Visual Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics : Structure, context and meaning.

Semiotics as we know from the last lecture is the study of signs. We have learned how to perceived things with our senses such as see, touch, hear, taste and smell. We have seen signs, pictures, images all of our life, we also have heard multi languages and words, but did you ever questioned how a certain sign have been declare as an object or a word to define them? I guessing not, because all of the sign or words that we seen or heard we have known it all for our entire life. For a simple example; children knows all around them by memorizing all the things that they heard or seen, that is why in kindergarten or nursery, they taught the kids with singing songs like Alphabets song

Whenever they see the word of “A” they will be automatically thinks about the word "Apple" or "Ant" as the picture describe in the alphabets chart, as Saussure (1983) quote “Semiology was a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life”. Moving on to the branches of the semiotics, we will starts from Syntactic then Semantic and lastly Pragmatics.

Syntactic is the grammar of the visual image which according to Lester (2006), "Syntactics is the study of the ways signs are combined with each other to form complex messages". These means that syntactics have the signs that have mixed or combined to create an image and also hidden messages. Take look at this advert for example:

This is the anti-smoking advertisement against cancer. The advertisement shows a child crying while there are clouds of smoke covering his face which also showing the boy is suffocated. The background of the image is black and seems very dull. This image uses black background because the color symbolizes death and the boy showing an expression of sadness and if the signs are combine all together then the message that send to the viewer will be delivered which is smoking will not only killing yourself but also killing your love ones. Even though the image doesn't have any words saying that by smoking you can kill a child but because you have the ideology of a certain perspective on smoking then you can read the message from the image, as according to Saroyan, "One picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, but only if you look at the picture and say or think the thousand words".

Moving on to Semantics, Semantics is the study of meaning or interpretation of sign from the views of certain cultures, which according to Lester (2006), “Semantics is an area of semiotics in which the researchers attempt to determine the significance of the signs within and throughout various cultures”. Look at the image below:

When we see this image, the first thing that pops to our mind is luxury, rich and the perfect paradise vacation to everyone dreams. Others might think a glass building located near the sea shores, some might says that this image is one of expensive hotel with a great sea view that located somewhere in this world. According to Barthes, “The text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral and imagination” and also according to Morris (1938), "Semantics deals with the relation of signs to … objects which they may or do denote". Different people have their own perspective for every image they see depends on their culture influences or imagination to create the description of the image.

Lastly for not least the Pragmatics, which according to Lester (2006), “Pragmatics is the study of the origin, common uses and communicative effects of the signs” which means that it refers to the study of context to meaning such as social context that refers to the relationship from sender and readers. The readers decodes the texts using their spoken language or other technological resources. As according to Davis (1991), "Pragmatics will have as its domain speakers' communicative intentions, the uses of language that require such intentions, and the strategies that hearers employ to determine what these intentions and acts are, so that they can understand what the speaker intends to communicate". For example:

This advertisement of Calvin Klein Jeans has been banned by the Australia's Advertising Standard Bureau because the image has created the idea of rape. This ad has received more than 50 complaints from women's advocates who claimed that this ad has promoted gang rape and violence. This ad also has been claimed if this type of ad keeps on created in the future then it will giving the idea of open sex, rapes and the violent to women and child will be rapidly high. This is the idea of the people that have the knowledge of a certain situation and the body language in their society but to others this will be just a picture of a girl laying with three mens.




References:

Chandler, D., Semiotics for Beginners. Retrieved August 27, 2011 from 

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.html

Pragmatics. Retrieved August 27, 2011 from http://www.unc.edu/~gerfen/Ling30Sp2002/pragmatics.htm

Korta, K., and Perry, J., Pragmatics, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Z., (ed.), Retrieved August 27, 2011 from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatics/

Lester, P.M. (2006). Syntactic theory of Visual Communication. Retrieved August 27, 2011 from

http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/viscomtheory.html

Photos:
http://lifeisreallybeautiful.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/calvin-klein-banned-advertisement-featuring-lara-stone-590bes10211
http://www.hotels.com/13/hotels/1000000/530000/527500/527498/hcom_527498_37_b.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRX8rGDIVuzRQb-VhrhgPw5nG10dtaevskfBLaGBAvnITSm2VSKPKJE22x53b2xIxLr8VaTB1P3FGSBqge9Uz4A2D6sdjsDob8SjX7dTdzxloHzZezax97gfDBKCKH1iOk05qWgh9cXLk/s1600/41.jpg

Semiotics Revisited

Week 3 : Semiotics

Q1. Provide examples of signifiers, signified and connotations.

Semiotics is basically called the sciences of signs which are very useful for analyzing visual texts and finding the meanings of the text. According to Strokes (2003), “semiotics is one of the most interpretive of methods for analyzing texts”. Semiotics analysis consist of finding the signifiers, signified which equals to sign. Meanwhile, denotation is the description of the sign and connotation is the mental concept generated from the signifiers.

Signifiers + Signified = Sign.

Mental concept generated from signifiers = connotations.

