Social semiotics

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Social semiotics (also social semantics) [1] is a branch of the field of semiotics which investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances, and which tries to explain meaning-making as a social practice. Semiotics, as originally defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, is "the science of the life of signs in society". Social semiotics expands on Saussure's founding insights by exploring the implications of the fact that the "codes" of language and communication are formed by social processes. The crucial implication here is that meanings and semiotic systems are shaped by relations of power, and that as power shifts in society, our languages and other systems of socially accepted meanings can and do change.

Contents

Overview

Social semiotics is the study of the social dimensions of meaning, and of the power of human processes of signification and interpretation (known as semiosis) in shaping individuals and societies. Social semiotics focuses on social meaning-making practices of all types, whether visual, verbal or aural in nature. [2] These different systems for meaning-making, or possible "channels" (e.g. speech, writing, images) are known as semiotic modes (or semiotic registers). Semiotic modes can include visual, verbal, written, gestural and musical resources for communication. They also include various "multimodal" ensembles of any of these modes [3]

Social semiotics can include the study of how people design and interpret meanings, the study of texts, and the study of how semiotic systems are shaped by social interests and ideologies, and how they are adapted as society changes (Hodge and Kress, 1988). Structuralist semiotics in the tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure focused primarily on theorising semiotic systems or structures (termed langue by de Saussure, which change diachronically, i.e. over longer periods of time). In contrast, social semiotics tries to account for the variability of semiotic practices termed parole by Saussure. This altered focus shows how individual creativity, changing historical circumstances, and new social identities and projects can all change patterns of usage and design (Hodge and Kress, 1988). From a social semiotic perspective, rather than being fixed into unchanging "codes", signs are considered to be resources which people use and adapt (or "design") to make meaning. In these respects, social semiotics was influenced by, and shares many of the preoccupations of pragmatics (Charles W. Morris) and sociolinguistics and has much in common with cultural studies and critical discourse analysis.

The main task of social semiotics is to develop analytical and theoretical frameworks which can explain meaning-making in a social context. [2]

Halliday and the social semiotic in language

Linguistic theorist, Michael Halliday, introduced the term ‘social semiotics’ into linguistics, when he used the phrase in the title of his book, Language as Social Semiotic. This work argues against the traditional separation between language and society, and exemplifies the start of a 'semiotic' approach, which broadens the narrow focus on written language in linguistics (1978). For Halliday, languages evolve as systems of "meaning potential" (Halliday, 1978:39) or as sets of resources which influence what the speaker can do with language, in a particular social context. For example, for Halliday, the grammar of the English language is a system organised for the following three purposes (areas or "metafunctions"):

Any sentence in English is composed like a musical composition, with one strand of its meaning coming from each of the three semiotic areas or metafunctions. Bob Hodge generalises Halliday’s essays [4] on social semiotics into five premises: [5]

  1. ‘Language is a social fact’ (1978:1)
  2. ‘We shall not come to understand the nature of language if we pursue only the kinds of question about language that are formulated by linguists’ (1978:3)
  3. ‘Language is as it is because of the functions it has evolved to serve in people’s lives’ (1978:4).
  4. Language has ‘metafunctions’, which in English are: ideational (‘about something’), interpersonal (’doing something’) and textual (‘the speaker’s text-forming potential’) (1978:112).
  5. Language is constituted as ‘a discrete network of options’ (1978:113)

Social semiotics and critical linguistics

Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress's Social Semiotics (1988) focused on the uses of semiotic systems in social practice. They explain that the social power of texts in society depends on interpretation: "Each producer of a message relies on its recipients for it to function as intended." (1988:4) This process of interpretation (semiosis) situates individual texts within discourses, the exchanges of interpretative communities. The work of interpretation can contest the power of hegemonic discourses. Hodge and Kress give the example of feminist activists defacing a sexist advertising billboard, and spray-painting it with a new, feminist message.

"Text is only a trace of discourses, frozen and preserved, more or less reliable or misleading. Yet discourse disappears too rapidly, surrounding a flow of texts." (1988:8)

Hodge and Kress built on a range of traditions from linguistics (including Noam Chomsky, Michael Halliday, Benjamin Lee Whorf and sociolinguistics), but the major impetus for their work is the critical perspective on ideology and society that originates with Marx.

Hodge and Kress build a notion of semiosis as a dynamic process, where meaning is not determined by rigid structures, or predefined cultural codes. They argue that Ferdinand de Saussure's structuralist semiotics avoided addressing questions about creativity, movement, and change in language, possibly in reaction to the diachronic linguistic traditions of his time (the focus on the historical development from Indo-European). This created a "problematic" legacy, with linguistic change relegated to the "contents of Saussure’s rubbish bin" (1988:16-17).

