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APPLIED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Popular Culture,
Media, and Everyday Life
Arthur Asa Berger

Applied Discourse Analysis
Arthur Asa Berger Applied Discourse Analysis

Popular Culture, Media, and Everyday Life
Arthur Asa Berger San Francisco State University San Francisco, California, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-47180-8 ISBN 978-3-319-47181-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47181-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956860
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic
adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names,
registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names
are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe
to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may
have been made.
Cover illustration: © Bitboxx.com
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered
company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: Li’l Abner and Critical Multimodal
Discourse Analysis 1
Part I Communication
2 Communication: What Objects Tell Us 13
3 Language: Speed Dating 21
4 Metaphor: Love Is a Game 29
5 Words: Freud on Dreams 35
6 Images: Advertising 41
7 Signs: Fashion 51
Part II Texts
8 Narratives: Fairy Tales 63
9 Texts: Hamlet 77v
vi CONTENTS
10 Myths: The Myth Model 91
11 Genres: Uses and Gratifications 99
12 Humor: Jokes 107
13 Intertextuality: Parody 119
Part III Concepts
14 Ritual: Smoking 127
15 Lifestyles: Grid-Group Theory 135
16 Sacred and the Profane: Department Stores
and Cathedrals 145
17 Ideology: The Prisoner 155
18 Culture: Identity 167
19 Nobrow Culture: The Maltese Falcon 179
References 187
Index 191
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Asa Berger is Professor Emeritus of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts at San Francisco State
University, where he taught from 1965 until 2003. He received BA in English and Philosophy at the University of
Massachusetts in 1954; MA in journalism at the University of Iowa (and studied at the Writers’ Workshop there) in
1956, and PhD in American studies at the University of Minnesota in 1965. He wrote his dissertation on the comic
strip Li’l Abner. During the academic year 1963–1964, he had a Fulbright scholarship to Italy and taught at the
University of Milan. He spent a year as visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1984 and taught a short course on advertising in 2002 as a
Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2012, he spent a month
lecturing in Argentina
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viii ABOUT THE AUTHOR
on semiotics and media criticism as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. In 2014, he spent a month as a Fulbright Senior
Specialist at Belarus State University lecturing on discourse analysis, media, and popular culture and three weeks in
Iran, where he lectured on media, communication, and related concerns. He is the author of more than 140 articles
and book reviews, and of more than seventy books on mass media, popular culture, humor, and everyday life.
Among his recent books are Media Analysis Techniques 5th edition; Seeing Is Believing: An Introduction to Visual
Communication, 4th edition; Understanding American Icons: An Introduction to Semiotics; The Art of Comedy
Writing; Messages: An Introduction to Communication and Media, Myth and Society. He has also written a number
of academic mysteries: The Hamlet Case, Postmortem for a Postmodernist, The Mass Comm Murders: Five Media
Theorists Self-Destruct, and Durkheim Is Dead: Sherlock Holmes Is Introduced to Social Theory. His books have
been translated into German, Swedish, Italian, Korean, Indonesian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, and Chinese.
He has lectured in more than a dozen countries in the course of his career. Berger is married, has two children and
four grandchildren, and lives in Mill Valley, California.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Li’l Abner and Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Abstract Intertextual nature of texts and applied discourse analysis are discussed. Distinctive aspects of this book
are found in its design. In each chapter, after discussing a concept from discourse theory, it applies that concept to a
text of some kind from popular culture, media, and everyday life. Ideas from prominent discourse theorists are dealt
with, different kinds of discourse analyses are explained, and they are differentiated from ethnomethodology.
Application The author’s dissertation on the American comic strip Li’l Abner is offered as an example of
multimodal critical discourse analysis.
Keywords Intertextuality 4 Ethnomethodology 4 Critical discourse analysis 4 Multimodal discourse analysis
PASSOVER SEDER
How is this book different from other books on discourse analysis? This may seem like an ordinary question, but the
material in italics happens to be adapted from a small book, the Passover Haggadah, used in all Seder dinners (the
term Seder means “order”) in which a wise son asks “Why
© The Author(s) 2016 A.A. Berger, Applied Discourse Analysis, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47181-5_1
1
2 APPLIED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Passover Haggadah
1 INTRODUCTION: LI’L ABNER AND CRITICAL MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ... 3
is this night different from all other nights?” This question which I asked in the first sentence of this book is an
example of what communication scholars call “intertextuality,” which means, roughly speaking, that all texts borrow
from other texts or are intertwined with one another. I will have a lot more to say about this topic later. It is very
important and plays a major role in the thinking of discourse analysts. According to the Russian scholar Mikhail
Bakhtin, whose thinking is behind intertextual theory, all texts borrow—in various ways—from other texts, whether
the borrowing is conscious or unconscious.
This book, then, like all books, if Bakhtin is correct, is full of borrowings—of quotations by discourse theorists and
others of interest and with material revised, updated, and transformed in various ways from my writ- ings over the
years. In all cases, when I borrow from others, I quote them and tell who wrote the passage, so there is a difference
between intertextuality and stealing someone else’s material, which we describe as plagiar- ism. I use quotations
because I think that what the people I’m quoting have to say is important and is expressed in a distinctive way.
Intertextuality suggests that we often imitate others by using their plots, themes or styles, or other things, and we are
generally not conscious that we are doing so.
I cover a wide variety of topics in this book. You will learn about discourse theory, language, metaphor, narratives,
culture, myths, rituals, genres, signs (and the science of semiotics), jokes, images, the psyche, Hamlet, fairy tales,
dreams, and love, among other things, and I have included a number of learning games that will help you learn how
to apply concepts and use them to make sense of the role discourse analysis plays in our lives, societies, and
cultures. So this book differs from other discourse analysis books in that it focuses upon a wider range of topics
relating to culture than you find in the typical discourse analysis book and applies concepts from discourse very
broadly—perhaps more broadly than traditional discourse analysts do.
In their book, Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of Social Construction, Nelson Phillips and Cynthia
Hardy write (2002:6):
Traditional qualitative approaches often assume a social world and then seek to understand the meaning of this world for
participants. Discourse analysis, on the other hand, tried to explore how the socially produced ideas and objects that populate the
world were created in the first place and how they are maintained and held in place over time. Whereas other
qualitative methodologies work to understand or interpret social reality as it exists, discourse analysis endeavors to uncover the
way in which it is produced. This is the most important contribution of discourse analysis: it examines how language constructs
phenomena, how it reflects and reveals it. In other words, discourse analysis views discourse as constitu- tive of the social
world—not a route to it—and assumes the world cannot be known separately from discourse.
Discourse analysis deals with our use of language and the way our language shapes our identities, our social
relationships, and our social and political world. Discourse analysis is mostly done by linguistics professors, who
used to be confined in their research to the sentence. When the linguists decided to move beyond the sentence to
conversations and then to literary texts of one kind or another, and then to mass-mediated texts, linguists identified
themselves as discourse analysts. When I searched “discourse analysis” on Google on August 8, 2015, I got
5,770,000 results. So there is a great deal of interest in the subject.
Teun A. van Dijk, a Dutch scholar who is one of the most prominent contemporary discourse analysts, writes in “The
Study of Discourse” in Discourse as Structure and Process (1997:1):
Teun A. van Dijk
What exactly is discourse, anyway?
