Semiotics: Saussure's Model

• Semiotics is the study of signs.
• Semiotics studies anything that 'stands-for' something else, including words, images, sounds, gestures, and objects.
• Contemporary models of signs include those of Ferdinand De Saussure and Charles Sanders Pierce.

Saussure's Model

• Saussure's term 'sémiologie' dates from 1894, defining it as a science studying the role of signs in social life.
• Saussure's model of the sign is dyadic, consisting of two parts: the sign vehicle and its meaning.
• A linguistic sign is a link between a concept (signified) and a sound pattern (signifier).
• The sound pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound, derived from sensory evidence.
• The concept (signified) is more abstract.
• Both the signifier (sound pattern) and signified (concept) were purely psychological, representing non-material form rather than substance.
• The signifier is now commonly interpreted as the material or physical form of the sign that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted.
• The sign is the whole that results from associating the signifier with the signified.
• Signification is the relationship between the signifier and the signified, represented in diagrams by arrows.
• The 'bar' is the horizontal broken line that marks the two elements of the sign.
• A sign needs both a signifier and a signified, as you cannot have a meaningless signifier or a formless signified.
• A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified.
• The same signifier can stand for a different signified and thus be a different sign.
• Writing, for Saussure, is a separate, secondary, dependent but comparable sign-system, a 'sign of a sign'.
• Within written signs, a signifier (like the letter 't') signifies a sound in the primary language sign-system.
• The signified is somewhere between a mental image, a concept, and a psychological reality.
• Linguistic sign, avoided by Saussure, is referred to as a 'symbol'.
• Symbols are vehicles for the conception of objects, not proxies for them.
• Conceptions, not things, are what symbols directly mean.
• Behavior towards conceptions is what words normally evoke, which is typical of the thinking process.
• The linguistic sign is wholly immaterial, although Saussure disliked referring to it as 'abstract.'
• Sound and thought (signifier and signified) are inseparable, intimately linked in the mind by an associative link, each triggering the other.
• Sign consists of sound with sense or of sense without sound.
• The bar and opposition implies that the signifier and signified could be distinguished for analytical purposes.
• However, poststructuralist theorists seek to blur the distinction between the signifier and the signified in order to reconfigure the sign.

Horizontal and Vertical Axes

• Meaning arises from the differences between signifiers.
• These differences are syntagmatic (concerning positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution).
• Paradigmatic relations, now used from Roman Jakobson's term, were previously called associative relations
• The syntagmatic (horizontal) and paradigmatic (vertical) axes are applicable to all sign systems.
• Plane of the syntagm combines 'this-and-this-and-this.'
• Plane of the paradigm selects 'this-or-this-or-this.'
• Syntagmatic relations involve combination possibilities.
• Paradigmatic relations involve functional contrasts or differentiation.
• Temporally, syntagmatic relations refer intratextually to signifiers co-present within the text.
• Temporally, paradigmatic relations refer intertextually to signifiers absent from the text.
• The 'value' of a sign is determined by both its paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations.
• Syntagms and paradigms provide a structural context for signs to make sense.
• The structural forms which signs are organized into codes.
• Paradigmatic relationships operate on the levels of the signifier and the signified.
• A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers or signifieds which are all members of some defining category, but in which each is significantly different.
• Natural language contains grammatical paradigms such as verbs or nouns.
• Using one signifier rather than another from the same paradigm shapes the meaning of text.
• Paradigmatic relationships, thus, can be seen as 'contrastive.’
• Associative relations, notion by Saussure, was less formal than paradigmatic relations, including perceived similarities in form or meaning.
• Paradigms aren't confined to the verbal mode, including ways of changing shot in film and television.
• 'The medium is the message', aphorism by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, reflects semiotic concern as medium is not neutral.
• A syntagm is an orderly combination of interacting signifiers, forming a meaningful whole within a text. It is sometimes called a 'chain'.
• Syntagmatic relations are the ways in which elements within the same text may be related to each other.
• Syntagms are created by the linking of signifiers from paradigm sets which are chosen on the basis of whether appropriate or required by rule system.
• Syntagmatic relations highlight the importance of part to whole relationships.
• The whole depends on the parts, and the parts depend on the whole.
• The structure of any text or cultural practice has syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes.
• Paradigmatic elements cannot be worn at the same time on the same body part.
• Syntagmatic dimension is the juxtaposition of different elements at the same time in an ensemble.
• Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic analysis treat signs as part of system, exploring functions.

Langue and Parole

• A distinction is made between langue (language) and parole (speech).
• Langue refers to the system of rules and conventions which is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users.
• Parole refers to langue's use in particular instances.
• Langue/parole defines a distinction between system and usage, structure and event, or code and message.
• Saussure focused on langue rather than parole.
• Saussurean semioticians prioritize the underlying structures and rules of a semiotic system over specific instances of its use.
• Saussure studied the system 'synchronically,' frozen in time, rather than 'diachronically,' in terms of its evolution over time.
• Some structuralist cultural theorists adopted this Saussurean priority, focusing on the functions of social and cultural phenomena within semiotic systems.
• The structuralist dichotomy between usage and system has been criticized for its rigidity, splitting process from product, subject from structure.
• Prioritizing structure over usage fails to account for changes in structure.
• In the late 1920s, Valentin Voloshinov rejected Saussure’s synchronic approach.
• Voloshinov reversed the Saussurean priority of langue over parole, stating that a sign's meaning is in the social context of its use, not relationships to other signs.
• Therefore, Saussure was criticized for ignoring historicity.
• Roman Jakobson and Yuri Tynyanov declared that ‘pure synchronism now proves to be an illusion’, adding that ‘every synchronic system has its past and its future as inseparable structural elements of the system’.
• There is no real moment when a synchronic system of language could be constructed.
• A synchronic system exists only from the point of view of the subjective consciousness of an individual speaker belonging to some particular language group at some particular moment of historical time.
• While Claude Lévi-Strauss applied a synchronic approach in anthropology, most contemporary semioticians have sought to reprioritize historicity and social context.