semiology and literary criticism

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FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE SEMIOLOGY and STRUCTURALISM By Müjgan Büyüktas

SEMIOLOGY : 

SEMIOLOGY The study of natural or human phenomena in terms of signs or signification. Semiology derives from the Swiss linguist Louis Ferdinand Saussure(1867-1914), who was the father of modern linguistics. Semiotics derives from American logician and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce(1839-1914). •Charles.S.Peirce(1839-1914) “Classification of Signs” "On a New List of Categories." “Semiosis” •Ferdinand de Saussure(1857-1913) “General Semiology” “Sign System”

SAUSSEREAN SEMIOLOGY : 

SAUSSEREAN SEMIOLOGY Language is the system of signs which express ideas, and is thus comparable to a system of writing, sign language, symbolic rites, politeness markers, military signals, and so forth. However, it can be said to be the most important of these A science that studies the life of signs within society is thus possible, and it would be regarded as part of sexual psychology, and therefore under general psychology. I shall call this semiology (from the Greek sêmeïon‘sign’). Semiology would indicate the elements which constitute signs, what laws/rules govern them. However, as this science is not yet in existence, no person can state what it would be, but it has the right to exist, a place decided in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws that will be discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will indicate a well-defined field within the thewide range of human phenomena. “Course in General Linguistics”

SAUSSURE’S SIGN DEFINITION : 

SAUSSURE’S SIGN DEFINITION

SAUSSURE’S SIGN DEFINITION : 

SAUSSURE’S SIGN DEFINITION “The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified” (Saussure) Signified and Signifier are both psychological (form rather than substance) Saussure´s model of the sign refers only to a concept and not to a thing

SAUSSURE’S SIGN DEFINITION : 

SAUSSURE’S SIGN DEFINITION Same signifier can stand for different signifieds depending on the context The link between signified and signifier is arbitrary (nothing ‘treeish’ about word ‘tree’) No specific signifier is ‘naturally’ more suited to a signified than another

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SIGNIFIER: 1. Word ‘tree’ 2. Picture of a tree 3. Pronunciation of ‘tree’ SIGNIFIED Concept of a tree

SAUSSEREAN SEMIOLOGY : 

SAUSSEREAN SEMIOLOGY Semiology: a part of the social psychology Linguistics is within semiology Semiology is a science of forms, not of substances; form is a structure Sign is a social institution A linguistic sign consist of signifier (image acoustique, sound-image) and signified (concept) Both are mental (sound-image is a psychological imprint of the sound); i.e. sign is a mentallistic entity No referential object Sign model: Bilateral (the two-sided)

1839-1914 : 

1839-1914 “Who is the most original and the most versatile intellect that the Americas have so far produced? The answer "Charles S. Peirce" is uncontested, because any second would be so far behind as not to be worth nominating. [He was] mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, metrologist, spectroscopist, engineer, inventor; psychologist, philologist, lexicographer, historian of science, mathematical economist, lifelong student of medicine; book reviewer, dramatist, actor, short story writer; phenomenologist, semiotician, logician, rhetorician and metaphysician”.     Max H. Fisch in Sebeok, The Play of Musement

PEIRCIAN SEMIOLOGY : 

PEIRCIAN SEMIOLOGY •A sign – something which stands to somebody for something else, in some respect or capacity Icon: A sign which means by virtue of resemblance to what it signifies. Signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified. Eg. Pictures, maps, diagrams. Index: A sign which points to something else by virtue of a casual relationship. Signifier is directly connected in some way (physically or causally) to the signified. Eg. Smoke – fire, Mark on a termometer- body temperature. Symbol: Signifier does not resemble the signified. It is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional. € - Euro, alphabeths.

SYMBOL (Both for Saussure and Peirce) : 

SYMBOL (Both for Saussure and Peirce) Symbols refer to objects by virtue of law, rule, custom, convention, tradition, culture, norm. No similarity or casual link is suggested between the word tree and the object it refers.

PEIRCE’S DEFINITION OF SIGN : 

PEIRCE’S DEFINITION OF SIGN 'A sign... [in the form of a representamen] is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.228). The interaction between the representamen, the object and the interpretant is referred to by Peirce as 'semiosis' (ibid., 5.484). Within Peirce's model of the sign, the traffic light sign for 'stop' would consist of: a red light facing traffic at an intersection (the representamen); vehicles halting (the object) and the idea that a red light indicates that vehicles must stop (the interpretant).

PEIRCEAN SEMIOTICS : 

PEIRCEAN SEMIOTICS

INTERPRETANT : 

INTERPRETANT The importance of the interpretant for Peirce is that signification is not a simple dyadic relationship between sign and object: a sign signifies only in being interpreted. This makes the interpretant central to the content of the sign, in that, the meaning of a sign is manifest in the interpretation that it generates in sign users.

PEIRCEAN SEMIOTICS : 

PEIRCEAN SEMIOTICS Representamen – form which the sign takes (not necessarily material) Object – to which the sign refers Interpretant – idea, interpretation in mind Every interpretant is itself a further sign of the signified object. Since interpretants are the interpreting thoughts we have of signifying relations, and these interpreting thoughts are themselves signs, it seems to be a straight-forward consequence that all thoughts are signs, or as Peirce calls them “thought-signs”.

Semiotics and Literary Criticism : 

Semiotics and Literary Criticism A consequence of Saussure's and Peirce’s theories on the arbitrariness of signs is that the world is the result of signification. Logically, therefore, it follows that the individual consciousness is also the result of signification. The language system into which we are born pre-dates us and is a system independent of us and, as we enter into language use, we enter into a system of differentiations over which we have no creative control, as well as into a repository of cultural meanings. Our social being is produced by our language

From Semiology to Structuralism : 

From Semiology to Structuralism The basic premise of structuralism is that societies and sociological or cultural practices can be analysed, along the lines of a language, as signifying systems. Thus we find structuralist methods applied not only in Sausssure's linguistics, but also in Barthes' broader cultural critique, the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan. In structuralism, the subject is decentred, in other words the central focus on the individual in much social analysis is replaced by focus on the structures, of which the individual is just another element.

From Semiology to Structuralism : 

Structuralism means analyzing the narrative material by examining the underlying invariant structure, which is based on the linguistic sign system of Ferdinand de Saussure. The structuralists claim that there must be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Hence, they say that everything that is written seems to be governed by specific rules, a "grammar of literature", that one learns in educational institutions. From Semiology to Structuralism

Structuralism : 

Structuralism For example, a literary critic applying a structuralist literary theory might say that the authors of West Side Story did not write anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love. A "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl“ "Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces" and conflict is resolved by their death.

Structuralism : 

Structuralism Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "novelty value of a literary text" can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed. One branch of literary structuralism, like Freudianism, Marxism, and transformational grammar, posits both a deep and a surface structure. In Freudianism and Marxism the deep structure is a story, in Freud's case the battle, ultimately, between the life and death instincts, and in Marx, the conflicts between classes that are rooted in the economic "base.“ Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that human behavior is determined by various structures (advertisements)

Semiology and Literary Criticism : 

Semiology and Literary Criticism Semiotics is important because it can help us not to take ‘reality’ for granted as something having a purely objective existence which is independent of human interpretation Information or meaning is NOT contained in the world We live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs Deconstructing and contesting the realities of signs can reveal whose realities are privileged and whose are supressed