It would be nice if we could squeeze all we know about discourse into a handy definition. Unfortunately, as is also the case for
related concepts as “language,” “communication,” “interaction,” “society” and “culture” the notion of discourse is essentially fuzzy.
As is so often the case for concepts that stand for complex phenomena, it is in fact the whole discipline, in this case the new
cross-discipline of discourse studies (also called “discourse analysis”) that provides the definition of such fundamental concepts.
So understanding what discourse analysis isn’t easy because it is a “fuzzy” concept.
If you look in dictionaries, you’ll see discourse described as a conversation or a treatise on some subject. Discourse
analysts are interested in how people use language and how this language shapes their relationships with others and
the institutions in their societies. Many academic disciplines are interested in language but not the same way that
discourse analysts are. Let me offer an example that will help you understand more about discourse analysis. In his
book Story and Discourse, Seymour Chatman, a professor of rhetoric at the University of California in Berkeley,
discusses narratives— texts that have a linear or time perspective to them. He writes (1978:19)
Each narrative has two parts: a story (histoire), the content or chain of events (actions, happenings), plus what might be called the
existents (characters, items of settings); and a discourse (discourse), that is the expression, the means by which the content is
communicated.
The story is the “what” and the discourse is the “how.” And it is the how that discourse analysis focuses attention on.
We can see these relationships in the chart that I have made based on Chatman’s ideas:
Story Discourse
Events Expression Content (what happens) Form (how story is told) Histoire Discourse
Chatman’s discussion helps us understand how discourse analysis differs from other approaches to communication.
The focus, in discourse analysis, is on style and on expression, not only content.
The quote by Phillips and Hardy in the epigraph suggests that discourse is basic to our social world. From the
moment we start to talk, when we are little children, discourse shapes our existence. At a very early age children
learn what words mean, and around the age of four can put words together in their own way, and make sentences
they’ve never heard before. As I show in this book, discourse deals not only with words but also in newer versions of
discourse analysis, with images. So this book will not only deal with theories and concepts related to discourse
analysis but also will show you discourse in action in the real world.
As I suggested earlier, discourse analysis represents an effort by linguists to move beyond the sentence, which is
where linguists traditionally have focused their attention. Discourse analysts worked on speech and conver-
sation—spoken discourse—before moving on to written discourse and then, in our brave new world of Internet, to
what they call multimodal discourse analysis. This kind of discourse analysis deals with images and videos—what is
found on Facebook, Pinterest and other social media sites. A number of discourse analysts write from what they call
a “critical” perspective, meaning an approach that deals with ideology and politics and is, generally speaking, critical
of the political arrangements found in bourgeois capitalist societies. Since these scholars are interested in what is
going on in contemporary societies they describe themselves as “Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysts.”
Van Dijk adds other insights into what discourse analysis is in a book he edited, Discourse as Structure and Process,
the first of two volumes of Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. In his chapter in this book titled
“The Study of Discourse” he describes what discourse analysis deals with and discusses the three main dimensions
of the field (1997:2):
(a) language use, (b) the communication of beliefs (cognition), and (c) interaction in social situations. Given these three
dimensions, it is not surprising to find that several disciplines are involved in the study of discourse such as linguistics (for the
specific study of language and language use), psychology (for the study of beliefs and how they are communicated), and the
social sciences (for the analysis of interactions in social situations).
It is typically the task of discourse studies to provide integrated descriptions of these three main dimensions of discourse: how
does language use influence beliefs and interaction, or vice versa, how do aspects of interactions influence how people speak, or
how do beliefs control language use and
interaction? Moreover, besides giving systematic descriptions, we may expect discourse studies to formulate theories that explain
such relationships between language use, beliefs and interaction.
He reminds us that while discourse analysis pays attention to talk and oral communication, it also studies written
language. And written texts. We can see that it is interested in all kinds of human communication, with a focus on
people’s language use and the interactions among people who are talking with one another or writing texts of one
kind or another. While scholars from many disciplines focus their attention on the content of discourse, discourse
analysis are more interested in the styles used, in the way language and images are used and the role language plays
in social interactions.
Discourse analysis is different from ethnomethodology, though both are interested in conversation. As Dirk vom
Lehn, the author of a book on the ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel, explains (in a personal communication,
2015):
Ethnomethodologists are ethnomethodologists. Discourse Analysis in my book is a collection of research methods. Some
discourse analysts use research methods, like conversation analysis, that have been derived from ethnomethodology. But often
they do not use these methods in the spirit of ethnomethodology. In particular they ignore Garfinkel and Harvey Sack’s argument
that people themselves in their conversations analyze the interaction as and when it happens. And it is this analysis that allows
them to participate in the interaction. Discourse analysts tend to stick to the scientists perspective and use conversation analytic
techniques to explore the organization of talk.
Van Dijk describes discourse analysis as a multi-disciplinary approach that encompasses semiotics, psychoanalytic
theory, sociological theory, literary theory, and many other disciplines. So it is a field in which different kinds of
scholars can work and do work, since language and communication are so central to many qualitative disciplines.
Although many people have never heard the term, it is very popular in academic circles. One publisher, Routledge,
has more than forty books on the subject and there are hundreds of books on discourse analysis at Amazon.com. So
the question naturally arises—why another book on the subject?
My answer is that this book is different from other books on discourse analysis in that it focuses upon applying
discourse analysis to popular culture, media, and everyday life. You will be able to see how the dominant concepts,
theories, and topics discussed by discourse theorists function in the real world and this will help you better
understand the role that discourse plays in your life and the lives of your friends, families, and loved ones.
LI’L ABNER AND CRITICAL MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
In 1964, I was a graduate student in the American Studies program at the University of Minnesota. I wrote my Ph.D.
dissertation on Al Capp’s comic strip Li’l Abner. It was very popular and read by around 200 million people every
day, but some members of the committee (from the English department and the humanities department) that ruled on
topics for dissertations were not pleased with my choice of subject. My dissertation advisor, a political theorist
named Mulford Q. Sibley had suggested I write on the topic and the scholars from the social sciences in the
American Studies program went along with Sibley’s suggestion. What I did was write about Capp’s use of language
in the strip, his graphic style, the nature of his narrative style, and his satire of American culture. All of these topics
are
Shmoo drawing by AAB
of interest to the newest development in discourse analysis, what is called “Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis.”
We read, a book by two English scholars, David Machin and Andrea Mayr’s How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis
(2012:1):
While visual analysis has more traditionally been the domain of Media and Cultural Studies, linguists....have begun to develop
some of their own models for analysis that draw on the same kinds of precision and more systematic kinds of description that
characterized the approach to language in CDA. These authors began to look at how language, image and other modes of
communication such as toys, monuments, films, sounds, etc. combine to make meaning. This has broadly been referred to as
“multimodal” analysis. Not all of this work has adopted the kind of critical approach used in CDA, where the aim is to reveal
buried ideology.
What this passage suggests to me is that in 1964, when I wrote my dissertation on Li’l Abner, I was functioning as a
multimodal critical discourse analyst, though I’d never heard of the term “discourse analysis” because I was not
trained in linguistics and linguists were not yet at the multimodal stage of development for discourse analysis. The
concept of multimodal critical discourse analysis had not yet been invented.
