Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

Semiotic power

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language with a wider-angle lens, conceiving

semiotics (the term preferred in the US) as

being an interdisciplinary science in which sign

systems manifested in structures and levels could

be analysed from philosophical, psychological

and sociological as well as linguistic points of

view. Peirce and other philosophers such as

Charles Morris and Rudolph Carnap saw the

fi eld as divisible into three areas: semantics, the

study of the links between linguistic expressions

and the objects in the world to which they refer

or which they describe; syntactics, the study of

the relation of these expressions to each other;

and pragmatics, the study of the dependence of

the meaning of these expressions on their users

(including the social context in which they are

used).

The terminology of semiology/semiotics is

complex and daunting, but the names Peirce

gave to his categories are worth quoting here:

the sign he called an icon resembles the object

it wishes to describe, like a photograph; an index

establishes a direct link between the sign and

its object (smoke is an index of fi re); fi nally, the

symbol where there is neither connection nor

resemblance between sign and object. A symbol

communicates only because there is agreement

among people that it shall stand for what it does

(letters combined into words are symbols).

Semiology has come to apply, as a system of

analysis, to every aspect of communication.

Th ere is practically nothing that is not a sign

capable of meaning, or signifi cation. Th e work

of the French philosopher Roland Barthes

(1915–80) has exercised particular influence

on our understanding of areas such as music,

eating, clothes and dance as well as language.

See paradigm; myth. See also topic guides

under communication theory; language/

discourse/narrative.

▶Elliot Gaines, Media Literacy and Semiotics

(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Semiosic plane See mimetic/semiosic planes.

Semiotic power Th e power, by members of the

public – audience, consumers – to turn the

consumerist signs and symbols which dominate

contemporary life to their own uses. Th e case

is put by John Fiske who, while acknowledging

the power of advertising and consumerist

propaganda generally, gives substantial credit

to individuals to exercise a ‘semiotic power’ –

resistance – of their own.

Our initial impression of the public flock-

ing, for example, to an enticing new shopping

mall might be to see it as a clear indicator of

corporate influence at work. However, Fiske

intelligence men do not trouble to clarify their
conceptions.’ Semantics, therefore, must lie at
the heart of any serious study of communication
processes. See topic guide under language/
discourse/narrative.
Semiology/semiotics Word derives from the
Greek, semeion, meaning sign, and semiology is
the general science of sign systems and their role
in the construction and reconstruction of mean-
ing. All social life, indeed every facet of social
practice, is mediated by language conceived as a
system of signs and representations, arranged by
codes and articulated through various discourses.
Sign systems, believes the semiologist, have no
fi xed meaning. Th e perception of the sign system
rests upon the social context of the participants
and the interaction between them.
Semiology examines the sign itself, the codes
or systems into which the signs are organized,
and the culture within which these codes and
signs operate. Th e primary focus of semiology is
upon the text, preferring the term reader (even
of a painting, photograph or fi lm) to receiver
because it implies a greater degree of activity,
and that the process of reading is socially and
culturally conditioned. The reader helps to
create the meaning and signifi cance of the text
by bringing to it his/her experience, values and
emotional responses.
Th ere is special emphasis on the link between
the reading and the ideology of the reader.
‘Wherever a sign is present,’ writes V.N.
Volosinov in Marxism and the Philosophy of
Language (Seminar Press, 1973), ‘ideology is
present too. Everything ideological possesses a
semiotic value’; or as Umberto Eco says, ‘Semiol-
ogy shows us the universe of ideologies arranged
in codes and sub-codes within the universe of
signs’ (in ‘Articulations of the cinematic code’ in
Cinematics 1, undated).
Th e theories of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857–1913) provided the foundation
stone of Semiology. His lectures, Cours de
Linguistique Générale (1916), were published
after his death by two pupils, Charles Bally
and Albert Sechehaye. De Saussure set out to
demonstrate that speech is not merely a linear
sequence like beads on a string, but a system
and structure where points on the string relate
to other points on the string in various ways (the
so-called syntagmic structure) and operate in
a network of relationships with other possible
points which could substitute for it (the paradig-
mic structure).
Th e American logician and philosopher C.S.
Peirce (1834–1914) approached the structure of