Signifiers are any material things that signified such as words, image, or facial expressions. Signifiers are formed by five senses which are sight, smell, touch, taste and sound. Meanwhile, signified is a mental image that created from the signifier. For example:

Signifiers has many signified for example for the word of MAGNUM, in my mental image when I see or hear the words all I can think of is ice cream but when I google the word magnum I can see there’s so many pictures that consist on the word of MAGNUM. Some of the images that I found out are:-

Therefore, the signifiers which made up with the word MAGNUM is a sign, signified of the sign is the mental image in your head as an ice cream, a gun, cars and soap opera drama magnum P.I. As according to Strokes (2003),”the key to semiotics: it is how the producer of an image makes it mean something and how we, as readers, get meaning out.”

Meanwhile, connotation is the cultural meaning of the sign which means the representation and concept of the sign which also means that the sign is our mental perception that influence by our culture or other culture as in media perception idea to connote the image that represented which also have dozens of meanings as Barthes (1984) said, “images are polysemic- they have multiple meanings and ate open to diverse interpretations.” For example is the image below:-

The sign is a sport car, when you see the sport car all you see is luxury, money, fast cars and women which all of the above is the connotation of the sport car.  The idea of the car that sets by the culture to your mental image has created a perception that the car is luxury and expensive that can afforded by the rich and wealthy people only and with the define of rich and wealthy automatically our mindset says that the person has a big house with all the butler and maid and also a typical rich girlfriend or wife.

Hence, signifiers is any materials that we signified and signified is a mental image that created by our mind which also influenced by the culture meaning. Every signifier has many signifieds. Meanwhile, connotation is the representation and concept of the sign which also means the cultural meaning of the signs.

References:

·         Luxury lifestyle. Retrieved august 20, 2011 from http://blogs-images.forbes.com/anthonydemarco/files/2011/05/luxury-lifestyle.jpg.

·         Stunning Tuning Sport Car. Retrieved august 20, 2011 from http://good-wallpapers.com/pictures/1449/Stunning-Tuning-Sport-Car.jpg.

·         Magnum. Retrieved august 20, 2011 from http://www.angloamerican.free-online.co.uk/magnum1.JPG.

·         Magnum. Retrieved august 20, 2011 from http://www.imfdb.org/w/images/2/2f/Magnum.jpg.

·         S & W mod. Retrieved august 20, 2011 from http://www.downrangezero.com/s&w_mod500.jpg.

·         Tops knives magnum black. Retrieved august 20, 2011 from http://bekleidungskammer.de/images/Tops%20Knives%20TKCQTM711%20CQT%20Magnum%20711%20Black.jpg.

·         Strokes, J. (2003). How to do Media and Cultural Studies (p. 70-71). London, GBR: Sage Publications, incorporated.

·         Barthes, R. (1984). Rhetoric of the image. In Image, Music, Text (pp. 32-51). Translated by Heath, S. London: Fontana.

Week 2 : Seeing and Perception

Perception is an interpretation of a visual stimulus that captured by the brain to create an image. Perception requires awareness and attention towards our surrounding by sensing them. According to Jamieson (2007) “the ‘innocent eye’ representing the world in pristine faithfulness, can be seen more as a figment of imagination than of reality”. He meant by this quote is what we see of the world is more to the imagination of our brain to make it seems beautiful, pure and untouched but in reality it’s the other way around.

An example to understand more about perception is when you see an image below, what do you understands about that image?

 Retrieved August 14, 2011 from http://mobile-review-online.blogspot.com/2011/08/iphone-5-review.html

  

You might answer Iphone mobile, a communication device, a popular mobile phone and etc, because you recognize the image that you see, you know the image you don’t need to question about it anymore this is what meant by seeing, it’s a vision that you have seen or experienced. According to Berger (1972) “ In the middle ages when men believed in the physical existence of hell the sight of fire must have meant something different… their idea of hell owed a lot to the sight of fire consuming… as well as to their experience of the pain of burns”.  What he meant by this is every time the middle ages thinks about the hell looks like, the sight of fire is the image of hell and they will not question about it anymore, same with when we look at the iphone picture, we have experience seeing the device and our sight of the device as  a communicator.

 A vision which is seeing is a different meaning than perception, look again at the image and what do you see? You might answer the same thing again but what you don’t realize is when you perceiving the image inside your brain, you are sensing the image with your vision and vision is one of the five senses that human have. The thing that you don’t realize is when you perceive at the image, you are not only viewing the iphone picture, you are sensing all surrounding you. According to Jamieson (2007) “the individual make contact with the world via the senses”. What meant by Jamieson by the senses are we as a human, we senses the world around us by five senses which are seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting and feeling. For example the smell of your room, hearing the sound of keyboard when your typing also the sound of television at the background, seeing your computer laptop in front of you and also the numb you feel when you sitting down for hours writing this assignment and while you are perceiving the iphone picture.

Hence, perceiving is about paying attention to a certain object or situation or image. All of the senses that you feel, hear, see or touch, these are visual sensation which is things you sense without perceiving. Perception is where your brain is concentrate to the image and focusing the image to your brain and creating imaginary fantasy of the image. For the answer why perception is different from seeing or vision sensing is perception only can be focus or concentrate at one at a time and seeing or vision sensing does not have to focus at one thing at a time.

(554 words)

References:

• -         Jamieson, H. (2007). Visual Communication: More Than Meets the Eye. Bristol: GBR Intellect Books.
• -         Berger, J., Blomberg, S., Fox, C., Dibb, M., & Hollis, R. (1972). Ways Of Seeing. London: Thc British Broadcasting Corporation.