Current Perspectives in Semiotics

List of Contributors

Łukasz Jan Berezowski, University of Łódź, Poland

Łukasz Berger, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland

Marek Debnár, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz, University of Łódź, Poland

Ibrahim A. El-Hussari, Lebanese American University, Lebanon

Krzysztof Gajewski, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland

Justyna Galant, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland

Artur Gałkowski, University of Łódź, Poland

Lale Kabadayı, Ege University, Turkey

Marta Komsta, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland

Monika Kopytowska, University of Łódź, Poland

Natasha Remoundou, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

Renáta Sedláková, Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic

Martin Švantner, Charles University in Prague and West Bohemian University, Czech Republic

Konca Yumlu, Ege University, Turkey

Evripides Zantides, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus←7 | 8→←8 | 9→

Semiotic Reflections on Ideology, Representation, and Genres

Abstract: This introductory chapter focuses on semiotic resources, mechanisms and strategies involved in the process of meaning-making both on the part of producers and interpreters of messages. Various factors underlying this process and the dynamic nature of signification are discussed. Departing from the assumption that semiotics is concerned with multiple forms of representation – texts, genres, and media – the authors examine the structural and functional properties of these forms, along with motivations behind them and their socio-political and cultural implications. The notions of identity and ideology, as well as their discursively constitutive and constituted nature, are discussed from the perspective of social semiotics and other approaches to discourse and communication. The interplay between the verbal, the visual, and other semiotic modes, and the role of traditional and new media forms are also explored.

Keywords: text, genre, medium, identity, ideology, representation, positioning

1 Inspirations, Influences, and Interfaces

Our lives have been saturated with and dominated by representations generated by the mass media (including social media) and our experience “of events which take place in contexts that are spatially and temporally remote […] is an experience largely mediated by the institutions of mass communication” (Thompson 1995: 216). The media are not only a source of information and entertainment for billions of people; they have also been responsible for creating, consolidating and preserving values, myths and symbols constituting our common culture. They have won and lost wars, vested political leaders with power, and substantially contributed to the “manufacturing of consent” (Torfing 1999: 210).¹ They have been shaping social behaviour and providing material out of which identities are constructed in terms of race, nationality and gender, as well as distinctions between us and them. With the advent of Web 2.0. and its user generated context, which blurred the boundaries between producers and consumers of texts, we – audiences – have acquired new powers and responsibilities, we have become “prosumers” (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). To successfully navigate ←9 | 10→in our media-saturated environment, we need to understand the dynamics of text production and consumption. Accordingly, Eco observes that

[s]‌emiotics has become a sort of moral critical duty when it was clear that mass media were the new “sacred texts” which produced ideology and changed our perception of the real world. (Eco 2018: 42)

Media literacy, however, is not the only context in which semiotic perspective proves useful.² Our functioning as individuals and group members is contingent on critical reflection and interaction with others, which involves making choices at any semiotic level, both in moments of meaning generation and interpretation.

The contemporary semiosphere in which we live and interact every day, and in which meaning formation processes take place, merits critical reflection for a number of reasons and on several levels. We need such reflection to make sense of the social and political relations in the globalized world and to understand change and continuity, sameness and difference as the root causes of conflict and inequality. Given that representations function as “sites of struggle”, we need it to challenge (if necessary) the existing status quo, and to effectively use the semiotic resources that are available to us. Lastly, we need it to cope with globalization induced fear of uncertainty, the unknown, and the Other (Bauman 2006, 2016; Sedláková and Kopytowska, Chapter 13, this volume).

The inspiration and rationale for this semiotic reflection can be found in Umberto Eco’s work – in its both literary and scholarly dimension – pertaining to various aspects of human activity and embeddedness in social and material habitat. In addition to being “polymathic to an extent most will regard as practically inhuman”, as Frank Kermode (1996) observed while reviewing his book The Search for the Perfect Language, Eco was unarguably one of the most influential figures in contemporary semiotics, a bridge between semiotic traditions, combining “the structuralist perspective of Hjelmslev with the cognitive-interpretative semiotics of Peirce” (Eco 1999: 251, cit. in Chandler 2002: 7).³ Needless to say, he was an insightful observer of everyday life.