As an example of Capp’s remarkable use of language, let me quote a passage from the strip—which was about a
zany collection of country bumpkins and other types living in a mythical “Dogpatch” in the United States. Here is
“Marryin’ Sam’s” description of what he does for an eight-dollar wedding, from my Li’l Abner: A Study in American
Satire (1994:58)
Fust—Ah strips t’ th’ waist an’ rassles th’ four biggest guests!! Next—a fast demon-stray-shun o’ how t’ cheat your friends at
cards!!—followed by four snappy jokes—guaranteed t’ embarrass man or beast—an’ then after ah dances a jig wif a pag, Ah
yanks out tow o’ mah teeth and presents ‘em t’ th’ bride an’ groom—as mementos o’ th’ occasion!!—then—Ah really gits
goin!!—Ah offers t’ remove any weddin’ guest’s appendix, with mah bare hands—free!! Then yo spread-eagles me, fastens mah
arem an’ laigs t’ four wild jackasses—an’—bam!! yo’ fires a gun!!—While they tears me t’ pieces— Ah puffawms th’ wedding
cermony.
My book has chapters on Li’l Abner’s place in American Satire, on Capp’s narrative technique, on Capp’s use of
dialogue, and on social criticism and the pictorial image. It would take fifty years for me to discover that in 1964 I
was what we now call a critical multimodal discourse analyst.
PART I
Communication
CHAPTER 2
Communication: What Objects Tell Us

Abstract Different definitions of the term are offered from communication theorists. Roman Jakobson’s model of
communication process is described. Importance of nonverbal communication is mentioned along with the way
messages are transmitted through language or other methods. Umberto Eco’s definition of a sign is mentioned along
with his caution that signs can be used to lie.
Application Objects are shown to transmit messages about owners and the ways in which they are used. Work of
motivation researcher Ernest Dichter is discussed. Learning games in which students analyze messages they find in
an object and what the owner of objects thinks the object means is described.
Keywords Objects 4 Material culture 4 Nonverbal communication 4 Signs
Though communication is certainly a tool for conducting the everyday business of our lives, it is also at the core of who we are,
what we think, and what we do. The debate over whether communication reflects or creates the reality we call our lives
oversimplifies the relationship between communication and the things about which we communicate....Our communication
reflects the world within and around us, and simultaneously creates it. For now, “symbols shape meaning” is a phrase that best
captures the idea that communication gives meaning to reality, whether reality is an object in the physical world or an idea in our
minds. Imagining the meaning of any pre-existing thing or thought in this world,
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untouched by communication, is difficult.... In short, communication plays a significant role in who we are, what we know, and
what we do.
Jodi R. Cohen, Communication Criticism: Developing Your
Critical Powers
Whether we are considering ordinary conversation, a public speech, a letter, or a poem, we always find a message which proceeds
from a sender to a receiver. These are the most obvious aspects of communication. But a successful communication depends on
three other aspects of the event as well: the message must be delivered through a contact, physical and/or psychological; it must
be framed in a code, and it must refer to a context. In the area of context, we find what a message is about. But to get there we
must understand the code in which the message is framed—as in the present case, my messages reach you through the medium of
an academic/literary subcode of the English language. And even if we have the code, we understand nothing until we make
contact with the utterance; in the present case, until you see the printed words on this page (or hear them read aloud) they do not
exist as a message for you.
Robert Scholes, Structuralism: An Introduction. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. 1974.
Communication, as linguists such as Roman Jakobson have suggested, involves sending messages and interpreting
how these messages “work.” In Denis McQuail and Sven Windahl’s we find a number of definitions of the term
“communication” by scholars (1993:4):
The transmission of information, ideas, attitudes, or emotion from one person or group to another (or others) primarily through
symbols. (Theodorson and Theodorson, 1969) In the most general sense, we have communication wherever one system, a source,
influences another, the destination, by manipulation of alternative symbols, which can be transmitted over the channel connecting
them. (Osgood et al. 1957) Communication may be defined as ‘social interaction through messages.’ (Gerbner 1967).
Another definition of communication is offered by semiotician Marcel Danesi (2002:220):
Social interaction through messages; the production and exchange of messages and meanings; the use of specific modes and
media to transmit messages.
McQuail and Windahl offer their own definition of communication (1993:5):
Thus, in the most general terms, communication involves a sender, a channel, a message, a receiver, a relationship between
sender and receiver, an effect, a context in which communication occurs and a range of things to which “messages”
refer...Communication can be any or all of the following: an action on others; an interaction with others and a reaction to others.
There is a common theme to these definitions: central to the communication process are the messages that people
send back and forth to one another, and it is discourse analysis, which deals with how we find meaning in messages
sent by others and affected by these messages, that informs this book.
The McQuail and Windahl definition of communication is similar to one of the most important and widely discussed
models of communication, which comes from Roman Jakobson, a Russian linguist who lived from 1896 to 1982.
He taught at institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his ideas
were very influential. In his model, someone, a sender, sends a message (with some kind of information) to a
receiver. The message is transmitted by a code (such as the English language) using a contact (or medium, such as
speech). The context in which a message is sent also plays an important role in helping the receiver make sense of
the message.
Roman Jakobson
2 COMMUNICATION: WHAT OBJECTS TELL US 15
There are six elements in Jakobson’s model which is shown below (found in Berger 2016:92):Context Message
Sender ————————————— Receiver Contact (Medium) Code
The message is affected by the context in which it is sent (we speak differently in bars and university seminars), the
medium used (such as speech) and the code (such as the French or English language).
We also recognize that speech—that is words—is not the only way of sending messages. A considerable percentage
of the information in the messages we send and receive come from nonverbal communication. I am talking about
things like gestures, facial expression and body language when we are speaking and semiotic signs we send by
things such as our hair style, hair colors, style of clothing, objects we carry (I call them props) and that kind of thing.
As David Matsumoto, Mark G. Frame, Hi Sung Hwang (eds.) explain, in their book Nonverbal Communication:
Science and Applications (2013:4):
Although “language” often comes to mind when considering communication, no discussion of communication is complete
without the inclusion of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication has been referred to as “body language” in popular
culture since the publication of Julius Fast’s book of the same name in 1970. Researchers, however, have defined nonverbal
communication as encompassing almost all of human communication except the spoken and written word. (Knapp 1972). We
also define nonverbal communication as the transfer and exchange of messages in any and all modalities that do not include
words. As we discuss shortly, one of the major ways by which nonverbal communication occurs is through nonverbal beha-
viors, which are behaviors that occur during communication that do not include verbal language. But our definition of nonverbal
communication implies that it is more than body language. It can be the distance people stand when they converse. It can be the
sweat stains in their armpits. It can be the design of the room. Nonverbal communication is a broader category than nonverbal
behavior, encompassing the way you dress, the place of your office within a larger building, the use of time, the bumper stickers
you place on your car, or the arrangement, lighting, or color of your room.
Their point is that nonverbal communication involves the exchange of messages not involving words but involving
what semioticians would describe as signs, which, as Umberto Eco reminds us, are anything that can be used to
stand for something else and to lie. Communication is a complicated process and in something that might seem to be
simple, our conversations, we find that our words, our facial expressions, our body language, our gestures, and
where the conversation is taking place, play an important role in shaping the way the messages we send are received
by others and the messages others send are received by us.
