Semiotics – a beginner’s guide

1. A sign is the image/code/physical part that stands for a ‘thing’

or ‘idea’
2. The thing that is the sign – the thing that means something -
is called the SIGNIFIER. What it means is called the
SIGNIFIED.
3. Signs have literal meaning (denotation) and ‘value added’
meanings – things we associate with them, as individuals or as
groups (connotation).
4. The meanings signs have are shared by groups of people.
5. The understanding of the non-literal meanings of signs by a
group is especially governed by factors such as:
Age Religion
Race Country of residence
Cultural Upbringing Schooling
Class Media Experiences
Our hobbies and habits
6. Meaning has to be shared by a group for the ‘code’ to work.
7. ‘Codes’ have different numbers of people who are fluent in
that ‘code’.
8. ‘Codes’ are used everyday and include language (spoken),
written language, moving images (TV, Film), behaviour at
mealtimes, marriages etc to name a few. These are often
called ‘Discourse’ in media studies.
9. Signs can relate directly to what they represent (i.e. look like
what they stand for) (called ‘iconic’) or they can be an
arbitrary shape or sound that a group agrees to and not look
anything like the thing they represent (called ‘symbolic’).
Signs that give or have meaning based on a relationship
between the two are called ‘indexical’ (such as using smoke
on a warning sign to indicate fire).

Other Factors in Media Studies related to semiotics

1. Things are not usually black and white – they can be on a

graded scale (called a ‘Cline’) – think about grades or degrees
of heat/hotness.
2. Users of codes (such as language or film) make choices
relating to what happens NEXT (called a ‘syntagm’). This is
like a sentence or the running order of scenes in a film; it’s
about choosing along the linear.
3. Those same users also make choices at each point from a list
of options (called a ‘paradigm’), making a choice each time
from a list. Remember the example of;

The cat sat on the mat

A Kitten laid undera rug
The mat was laid upon by a moggy

4. People
 associate ideas and things together and this is used to make
meaning in media. It’s called ‘contiguity’ (contiguous).
5. People often use the characteristics of one thing to stand for
the whole of it – so Big Ben for the Houses of Parliament
and/or for the UK Government, likewise the White House is
used to stand for the presidential administration or The Eiffel
Tower for Paris. These meanings are called ‘metonymous’
(metonyms).
6. People’s shared experiences, especially in media texts, allow
for media text producers to refer to other media texts in their
work. This is called ‘Intertextuality’ – The Simpsons often
does this when they ‘do’ The Simpson’s versions of, for
example, horror films.
7. Theorists argue a lot about the extra meanings (‘value added’
– connotations).
8. The audience or receivers of texts are often assumed to
be/react or read a text in a similar way. This similarity is called
‘homogenous’ (homogeneity). However, as you surely
already know, audiences are NOT the same and read things in
their own ways. They can be very diverse. Diversity in the
audience in media studies is called ‘heterogeneity’
(heterogeneous)
9. There are different types of signs as alluded to above:
a. ICON – looks very like the thing represented (e.g. Photo)
b. INDEX – suggests something related to the image (e.g.
Smoke to indicate fire)
c. SYMBOL – has agreed shared meaning(s) not related to
what the sign itself looks like and those meanings can
be quite ‘deep’
10.Signs that have more than one meaning are said to be
POLYSEMIC.
11.Because signs can have more than one meaning, the way
they are grouped or placed together is important – adding
words for example ANCHORS meaning.
12.Images are placed together carefully in groups to help make
the audience make sense of what they’re seeing – it anchors
the meaning.
13.Meaning can change over time. Some signs can no longer be
read by ‘younger readers’ or perhaps those outside of a group.
14.Film is a language of signs we read subconsciously. There are
general rules that filmmakers follow (CONVENTIONS).
Sometime they break these rules to disrupt how audiences
read them.
15.Images and sequences are always created with a purpose – all
the elements are there for a reason and by the choice of the
creator. This makes the text what we call MOTIVATED. That is
to say that there is a reason, or a motive, behind everything in
a text.
16.Signs work together in different ways they can be used
harmoniously in COMBINATION or they can be placed in
different ways or unusual combinations to create new
meanings – this is often called JUXTAPOSITION.
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