In his novel, The Name of the Rose, Eco wrote that “[b]‌ooks are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ←10 | 11→ourselves what it says but what it means”. In his interpretative quest for meaning, he scrutinized in this way cultural texts, practices and artefacts. Looking beyond the surface, the obvious and the seemingly real,⁴ he saw semiotics as “concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign” and “studying everything which can be used in order to lie” (Eco 1976: 7). Eco’s last novel, Numero Zero, which focused on a political scandal from the 1990s connected with Berlusconi’s rise, was meant to shed light on the role of the media as what Eco called “instruments to delegitimise the enemy”. Some other critical and insightful reflections on the dynamics of the interface between media and society can be found in Eco’s Apocalypse Postponed (1994) and Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism (2008). It is thus from his work that the inspiration for our book comes. Adopting various theoretical perspectives and methodological frameworks, the contributors to this volume examine multiple aspects of the meaning-making process, the language-society-culture interface and the interplay of various semiotic modes. They discuss various structural and functional aspects of semiosis across time, space, and genres. Notions of identity, ideology and representation come to the fore in these discussions, along with a range of topical issues, themes and dilemmas of both theoretical and socio-political nature.

2 Texts, Genres, and (Mass)Media

Semiotics is concerned with representations in many forms – texts, genres, and media. They come with constraints and affordances, offering different potential for representing human experience and what we call “reality”. They are always embedded in the socio-cultural contexts, along with norms and values attached to them, and ideologically motivated. Kress and van Leeuwen see representation as

a process in which the makers of signs, whether child or adult, seek to make a representation of some object or entity, whether physical or semiotic, and in which their interest in the object, at the point of making the representation, is a complex one, arising out of the cultural, social and psychological history of the sign-maker, and focused by the specific context in which the signmaker produces the sign. (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 7)←11 | 12→

Representations are thus always constructed by a certain individual or group, with the use of selected semiotic resources and purpose in mind, and, typically, for a particular group – target audience.⁵

A social semiotic theory cannot claim to establish the absolute truth or untruth of representations. It can only show whether a given proposition (verbal, visual or otherwise) is represented as true or not. From the point of view of social semiotics, truth is a construct of semiosis, and as such the truth of a particular group, arising from the values and beliefs of that group. (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 154)

According to Hall (1997: 10), “practices of representation” (signs, symbols, images, narratives, words, discourses) are “dialogic” and must be “decoded” by the audience so that cultural communication is completed. Importantly, the visual dimension plays a significant role here too, as images can “represent people, places and things as though they are real, as though they actually exist in this way, or as though they do not – as though they are imaginings, fantasies, caricatures, etc.” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 156).

While Moscovici (1984) talks about “social anchoring” through representation, Bourdieu (1991), who, in fact, rejects the quasi-formalism of semiotic perspectives, calls the power to constitute the common-sense categories with which people think and perceive the social world “symbolic power”; it is, as he believes, articulated through educational institutions and mass media and it is this form of power that makes it possible to reproduce specific ways of speaking and thinking as most legitimate. Importantly, representations promote both social integration and cohesion, and social division and exclusion.

Several authors in this volume discuss the structural and functional aspects of representation across various texts and genres. Debnár (Chapter 1) examines how autobiographies represent their empirical author, while Komsta (Chapter 3), in her analysis of late Victorian narratives, scrutinizes the representation of a eutopia. Some contributors critically reflect upon this notion in the context of conflict, “us” vs “them” relation, and the Other. El-Hussari (Chapter 6) examines how “dialogue as representation is articulated when it comes to the complex concept of inclusion and exclusion”. He argues that the response of the audience to texts – in his case Israeli intelligentsia to Arabesques – can tell us a lot about the representation itself. In their analysis of Ferzan Özpetek’s films, Yumlu and Kabadayı (Chapter 7), focus on “difference” and “otherness” and the way in which these are constructed and reproduced in practices of representation. ←12 | 13→They point to the impact of existing (and dominant) ideologies on the process of interpreting particular representations by the audience. Sedláková and Kopytowska (Chapter 13) also discuss this notion in connection with the Other – migrants and refugees – and highlight the role of myth and recontextualization in media representations of social and political problems. They focus primarily on the visual dimension of representation. So does Zantides (Chapter 9) in his analysis of representations in advertisements of products or social services where he discusses them in connection with collective identity and national values. Švantner (Chapter 10) explores representation in music theory, while Gajewski (Chapter 12) refers to examples of representations that are more vivid and convincing than the reality they represent, linking them to Eco’s and Baudrillard’s concept of “simulacrum”.⁶