APPLICATIONS: OBJECTS AS MESSAGES
When I taught a seminar in semiotics many years ago at San Francisco State University, I devised a little exercise
that turned out to be extremely interesting. One week I asked students to get an unmarked brown paper bag
(typically used for sandwiches) and put some common object that reflected something about them in it, along with
a piece of paper listing what they believed the object reflected about them. What this exercise involved, among other
things, was using
Shell Photo by author (Photograph by Arthur Asa Berger)
material culture to reflect the owner’s personality and taste. As Ernest Dichter explained in his book The Strategy of
Desire (1960/2002:91):
The objects which surround us do not simply have utilitarian aspects; rather, they serve as a kind of mirror which reflects our own
image. Objects which surround us permit us to discover more and more aspects of ourselves. Owning a boat, for example, for a
person who did not own a boat before, produces new understandings of aspects of his own personality; and also a new bond of
communication is established with all boat owners. At the same time some of the power strivings of the individual come out more
clearly into the open, in the speed attained, the ability to manipulate the boat; and the conquest of a new medium, water, in the
form of lakes and rivers and the ocean, becomes a new discovery.
In a sense, therefore, the knowledge of the soul of things is possibly a very direct and new and revolutionary way of discovering
the soul of man. The power of various types of objects to bring out into the open new aspects of the personality of modern man is
great. The more intimate knowledge of as many different types of products a man has, the richer his life will be.... The things
which surround us motivate us to a very large extent in our everyday behavior. They also motivate us as the goals of our life—the
Cadillac that we are dreaming about, the swimming pool that we are working for, the kind of clothes, the kind of trips, and even
the kind of people we want to meet from a social-status viewpoint are influencing factors. In the final analysis objects motivate
our life probably at least as much as the Oedipus complex or childhood experiences do.
Dichter, one of the founding fathers of motivation research, argues that the things we own are much more
meaningful than we might imagine. With this insight from Dichter in mind, let us return to the brown bags I asked
my students to bring to class.
The next week the students all brought in brown bags into which they had placed objects that reflected their
personalities, taste and so on. The bags all looked the same so we had no way of knowing who put what into a bag. I
opened one bag and pulled out a seashell of about six inches. I held it up and asked the students to tell me what they
got from the sea shell. The answers from my class were terms like “empty,” “sterile,” “dead.” Then I took the slip of
paper on which the person who put the shell into the bag wrote what the shell signified and the terms were “natural,”
“beautiful,” and “refined.” For discourse analysts, the terms used by the students about the shell and the terms used
by the student
who brought the shell tell us a great deal. The woman who brought the shell thought of it in aesthetic terms while the
students in the class thought about it in functional terms. What this shows is that people can differ greatly in the way
they interpret objects, and by implication, all forms of communication—both verbal and nonverbal.
What did the students learn from this exercise? The most important thing they learned is that people don’t always
interpret the messages we send the way we think they will. You think that you are sending “beautiful” and “natural”to
others and they are interpreting your messages as “empty” and “sterile.” We must always assume, then, that our
messages may be interpreted the wrong way. We can attempt to deal with this by sending other messages to help
clarify our original message and by being redundant so the receivers of our messages have a better chance of
interpreting them correctly or remembering them. You will find a certain amount of redun- dancy in this book. It
represents my attempt to make sure my messages are interpreted correctly and, I hope, that you remember the
messages.
CHAPTER 3
Language: Speed Dating

Abstract Work of Saussure on semiotics is discussed, with a focus on signs and on differential nature of concepts.
Peter Farb’s work on language is explained, and rules behind language use are mentioned. Ideas by linguist
Francisco Yus about gaps in conversations are offered.
Application Work by James Pennebaker on speed dating is considered and the way in which language use can
predict which players will date after speed-dating sessions. Language use is shown to be a reflection of people’s
identities.
Keywords Semiotics 4 Signs 4 Concepts 4 Speed dating 4 Language
For human beings, society is a primary reality, not just the sum of individual activities... and if one wishes to study human
behavior, one must grant that there is a social reality ...Since meanings are a social product, explanation must be carried out in
social terms... Individual actions and symptoms can be interpreted psychoanalytically because they are the result of common
psychic processes, unconscious defenses occasioned by social taboos and leading to particular types of repression and
displacement. Linguistic communication is possible because we have assimilated a system of collective norms that organize the
world and give meaning to verbal acts. Or again, as Durkheim argued, the reality crucial to the individual is not the physical
21
environment but the social milieu, a system of rules and norms, of collective representations, which makes possible social
behavior.
Jonathan Culler, Ferdinand de Saussure (1986:86:87)
Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes,
symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems.
A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of
general psychology; I shall call it semiology (from Greek sēmeȋon “sign”). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what
laws govern them. Since the science does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place
staked out in advance.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose book, Course in General Linguistics (first published in French in
1915 comprised of notes on his lectures by two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye), is considered
to be one of the most influential books published in the nineteenth century. It is one of the foundational texts of
semiotics, the science of signs. Saussure used the term semiology—literally “words about
Saussure drawing
3 LANGUAGE: SPEED DATING 23
signs”—but it has been supplanted by the term semiotics, which was used by the other founding father of semiotics,
Charles S. Peirce. Saussure makes a number of important points, in the third chapter of the book, “The Object of
Linguistics.” He explains that (1966:9) “language [langue] is not to be confused with human speech [langage] of
which it is only a definite part, though certainly an essential one.” Later he adds (1966:13) “Execution is always
individual, and the individual is always its master. I shall call the executive side speaking [parole]. It is the speaking
and writing done by individuals that is most interest to discourse analysts.”
We then have three insights from Saussure relating to language:
Langue Langage Parole
Language Human Speech Speaking Social institution Vocabulary Individual act
We can say that language is a social institution and involves, for people who speak English, the approximately two
hundred thousand words in the English language. Speech refers to the vocabulary of an individual and speaking
refers to the words used by an individual when speaking to someone or to some group of people. We can also think
of speaking as involving “writing” by individuals and other forms of communication, such as gestures and body
language.
Saussure made another important point relative to language. He writes (1966:117):
Concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of
the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not.
Later he adds (1966:120, 21) “In language there are only differences... The entire mechanism of language, with
which we shall be concerned later, is based on oppositions.”
These two statements are of great importance. Concepts, we learn, have no meaning in themselves but take their
meaning from the system (the collections of words, we may say) in which they are embedded, and the most
important “difference” in language is the polar opposition. “Happy”
and “sad” are oppositions; “happy” and “unhappy” is a negation, not an opposition. If Saussure is correct, we make
sense of the world by interpreting concepts in terms of their oppositions, and that is built into the nature of language.
Boy talking
Discourse analysis grew out of linguistics and is primarily interested in language and the role it plays in our
lives—though in recent years, as I’ve explained earlier, multimodal discourse analysts have turned their attention to
images, videos, and related matters. Although we may not understand how language “works,” language is based on
rules we learn as we grow up. As Peter Farb, a linguist, explains in Word Play: What Happens When People Talk
(1974:6, 9, 10, 294):
The language game is similar to other games in that it is structured by rules, which speakers unconsciously learn simply by
belonging to a particular speech community ...By the age of four or so they have mastered most of the exceedingly complex and
abstract structures of their native tongues. In only a few more years children possess the entire linguistic system that allows them
to utter and to understand sentences they have not previously heard. Language is both a system of grammar and a human
behavior which can be analyzed according to theories of interaction, play, and games. It can also be viewed as a shared system of
rules and conventions, mutually intelligible to all members of a particular community, yet a system which nevertheless offers
freedom and creativity in its use....A language is like a game played with a fixed number of pieces—phonemes—each one easily
recognized by native speakers. This is true of every language, except that the pieces change from one language game to another.
