply indebted. Print publication in Greek is currently being negotiated. An official US mirror site for Semiotics for Beginners is at http://www.argyroneta.com/s4b/. It is run by Martin C Messer in North Carolina. Thanks Martin! Note that this site is not always up-todate. There is also an earlier version of Semiotics for Beginners for Palmsize PCs running WindowsCE with the Starbuck bookreader. This can be found at: http://www.adbosch.demon.nl/starbuck.htm. Offers to produce other specialized versions are also welcome. I would like to thank Professor Dr Winfried Nöth of the University of Kassel for his useful comments on 'articulation' and 'empty signifiers'. Dr David Mick of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has also been particularly kind in keeping me updated with his own papers on the semiotics of advertising which have been a very useful source of ideas and observations.
Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler Introduction If you go into a bookshop and ask them where to find a book on semiotics you are likely to meet with a blank look. Even worse, you might be asked to define what semiotics is - which would be a bit tricky if you were looking for a beginner's guide. It's worse still if you do know a bit about semiotics, because it can be hard to offer a simple definition which is of much use in the bookshop. If you've ever been in such a situation, you'll probably agree that it's wise not to ask. Semiotics could be anywhere. The shortest definition is that it is the study of signs. But that doesn't leave enquirers much wiser. 'What do you mean by a sign?' people usually ask next. The kinds of signs that are likely to spring immediately to mind are those which we routinely refer to as 'signs' in everyday life, such as road signs, pub signs and star signs. If you were to agree with them that semiotics can include the study of all these and more, people will probably assume that semiotics is about 'visual signs'. You would confirm their hunch if you said that signs can also be drawings, paintings and photographs, and by now they'd be keen to direct you to the art and photography sections. But if you are thick-skinned and tell them that it also includes words, sounds and 'body language' they may reasonably wonder what all these things have in common and how anyone could possibly study such disparate phenomena. If you get this far they've probably already 'read the signs' which suggest that you are either eccentric or insane and communication may have ceased. Assuming that you are not one of those annoying people who keeps everyone waiting with your awkward question, if you are searching for books on semiotics you could do worse than by starting off in the linguistics section. It is... possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeîon, 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge. (Saussure 1983, 15-16; Saussure 1974, 16) Thus wrote the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a founder not only of linguistics but also of what is now more usually referred to as semiotics (in his Course in General Linguistics, 1916). Other than Saussure (the usual abbreviation), key figures in the early development of semiotics were the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (sic, pronounced 'purse') (1839- 1914) and later Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who developed a behaviourist semiotics. Leading modern semiotic theorists include Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917- 1992), Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), Christian Metz (1931-1993), Umberto Eco (b 1932) and Julia Kristeva (b 1941). A number of linguists other than Saussure have worked within a semiotic framework, such as Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1966) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). It is difficult to disentangle European semiotics from structuralism in its origins; major structuralists include not only
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Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

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