As already mentioned, representations have the form of texts, which Chandler (2002: 2) defines as “an assemblage of signs, such as words, images, sounds and/or gestures) constructed (and interpreted) with references to the conventions associated with a genre and in a particular medium of communication”. Discussing tendencies in the development of semiotics over recent decades, Lotman (2014: 52) distinguishes two approaches to texts: (1) “metasemiotics”, focused not on texts as such but models of texts, and (2) “the semiotics of culture” which scrutinizes “the semiotic functioning of a real text”. The latter, in the words of (Winner and Winner 1976: 101) “assumes the multiplicity, diversity, stratification and intercorrelation of sign systems which are investigated on various levels, from that of technology to social, economic and expressive behaviour”. Texts can be analyzed in terms of paradigms to which they belong (paradigmatic analysis) or in terms of syntagmatic structures they contain (e.g. narrative, argument, montage). Kristeva argued (1980) that rather than focusing our attention exclusively on the structure of a text we should study its “structuration” – how the text structure came into being – for which it is necessary to situate a given text “within the totality of previous or synchronic texts” of which it was a “transformation” (cit. in Coward and Ellis 1977: 52). Having introduced the notion of “intertextuality”, she argued that texts should be examined along two axes: (1) “a horizontal axis” connecting the author and reader of a text, and “a vertical axis” connecting the text with other texts (Kristeva 1980: 69). What unites the two axes, she argued, are shared codes: every text and reading depend on prior codes. In other words, “every text is from the outset under the jurisdiction of other discourses which impose a universe on it” (cit. in ←13 | 14→Culler 2001: 105). In Postscript to the Name of the Rose, Eco (1984) insists that “books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told”. From the perspective of Media Proximization Approach developed by Kopytowska (2014a, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2018a, 2018b) intertextuality has a strong proximizing potential especially within the dimension of epistemic (knowledge-related) distance between the audience and the events and phenomena represented. Sedláková and Kopytowska (Chapter 13, this volume) discuss its role, along with recontextualization, in fear construction and perpetuating negative representations of migrants and refugees.

One of the key observations made by social semioticians was that, in addition to verbal language, there are other semiotic systems, and that “any system of signs (semiotic code) is carried by a material medium which has its own principles of structure” (Hodge and Tripp 1986: 17). In a similar vein, Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 35) argued that “semiotic modes […] are shaped by both the intrinsic characteristics and potentialities of the medium and by the requirements, histories and values of societies and their cultures”. Accordingly, “the material expression of signs, and therefore of the text, is always significant” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 216) as, being “charged with cultural signification” (Eco 1976: 267), the medium is never “neutral”. In the words of Chandler (2002: 3):

Human experience is inherently multisensory and every representation of experience is subject to the constraints and affordances of the medium involved. Every medium is constrained by the channels it utilizes. […] Different media and genres provide different frameworks for representing experience, facilitating some forms of expression and inhibiting others.

Hence, both construction and interpretation of texts is contingent on a particular medium of communication. While theorists define this concept differently, Posner (2004: 56–89) sees “medium” as “a sign system endowed with a certain constellation of properties in its constituent factors over a particular period of time, thus subjecting the sign processes occurring in it during that period to constant limitations”. In his theoretical approach, he introduces a biological, physical, technological, sociological, functional, or code-related media concept (ibid.). The biological media concept views sign processes from the point of view of human sensory apparatus and thus distinguishes between the visual medium, the auditory medium, the olfactory medium, the gustatory medium, and the tactile medium. The physical media concept takes as a point of departure the chemical elements and contact matter used in establishing a connection between the signs and the receptor organ of the recipient. The technological ←14 | 15→media concept defines sign processes according to the technical means used to modify the already mentioned contact matter (e.g. papers and pencils, screens, etc.). Posner further divides sign processes with respect to the apparatus used (e.g. visual sign processes – print media, projection media, screen media, etc.), as well as the production of such apparatus (e.g. printed texts, photos, films, etc.). The sociological media concept characterizes sign processes according to the social institutions that organize the biological, physical, and technical means involved in sign production (e.g. galleries, museums, libraries, book publishers, radio stations, fitness centres, etc.). The functional media concept views sign processes in terms of the purpose of the messages which are transmitted by them. Here Posner (ibid.) mentions styles, genres, and discourse types. The code-based media concept characterizes sign systems according to the types of rules by means of which the sign users manage to assign messages to the signs (e.g. a distinction between tonal and atonal music, or representational and non-representational paintings). Posner argues that while each medium determines the types of messages which can be conveyed by means of it, the biological, physical, technical, social, functional, and code-related limitations usually function together. In this context, Gajewski (Chapter 12, this volume) shows how Eco (1998) revisits McLuhan’s concept “medium is the message”, proposing an idea of “semiological guerrilla” intervening at the last stage of information flow.