Linguists... generally agree that the language game is played with the following 45 phoneme “pieces”:
21 consonants 9 vowels 4 semivowels (y, w, r) 4 stresses 4 pitches 1 juncture (pause between words) 3 terminal contours (to end
sentences)
These 45 phonemes used in English today represent the total sound resources by which speakers can create an infinity of
utterances.... For the rest of his life the child will speak sentences he has never before heard, and when he thinks or reads, he will
still literally talk to himself. He can never escape from speech. And from speech flow all the other hallmarks of our humanity:
those arts, sciences, laws, morals, customs, political and economic systems, and religious faiths that collectively are known as
“culture.”
We may not be aware of it, but when we speak, we always are following a number of complicated rules that we
unconsciously acquire and interna- lize. That’s what learning a language involves.
According to Farb, by around one year of age children generally can speak recognizable words and by four we can
speak sentences. While the English language has several hundred thousand words, they are all created, Farb says,
out of just three dozen sounds—which are selected from the many different sounds of which the human voice is
capable.
Our languages enable us to speak to one another—using words—to convey information, feelings, and all kinds of
other things. What discourse analysts suggest is that language is the cornerstone of culture and it is our words that
shape, in varying degrees, our sense of ourselves, our societies, and of our place in the universe.
As Francisco Yus, a Spanish linguistics professor, reminds us (personal communication), our conversations are full
of gaps that are filled in by those with whom we are speaking: He writes, “ When people talk to each other, what
people literally code (i.e. “say”) on most occasions undeter- mine (that is, is less informative) the thoughts that the
speaker really intends to communicate with these words. Normally, hearers are constantly fixing the real meaning
of utterances from the ‘skeleton,’ as it were, of the words encoded.” Yus suggests that when we converse we
generally don’t transmit as much information as we think we’re doing but since we’re also geared toward making
sense of whatever is transmitted due to our natural disposition to make what we hear relevant. This is based on our
general background of knowledge and, in conversations, what was said earlier in the conversation and our notions
about what might be said in the future. We will learn more about this when I discuss the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, an
influential Russian communications theorist.
APPLICATION: LANGUAGE AND SPEED DATING
A psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, James Pennebaker, has found that the language people use
during speed-dating sessions can be used to predict who will go out on a date with whom. Pennebaker makes a
distinction between what he calls “function words” and “content” words. As he explains in an interview with
Katherine Streeter on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, September 1, 2014, “function words” such as the,
this, though, I, and, am are filler words that we use between “content words” such as “school,” “family,” and “live,”
which are related to the substance of what we are talking about and conjure, in our minds, specific images. Someone
who works at a bank uses different “content” words when talking about his or her work than someone who is a taxi
driver, but they use similar “function” words.
What Pennebaker did was record and transcribe conversations between people who were participating in
speed-dating meetings. He also obtained information about the way people involved in speed dating “perceived” how
they were progressing. After analyzing his
data he discovered “We can predict by analyzing their language who will go on a date—who will match—at rates
better than the people themselves.” The key to his research was the way the two people involved in speed dating
used “function” words, such as prepositions, pronouns, and articles. If they did so in a similar way, they were more
likely to go on a date.
This is because, he suggests, when two people are interested in one another, the way they use language shifts in
subtle ways. When they find themselves paying close attention to one another, without being aware of what they are
doing, they tend to use language the same way. He concludes that changing your language doesn’t change who you
are, but changing who you are changes the way you use language. Our language, then, is a reflection of our
identities. Language plays a much more important role in our lives—including our love lives, than we might
imagine. As Pennebaker points out, our language use reflects our character and personality.
CHAPTER 4
Metaphor: Love Is a Game

Abstract Metaphor is shown to be fundamental to our thinking. Metaphor and metonymy are defined, and
subcategories of metaphor and metonymy, simile and synecdoche are discussed. Work of George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson on the important role metaphor and metonymy play in everyday life is considered.
Application Analysis of notion that love is a game, taken from popular ballad from many years ago, is dealt with
and implications of the metaphor upon our lives and thinking is explained. Example of implications of love seen as a
game and possible impact on relationships is considered.
Keywords Metaphor 4 Metonymy 4 Simile 4 Synecdoche 4 Love 4 Games
We all naturally find it agreeable to get hold of new ideas easily: words express ideas, and therefore those words are the most
agreeable that enable that enable us to get hold of new ideas. Now strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey only
what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, III, 1410b
Aristotle—the one who coined the term metaphor—itself a metaphor (meta “beyond” + pherein “to carry”)—saw the power of
figurative reasoning in its ability to shed light on abstract concepts. However, he affirmed that, as
29
conceptually powerful as it was, its primary function was stylistic, a device for sprucing up more prosaic and literal ways of
communication. Remarkably, this latter position became the rule by which figurative language came to be judged in Western
philosophy ever since. But as a seminal study by Pollio, Barlow, Fine and Pollio (1977) showed, Aristotle’s original view was in
effect the correct one. Those researchers found that speakers of English uttered, on average, 3,000 novel verbal metaphors and
7,000 idioms per week. Shortly thereafter, it became clear to language scientists that metaphor was hardly an optional flourish
on literal language. On the contrary, they started discovering that it dominated everyday communication and was the source of
many symbolic practices.
Marcel Danesi, Why It Sells. 2008. (60–61)
As Marcel Danesi, a Canadian media scholar, points out in the epigraph above, metaphor and metonymy are not just
figures of speech used in poetry but are fundamental to our thinking in everyday life. Metaphor is based on analogy
and metonymy on association. There are weaker forms of each. Simile is based on analogy but uses “like” or “as” in
comparison to metaphor which uses “is.” Thus, “my love is a red rose” is a metaphor and “my love is like a red rose”
is a simile. Metaphor and metonymy have a basic role: transmitting meaning. For example, we are using a simile
when we say “He’s as sharp as a razor” or “She’s as good as an angel.” We often use similes in our everyday speech
to convey certain ideas. For example:
The ship danced through the waves. (The ship is like a dancer.) The ship snaked through the waves. (The ship is like a snake.)
The ship raced through the waves. (The ship is like a race car.) The ship pranced through the waves. (The ship is like a horse.)
The ship plowed through the waves. (The ship is like a plow.)
The ship takes on different identities in these examples). These verbs convey information that is different from that
in the statement “The ship sailed through the waves.”
In metonymy, we have to know certain things in order for the association to make sense. If you don’t know that
Rolls Royce automobiles are expensive, using them to suggest “high class” or “sophistication” doesn’t make any
sense. As James Monaco (1977:135) has noted:
A metonymy is a figure of speech in which an associated detail or notion is used to invoke an idea or represent an object.
Etymologically, the word
4 METAPHOR: LOVE IS A GAME 31
means “substitute naming” (from the Greek meta, involving transfer, and onoma, name). Thus in literature we can speak of the
king (and the idea of kingship) as “the crown.”
A commonly used form of metonymy is a synecdoche, in which a part is used to stand for the whole or the whole is
used to stand for a part. Thus, the “White House” stands for the American presidency and the “Pentagon” stands for
the American military.
