Semiotics

Recently in Media studies, we have talked about Semiotics and what is meant by this term. Semiotics involves signifiers; and is a way of visually identifying objects due to pre-knowledge of the object before. We have gathered this information from the past due to media, experiences or our own perceptions of things in general. Such as being told from a young age a chair is a chair, therefore for the rest of our life we will always associate a chair as a chair, nothing else. Anyone else who tells us otherwise, we will disagree and tell them they're wrong, based on our knowledge of what this object is.

Signs denote the literal meaning on an object. Such as the object of a chair denotes the real meaning of a chair. Semiotics come in three parts: Icons, Symbols and indexical. The icon works through resemblance. For example, show anybody a picture of the S on a blue shirt and they will instantly think of Superman, without hesitation. This is because from a very young age the media has shown them many things about Superman, such as in films and in comic books; therefore the S is an icon for Superman.  Symbols works from things which are learned; or are arbitrary signs such as words. So the S on a shirt may be iconic for Superman, but what does it symbolise? It symbolises  the alien from another planet, who has super-human powers and can save the world from any type of danger. It also symbolises Clark Kent. All of this knowledge has been gained from a young age furthermore, like from seeing the old Superman films, and moreover reading the comic books to be taught this information. Something that is indexical works through a causal link. This means something like hearing the word Superman, then associating this word with superheroes. This is a casual link and everybody can make these associations of Superman with superheroes. Therefore, the S sign of Superman is polysemic. A polysemic sign is something that accounts for the icon, symbol and index.

Using our knowledge of Semiotics and our understanding of it so far, we were assigned to analyse a short clip from the film 'Titanic'. We had to firstly watch the clip and apply our knowledge of Semiotics to it, then we had to write a short essay on it. I thought this task and the essay went fairly well, and I understood the tasks well. We had to talk about how Cameron conveyed meaning through the use of Semiotics and what it symbolised. There were a range of Semiotics used, from the way the characters are clothed, music, lighting, sound, camera movements and so on.This was an interesting task and got me to think about all of the symbols in films that are less likely to be noticed, and the way in which directors wish to convey meaning.