Constraints are also imposed by genres which serve as contextual frameworks. Traditional definitions of genres associate them with particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and form (including structure and style) which are shared by texts belonging to these genres. Semiotic approaches tend to focus on the way in which the formal features of texts within the genre draw on shared codes and function to “position” readers using particular modes of address.

Different genres, whether classified by medium (e.g. comic, cartoon, film, TV, painting) or by content (e.g. Western, Science Fiction, Romance, news) establish sets of modality markers, and an overall value which acts as a baseline for the genre. This baseline can be different for different kinds of viewer/reader, and for different texts or moments within texts. (Hodge and Kress 1988: 142)

Modality, with “modality markers” concerning the plausibility, reliability, credibility, truth, accuracy or facticity of texts becomes an important concept here signalling what within a given genre is considered real. Over time, as methods of production within a given medium and genre become naturalized, the content comes to be accepted as a “reflection of reality”. Modality thus is both ←15 | 16→genre-dependent and genre-constitutive. The theory of social semiotics adopts a broader view of modality, as conveyed not only by the “fairly clear-cut linguistic systems” (Kress and Hodge 1979; Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 155). Kress and van Leeuwen (ibid.) claim that “[i]‌t produces shared truths aligning readers or listeners with some statements and distancing them from others. It serves to create an imaginary ‘we’. It says, as it were, these are the things ‘we’ consider true, and these are the things ‘we’ distance ourselves from”. Modality is also linked to power differences in communication (Fowler et al. 1979; Kress and Hodge 1979) and thus central to ideology critique (Fowler 1991). It not only influences relations and interdependencies, but also, in its affinity dimension, expresses the status of knowledge or the facticity of its mimetic system (news, with its unquestioning claims about the world – high affinity). Hence, as argued by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006: 24), “modality refers to the status, authority, and reliability of a message, its ontological status, or its value as truth or fact”.

The notion of genre is addressed by serval authors in this volume, also from a diachronic and comparative perspective. ⁷ Debnár (Chapter 1) discusses genre classification as one of the possible problems with autobiographies. Komsta (Chapter 3) explores the utopian genre. Remoundou (Chapter 5) examines the evolution of the genre in the context of the Antigone drama. Švantner (Chapter 10) discusses generic features of jazz music, while Gajewski (Chapter 12) in his analysis of lifestreaming as communication scrutinizes functional and structural features of a new video genre. His chapter signals an important tendency concerning contemporary genres and, more generally, representation, in connection with the emergence and rapid development of new media and the affordances of cyberspace. As argued by Kopytowska (2013), hybridization of (online) genres, non-linearity of textual forms, and a new dimension of interactivity and intertextuality, have brought about, to use Kress’ (2005) words, the “crisis” of the traditional status quo within the domain of representation and communication: “genres are insecure; canonical forms of representation have come into question” (Kress 2005: 17). The new forms and functions create both opportunities and challenges for all involved in the meaning making process. They also create the need to generate new methods of critical study to be applied to texts structurally and functionally different from the genres traditionally studied in the past.←16 | 17→

“In defining realities”, as Chandler observes, “signs serve ideological functions” (Chandler 2002: 15). To study signs is thus to study the control over meanings in contemporary world. As pointed out by Chandler (ibid. 12), modern semiotic theory is often “allied to a Marxist approach” which puts emphasis on the role of ideology. For Marxists, who defined ideology as “production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness” (Marx and Engels 1970) within class struggle and domination, the main function of ideology was to legitimize the hegemonic order. Speaking of the “manufacturing of consent”, Gramsci (1971) also perceived ideology as a determining factor within the society-power nexus, inevitably in the service of the ruling class.⁸ For Habermas (1979, 1987),⁹ who extended the notion of “false consciousness” to “fragmentation of consciousness” (1987: 355), ideology was closely related to “mediatization”, the situation in which money and power determine the core processes of symbolic reproduction, viz. socialization, social integration and cultural transmission (ibid. 196). And he saw language as a key factor in this process:

Language is also a medium of domination and social power. It serves to legitimate relations of organized force. In so far as the legitimations do not articulate the relations of force that they make possible, in so far as these relations are merely expressed in the legitimations, language is also ideological. Here it is not a question of deceptions within language, but of deception with language as such. (Habermas 1979: 130)

Contemporary theoretical approaches (whether Marxist or non-Marxist) continue to explore the cognitive and social embedding of ideology, its discursive representations and its dialectic relationship with the power of dominant groups, political economy, gender and culture. While Thompson (1984) refers to ideology as “meaning in the service of power”, Hall sees it as:

the mental frameworks – the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation – which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works. (Hall 1996: 26)