It is often the case that metaphor and metonymy are mixed together, and sometimes a given object might have both
metaphoric and metonymic significance. For example, snakes, in psychoanalytic theory, are phallic symbols (they
are like penises in that they are long and thin) and snakes also are metonymically associated with Adam and Eve in
the Garden of Eden.
Recognizing the relationship between metaphor and metonymy is important, because it enables us to see more
clearly how objects and images (as well as language) generate meaning. And, in the case of metonymy, it becomes
obvious that people carry around in their heads highly complex patterns of associations that enable them to interpret
metonymic communication correctly.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain the role that metaphor plays in our everyday lives. They write in
Metaphors We Live By (1980:3):
Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—a matter of extraordinary rather than
ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as a characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than
thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the
contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual
system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphoric in nature. The concepts that govern our thought are
not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts
structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays
a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical,
what we experience and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.... The concepts that govern our thoughts are
not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts
structure what
we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role
in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way
we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.
So metaphor and its allied concept, metonymy, help shape the way we think about things because our conceptual
system is basically metaphoric and metonymic. And as Danesi points out, the way we talk about things, since we use
something like 3,000 novel verbal metaphors a week in our conversations.
To show the power of metaphor, in the application section I will discuss a song, based on metaphor, and suggest that
metaphors also have logical implications that we seldom notice or think about, but which play an important role in
our lives.
Game of Love Drawing
4 METAPHOR: LOVE IS A GAME 33
APPLICATION: LOVE IS A G AME

There was a syrupy ballad that was popular many years ago—in the fifties or sixties—called “It’s All in the Game”
which made the argument that love is a game. One of the lines in the song is about “the wonderful game called love.”
If we say “Love is a game,” that is a metaphor; if we say “love is like a game,” that is a simile. There are endless
metonymic associations that go in our minds when we hear the word “love,” such as romance, weddings, families,
and so on. Love is one of the most important words in the English language and calls to mind endless images, in our
minds, about romantic love.
If love is a game or even like a game, it is worth thinking about the nature of games. I used to play a learning game
when I taught in which I asked students to think about the characteristics of games and then think about whether
they apply to love. Here are some of the aspects of games that my students came up with.
Games are not serious. They are relatively trivial and we stop playing them when we are bored.
Games have winners and losers. What, we may ask, does it mean to “lose” in the game of love? And what does it
mean to “win.” If one person wins in a love relationship does it mean the other person loses?
Games have rules that players must follow. If you don’t have rules, you don’t have a game. What are the “rules” of
love? Is one rule “I don’t...on a first date?”
Games are marred by people cheating. If love is a game and people “cheat” in the game, does that excuse the
cheating? Is the cheating not important? We might also ask, “how do people cheat in the game of love?”
Games end. When people get bored playing a game, the stop playing it. Does this apply to love? And what does it
mean to be “bored” in the game of love?
Games often involve trickery, pretense, and deceit. Think, for example of the game of poker, in which players
avoid giving information to others about their hands (what are called “tells”) and often bluff. What role should
trickery, pretense, and deceit play in the game of love? What role do they play in some love relationships?
Games are sometimes played for a stake. What does one bet in the game of love? What does the winner win and
the loser lose in the game of love?
Games are often played more than once. You lose one game and win the next. Does the fact that we often play
games more than once suggest
that love is a game that we should play more than once? Is love something that can be played many times and can it
played just as well, or even better, with other players?
We can see that thinking about love as a game poses many problems for lovers and is most unsatisfactory. And yet,
to the extent that we think metaphorically, the notion that love is a game and many other notions about the nature of
love, are the subject of countless songs and may have an impact upon impressionable young people—and older
ones, as well. And that is because metaphors have logical implications that often shape our thinking and behavior.
There are many metaphors about love. One that is interesting to consider, and an activity for students to think about
is “love is a fever.” This is adapted from a line in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. If you form your class into small
groups of three students and ask one to be a scribe (to write down the conclusions of the group but also to participate
in analyzing the phrase) it is remarkable what you may discover.
Love is a Fever
1.2.3.4.5.
CHAPTER 5
Words: Freud on Dreams

Abstract Ideas of James Paul Gee on how we use words and their situated meanings are dealt with. Oppositional
nature of concepts is explained. Words are shown to be reflections of unconsciously held cultural models in the way
people speak.
Application Work of Sigmund Freud on antithetical terms in dreams is considered, and his notion that in dreams we
represent ideas by their opposites. Connection between this notion and the defense mechanism of reaction formation
is dealt with.
Keywords Words 4 Situated meanings 4 Oppositions 4 Dreams 4 Reaction formation
The study of language is all too often restricted to matters of pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and sentence
structure. The methods by which composition and oratory are taught in old-fashioned school systems seem to be largely
responsible for this widespread notion that the way to study words is to concentrate exclusively on words.
But as we know from everyday experience, learning language is not simply a matter of learning words; it is a matter of correctly
relating our words to the things and happenings for which they stand. We learn the language of baseball by playing or watching
the game and studying what goes on. It is not enough for a child to learn to say “cookie” or “dog”; he must be able to use these
words in their proper relationship to nonverbal cookies and
35
nonverbal dogs before we can grant that he is learning the language. As Wendell Johnson has said, “The study of language begins
properly with a study of what language is about.”
S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action. 4th edition (1978:156)
[Upon Prince Hal telling Falstaff he owes God a death]
Tis not due yet: I would loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, “tis not
matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor pricks me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set a leg? No. Or an
arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill at surgery then? No. What is honor? A word. What is that
word honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that dies a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Does he hear it? No.” Tis
insensible then. Yea, to the dead. But will [it] not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll have
none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon—and so ends my catechism.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1. Act V, scene 2.
Falstaff asks “what’s a word?” and concludes it is just a puff of “air.” Hayakawa points out that language plays an
important role in our everyday lives. He is interested in language both “in thought and in action.” Earlier, we saw
how the language we use can be analyzed to determine—if we look at the language we use—whether we will be
successful in arranging to go out on a date with someone we met while speed dating. From Saussure we learned that
the meaning of concepts is relational—and I repeat this because
Shakespeare drawing
5 WORDS: FREUD ON DREAMS 37
it is so important (1966117) that concepts are defined “not by their positive content but negatively with their relations
with the other terms of the system.” We can see that a word like “rich” only has meaning because of its opposite
“poor,” but what of a word like hat? The answer is that hat is an object not a concept.
James Paul Gee, a well-known discourse analyst and the author of a number of books on the subject, discusses how
we use words in his book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. He writes about “situated
meanings” (1999:42):
So one important aspect of word meaning is this: we humans recognize certain patterns in our experience of the world. These
patterns (such as “soft,” “thick laces,” “perhaps with colored trim,” “flexible soles,” “made of certain sorts of characteristic
materials,” “having certain sorts of characteristic looks/designs”, etc. = athletic shoes) constitute one of the many situated
meaningsof a word like “shoe.”...There is more to meaning than patterns, children learning the meaning of words cannot stop
there. For adults, words involve, in addition to patterns, a sometimes “rough and ready” explanation of these patterns... Why do
these things hang together the way they do (at least for people in our social group)?