Instead, Hodge and Kress propose to account for change in semiosis through the work of Charles Sanders Peirce. Meaning is a process, in their interpretation of Peirce. They refer to Peirce's triadic model of semiosis, which depicts the "action" of a sign as a limitless process of infinite semiosis, where one "interpretant" (or idea linked to a sign) generates another. The flow of these infinite processes of interpretation are constrained in Peirce's model, they claim, by the material world (the "object"), and cultural rules of thought, or "habit". (1988:20)

Social semiotics revisits De Saussure's doctrine of the "arbitrariness of the linguistic sign". This notion rests on the argument that the signifier only has an arbitrary relationship to the signified) — in other words, that there is nothing about the sound or appearance of (verbal) signifiers (as, for example, the words "dog" or "chien") — to suggest what they signify. Hodge and Kress point out that questions of the referent become more complicated when semiotics moves beyond verbal language. On the one hand, there is the need to account for the continuum of relationships between the referent and the representation. Here, they draw on Pierce's differentiation between iconic signification (e.g. a colour photograph of smoke, where the signifier recreates the perceptual experience of the signified), indexical signification (e.g. a column of smoke, where there is a causal relationship between the physical signifier and the fire it might signify), and symbolic signification (e.g. the word "smoke", where the arbitrary link between signifier and signified is maintained by social convention).

Social semiotics also addresses the question of how societies and cultures maintain or shift these conventional bonds between signifier and signified. De Saussure was unwilling to answer this question, Hodge and Kress claim. This leaves the socially determinist implication that meanings and interpretations are dictated from above, by "the whims of an inscrutably powerful collective being, Society." For Hodge and Kress, social semiotics must respond to the question and explain how the social shaping of meanings works in practice (1988:22).

Social semiotics and multimodality

Social semiotics is currently extending this general framework beyond its linguistic origins to account for the growing importance of sound and visual images, and how modes of communication are combined in both traditional and digital media (semiotics of social networking) (see, for example, Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996), thus approaching semiotics of culture (Randviir 2004). Theorists such as Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen have built on Halliday's framework by providing new "grammars" for other semiotic modes. Like language, these grammars are seen as socially formed and changeable sets of available "resources" for making meaning, which are also shaped by the semiotic metafunctions originally identified by Halliday. The visual and aural modes have received particular attention. Accounting for multimodality (communication in and across a range of semiotic modes - verbal, visual, and aural) is considered a particularly important ongoing project, given the importance of the visual mode in contemporary communication.

In the field of graphic design, the multimodal and social semiotic viewpoint can be perceived as an illustration that connects our sensory abilities together opening up new opportunities for deeper visual interaction. Utilizing this design process, the graphic designers create content which helps improvise the act of meaningful visual communication between the content creators and their audiences.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Halliday</span> British linguist (1925–2018)

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar. Halliday described language as a semiotic system, "not in the sense of a system of signs, but a systemic resource for meaning". For Halliday, language was a "meaning potential"; by extension, he defined linguistics as the study of "how people exchange meanings by 'languaging'". Halliday described himself as a generalist, meaning that he tried "to look at language from every possible vantage point", and has described his work as "wander[ing] the highways and byways of language". But he said that "to the extent that I favoured any one angle, it was the social: language as the creature and creator of human society".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sign</span> Entity whose presence indicates the probable existence of something else

A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or medical symptoms a sign of disease. A conventional sign signifies by agreement, as a full stop signifies the end of a sentence; similarly the words and expressions of a language, as well as bodily gestures, can be regarded as signs, expressing particular meanings. The physical objects most commonly referred to as signs generally inform or instruct using written text, symbols, pictures or a combination of these.

Semiotics is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning-making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional, such as a word uttered with a specific meaning; or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings and may communicate internally or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Systemic functional grammar</span> Primary tenets

Systemic functional grammar (SFG) is a form of grammatical description originated by Michael Halliday. It is part of a social semiotic approach to language called systemic functional linguistics. In these two terms, systemic refers to the view of language as "a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for making meaning"; functional refers to Halliday's view that language is as it is because of what it has evolved to do. Thus, what he refers to as the multidimensional architecture of language "reflects the multidimensional nature of human experience and interpersonal relations."

Semiosis, or sign process, is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. A sign is anything that communicates a meaning, that is not the sign itself, to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste.