Gee then explains that because his theories are based on the practices of socioculturally defined collections of
people, he will use the term cultural models—which he later casts off in favor of the term “discourse model,”
because the word “culture” is so complicated and calls to mind so many different things and has so many different
meanings.
He concludes this section of the book as follows (1999:44):
So, in addition to situated meanings, each word is associated with a cultural model. A cultural model is usually a totally or
partially unconscious expla- natory theory or “storyline” connected to a word—bits and pieces of which are distributed across
different people in a social group—that helps to explain why the word has the different situated meanings and possibilities for the
specific social and cultural groups of people that is has.
Words, then, have complicated lives, being based upon situated meanings and unconsciously held cultural models by
certain social groups that determine the way we think about words and the way we use them. To a considerable
degree, then, the words we use (that is, our discourse) are connected to the social groups and subcultures to which
we belong.
APPLICATIONS: FREUD ON ANTITHETICAL TERMS IN DREAMS
Sigmund Freud discusses words (and the work of Karl Abel) in his essay “The Antithetical Sense of Primal Words.”
[A Review of a Pamphlet by Karl Abel. Uber den Gegensinn der Urworte, 1884. In S. Freud, Character and
Culture. Philip Rieff, ed. Collier Books, New York: 1963a.] He writes:
In my Traumdeutung I made a statement concerning one of the findings of my analytic work which I did not then understand. I
will repeat it at the beginning of this review:
“The attitude of dreams towards the category of antithesis and contra- diction is most striking. This category is simply ignored;
the work ‘No’ does not seem to exist for a dream. Dreams show a special tendency to reduce two opposites to a unity or to
represent them as one thing. Dreams even take the liberty, moreover, of representing any one element whatever
Dream of Love drawing
5 WORDS: FREUD ON DREAMS 39
by the opposite wish, so that it is at first impossible to ascertain, in regard to any element capable of an opposite, whether it is to
be taken negatively or positively in the dream-thoughts.”
To the chance reading of a work by the philologist K. Abel I owe my first understanding of the strange tendency of the
dream-work to disregard negation and to express contraries by identical means of representation...Abel continues: “Now in the
Egyptian language, this unique relic of a primitive world, we find a fair number of words with two meanings, one of which says
the exact opposite of the other.”
The riddle is more easily solved than appears. Our conceptions always arise through comparison. “Were it always light we should
not distinguish between light and dark, and accordingly could not have either the concep- tion of, nor the world for, light....” “It is
clear that everything on this planet is relative and has independent existence only in so far as it is distinguished in its relations to
and from other things.”
Freud explains that in dreams we represent ideas by their opposites, which calls to mind his theory about a defense
mechanism he called “reaction formation.” This theory states that we often express one feeling, such as hate, by
adopting its opposite feeling, love. This happens, generally when we have ambivalent attitudes toward someone; we
sup- press one side of our feelings and express the opposite one. It is possible, then, to act loving toward someone
we hate and hateful toward someone we love.
Freud is fascinated by the role that language plays in our thinking and our dreaming, and the role that comparisons
play in the way we make sense of the world. Abel’s statement, “Our conceptions always arise through comparisons,”
a statement very similar, in nature, to Saussure’s idea that “in language there are only differences” (1966:120,
originally published in 1815). It is remarkable that both Freud and Saussure, writing about the same time, have the
same notion of the importance of language and of comparisons and differences within language. When Freud writes
that “everything on this planet is relative and has independent existence only in so far as it is distinguished in its
relations to and from other things,” he is restating, in his own words, one of the basic notions of semiotics, as
explained by Saussure and of discourse analysis. Van Dijk argues that semiotics is a part of discourse analysis and
we must remember that Saussure was a professor of linguistics. As Saussure reminds us, “Signs function, then, not
through their intrinsic value but through their relative position” (1966:118).
The reason we see things in terms of their opposites, then, is built into the nature of language. And when we watch
dramatic television shows and movies, we automatically see characters in terms of whether they are heroes or
villains, sympathetic or hateful, and so on. How we interpret texts is a matter I will have more to say on in this book.
CHAPTER 6
Images: Advertising
Abstract Amount of time adults in America spend watching media on screens is considered. Definitions of image
are offered and role of images in visual culture of modern life is explained. Amount of information received from
eyes and amount of energy devoted to processing visual information is described. Work of Robert E. Orenstein is
analyzed. New developments in discourse analysis are explained.
Application Amount of advertising to which Americans and others are exposed to is shown. List of topics to
consider in analyzing advertisements is offered.
Keywords Image 4 Visual culture 4 Advertising
The fovea is a small circular pit in the center of the retina containing roughly 25,000 closely packed color-sensitive cones, each
with its own nerve fiber. The fovea contains cells at the unbelievable concentration of 160,000 cells per square millimeter (an area
the size of the heat of a pin). The fovea enables the average person to see most sharply a small circle ranging in size from 1/96 of
an inch to 1⁄4 of an inch (estimates differ) at the distance of twelve inches from the eye ... In man, needle-threading, removal of
splinters, and engraving are some of the many activities made possible by foveal vision ...
Surrounding the fovea is the macula, an oval yellow body of color- sensitive cells. It covers a visual angle of three degrees in the
vertical plane
41
and 12 to 15 degrees in the horizontal plane. Macular vision is quite clear, but not as clear or sharp as foveal vision because the
cells are not as closely packed as they are in the fovea. Among other things man uses the macular for reading.
The man who detects movement out of the corner of his eye is seeing peripherally. Moving away from the central portion of the
retina, the character and quality of vision change radically. The ability to see color diminishes as the color sensitive cones
become more scattered.
Edward Hall, The Hidden Dimension
According to one recent estimate, the retina contains 100 million nerve cells capable of about 10 billion processing operations per
second. The hyper- stimulus of modern visual culture from the nineteenth century to the present day has been dedicated to trying
to saturate the visual field, a process that continually fails as we learn to see and connect ever faster.
Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture
Desert Scene in Egypt. Photo by Arthur Asa Berger
6 IMAGES: ADVERTISING 43
It turns out that the average adult in the United States spends around eight hours a day looking at screens, and what
they see on those screens are images. But what exactly is an image? If you look in a dictionary you will find half a
dozen different definitions of images, which deal with different kinds of images or ways we connect with images.
One of the best definitions of images, per se, is found in John Morgan and Peter Welton’s See What I Mean: An
Introduction to Visual Communication, in which the authors write (1986:90) “An image has been defined as the
result of endowing optical sensations with meaning.” I can remember when my daughter was very young, a large
plane passed overhead. “Look at the airplane,” I said. She looked but since she didn’t know what airplanes looked
like, it didn’t register with her.
Nicholas Mirzoeff offers a discussion of images and visual culture in his book An Introduction to Visual Culture. He
writes (1999:1):
Modern Life takes place onscreen. Life in industrialized countries is increasingly lived under constant video surveillance from
cameras in buses and shopping malls, on highways and bridges, and next to ATM cash machines... For most people, life in the
United States is mediated through television and, to a lesser extent, film. The average American 18 year old sees only eight
movies a year but watches four hours of television a day. These forms of visualization are now being challenged by interactive
visual media like the Internet and virtual reality applications.
To these figures one must add time spent texting and watching things on mobiles, and time spent working at
computers. We swim, like fish, in a sea of images.