In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional, as when a word is uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, as when a symptom is taken as a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Systemic functional linguistics</span>

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to linguistics, among functional linguistics, that considers language as a social semiotic system.

In semiotics, the value of a sign depends on its position and relations in the system of signification and upon the particular codes being used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representation (arts)</span> Signs that stand in for and take the place of something else

Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements. Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gunther Kress</span>

Gunther Rolf Kress MBE was a linguist and semiotician. He is considered one of the leading theorists in critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and multimodality, particularly in relation to their educational implications. Kress has been described as "one of the leading academics of the early 21st century".

Visual semiotics is a sub-domain of semiotics that analyses the way visual images communicate a message.

The study and practice of visual rhetoric took a more prominent role in the field of composition studies towards the end of the twentieth century and onward. Proponents of its inclusion in composition typically point to the increasingly visual nature of society, and the increasing presence of visual texts. Literacy, they argue, can no longer be limited only to written text and must also include an understanding of the visual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruqaiya Hasan</span>

Ruqaiya Hasan was a professor of linguistics who held visiting positions and taught at various universities in England. Her last appointment was at Macquarie University in Sydney, from which she retired as emeritus professor in 1994. Throughout her career she researched and published widely in the areas of verbal art, culture, context and text, text and texture, lexicogrammar and semantic variation. The latter involved the devising of extensive semantic system networks for the analysis of meaning in naturally occurring dialogues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. R. Martin</span> Canadian linguist

James Robert Martin is a Canadian linguist. He is Professor of Linguistics at The University of Sydney. He is the leading figure in the 'Sydney School' of systemic functional linguistics. Martin is well known for his work on discourse analysis, genre, appraisal, multimodality and educational linguistics.

The term metafunction originates in systemic functional linguistics and is considered to be a property of all languages. Systemic functional linguistics is functional and semantic rather than formal and syntactic in its orientation. As a functional linguistic theory, it claims that both the emergence of grammar and the particular forms that grammars take should be explained "in terms of the functions that language evolved to serve". While languages vary in how and what they do, and what humans do with them in the contexts of human cultural practice, all languages are considered to be shaped and organised in relation to three functions, or metafunctions. Michael Halliday, the founder of systemic functional linguistics, calls these three functions the ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational function is further divided into the experiential and logical.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to semiotics:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multimodality</span> Phenomenon of human communication having different forms that combine

Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. Multiple literacies or "modes" contribute to an audience's understanding of a composition. Everything from the placement of images to the organization of the content to the method of delivery creates meaning. This is the result of a shift from isolated text being relied on as the primary source of communication, to the image being utilized more frequently in the digital age. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and visual resources used to compose messages.

The semiotics of fashion is the study of fashion and how humans signify specific social and cultural positions through dress. Ferdinand de Saussure defined semiotics as "the science of the life of signs in society". Semiotics is the study of signs and just as we can interpret signs and construct meaning from text we can also construct meaning from visual images such as fashion. Fashion is a language of signs that non-verbally converse meanings about individuals and groups. It holds a symbolic and communicative role having the capacity to express one's unique style, identity, profession, social status, and gender or group affiliation.

The kineikonic mode is a term for the moving image as a multimodal form. It indicates an approach to the analysis of film, video, television and any instance of moving image media that examines how systems of signification such as image, speech, dramatic action, music and other communicative processes work together to create meaning within the spatial and temporal frames of filming and editing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literacy in the New Media Age</span> 2003 book by Gunther Kress

Written in 2003, and published by Taylor & Francis Group, Gunther Kress' book Literacy in the New Media Age explores how the introduction of modern technology has impacted the way individuals interact with their culture through written and oral communication. Expanding upon the idea of the evolution of media and writing in a digital medium, Kress looks at the impacts of media communications on societies and cultures and vice versa.

References

  1. ↑ Thibault, Paul (2004). Agency and Consciousness in Discourse: Self-Other Dynamics as a Complex System. Continuum. p. 209.
  2. 1 2 Thibault, Paul (1991). Social semiotics as praxis: Text, social meaning making, and Nabokov's Ada. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  3. ↑ Kress, G.; Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.
  4. ↑ Review of Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning by M. A.K. Halliday, reviewer: Greg Urban, University of Texas at Austin, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 659-661, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~gurban/pdfs/reviews/Urban-Language_as_Social_Semiotic.pdf
  5. ↑ Social Semiotics - Semiotics Encyclopedia Online, E.J. Pratt Library, Victoria University, Canada.

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