As far as seeing images are concerned, human beings are like gigantic supercomputers, with the ability to process
enormous numbers of inputs with remarkable speed. Edward Hall also deals with seeing in his book The Hidden
Dimension where he discusses the fovea and its relation to the macula. Each area of the eye performs different
functions which enables us to see in different ways, but they blend together and normally aren’t differentiated. Donis
A. Dondis explains how much work we do when we look at an image. She writes in A Primer of Visual Literacy
(1973:17):
When we see, we are doing many things at once. We are seeing an enormous field peripherally. We are seeing in an up-to-down,
left-to-right movement. We are imposing on what we are isolating in our field of vision not only implied axes to adjust balance
but also a structural map to chart and measure
the action of the compositional forces that are so vital to content and therefore, to message input and output. All of this is
happening while at the same time we are decoding all manner of symbols.
What we learn from investigating visual perception and communication is that it takes a lot of work to just see
images, let alone figure out what they mean.
Jarice Hansen explains why our eyes have to work so hard in Under- standing Video (1987:39):
It is estimated that 75 percent of the information in the brain is from the eyes, and that 38 percent of the fibers entering or leaving
the central nervous system are in the optic nerve. Current research indicates that the eyes have 100 million sensors in the retina,
but only five million channels to the brain from the retina. This means that more information processing is actually done in the
eye than in the brain, and even the eye filters out information.
This means we have to allocate a good deal of energy to processing visual information. When we look at an image
our eyes are continually scanning it, as psychologist Robert E. Orenstein explains in The Psychology of
Consciousness. As he writes (1972:27)
Our eyes are constantly in motion, in large eye movements (saccades) as well as in eye tremors (nystagmus). We blink our eyes
every second, move our eyes around, move our heads and bodies and follow moving objects.... If we “saw” an image on our
retina, the visual world would be different every second, sometime one object, then another, sometimes a blur due to the eyes
moving, sometimes darkness due to blinks. We must then construct a personal consciousness from the selected input, and in this
way achieve some stability of awareness out of the rich and continually changing flow of information reaching our receptors.
What we do, Orenstein suggests, is select from all of the information our eyes can take in and, in a sense, construct
the world we see. Seeing is an active process in which we focus our attention on certain things and are inattentive to
others.
Understanding what images mean and how they generate meaning is now of considerable interest to scholars
working in multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA). In its earliest years, as I pointed out earlier, the focus
was on language, but now discourse analysts have become
“multimodal” and want to know how meaning is generated in sites like Facebook, which is full of images (around
seventy-five percent) as well as written text and videos. As Machin and Mayr write in How to Do Critical Discourse
Analysis (2012:6):
In the late 1980s and 1990s a number of authors who had been working in linguistics began to realize that meaning is generally
communicated not only through language but also through other semiotic modes. A linguist might, for example, be able to
provide a thorough and revealing analysis of the language used in an advertisement. But much of the meaning of this adver-
tisement might be communicated by visual features. The same would apply to a news text that was accompanied by a photograph
or a textbook where an exercise was part linguistic and part visual.
What is important for multimodal critical discourse analysts, scholars, and researchers to recognize is the fact that
images have both explicit and implicit ideological significance and can function as agents of persuasion and cultural
domination. The ideological aspects of written and visual texts generally are not recognized by most people. That is
because for most people recognizing what an image conveys is as far as they go. They function at the denotation
level and pay little attention to the connotations of the images they see.
We can interrogate images on a number of different levels. Let us take, for example, a frame from a comic strip. We
can makes sense of the last frame as follows:
The Literal Level. This involves what we see in an image. The Linguistic Level This focuses on language in the frame. The Textual Level.
This focuses on where the image/frame is in the text. The Intertextual Level This looks for relations between this image and other images. The
Mythic Level This connects the image to important myths, legends, etc. The Ideological Level This looks for unrecognized ideological aspects
of the image.
George Herriman’s Krazy Kat (1911–1944, when Herriman died) is considered by scholars who work with comics to
be the greatest American comic strip. There is good reason to believe that Herriman was an African-American,
though he did not identify himself as such. Given the times in which he lived, Herriman’s reticence to identify
himself as a black man is understandable.
In the strip, Ignatz Mouse spent forty years figuring out ways to bounce a brick off of Krazy’s head (she—but we
can’t be sure Krazy is a female— took it as a sign of love) and Offissa Pupp spent forty years trying to protect Krazy,
generally with little success. Herriman was very economical in the use of language. In one strip he uses only a half a
dozen words to tell its story. We can also read Krazy Kat as having something to say, at the ideological level, about
resistance to authority and power.
With these notions about levels at which we can interrogate images, it is possible to find things in images we never
noticed or thought about before. Images always tell a story and in advertising, the subject I will deal with next, that
story is more complicated than we might imagine.
APPLICATION: A DVERTISING
If we watch four hours of television a day, we see around an hour of television commercials. To this we must add all
the advertisements we see in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, on buses and now, on the screens of our
smartphones. According to eMarketer which studies advertising expenditures, the global expenditures on
advertising will be 542 billion dollars in 2016. According to eMarketer, America accounts for about 35 percent of all
money spent on advertising and will do so for a number of years. So America, a country with 330 million people,
spends 35 percent and the rest of the world, about six billion people, spend the rest of the money.
United States The World
330 million 6 Billion 35% 65%
What these figures demonstrate is that Americans are exposed to much more advertising than everyone else. If you
add Asia-Pacific and Europe you get around 40 percent and the rest of the world has relatively little advertising.
When you multiply 330 million people by twenty, you get around six billion. This means that Americans watch
around twenty times more advertising than the rest of the world, though people in Asia and Europe see a good deal
of advertising. The figures for global expenditures on advertising are shown in the table below, from eMarketer.
Total Media Ad Spending Worldwide, by Region, 2014-2020 billions and % change

2014
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Total media ad spending (billions)
North
$184.95 $192.81 $202.38 $212.00 $223.20 $234.48 $245.93 America
Asia-Pacific
$147.34 $158.30 $171.51 $185.78 $202.61 $219.39 $235.48
Western
$93.23
$95.44 $97.88 $100.22 $102.56 $104.80 $106.99 Europe
Latin America
$28.81 $31.02 $34.02 $37.06 $39.41
Middle East &
$20.62 Africa
Central &
$13.53 $13.65 $13.67 $14.04 $14.57 $15.22 $15.81 Eastern Europe
Worldwide
Total media ad spending growth (% change)
Latin America 12.6 %
9.5 %
6.9 %
3.3 %
2.2 %
7.4 %
Worldwide 5.7% 5.0% 5.7% 5.7% 6.0% 5.6% 5.1% Note: includes digital (desktop/laptop, mobile and other
internet-connected devices), directories, magazines, newspapers, out-of-home, radio and TV Source: eMarketer,
March 2016
eMarketer Chart
$41.14 $42.54
$21.85 $23.10 $24.25 $25.35 $26.44 $27.49 $488.48 $513.07 $542.55 $573.36 $607.70 $641.47 $674.24
7.7 %
7.4 %
6.0 %
4.3 %
2.4 %
0.9 %
9.7 %
8.3 %
5.7 %
5.0 %
2.6 %
0.2 %
8.9 %
8.3 %
5.0 %
4.8 %
2.4 %
2.7 %
6.3 %
9.1 %
4.5 %
5.3 %
2.3 %
3.7 %
4.4%
8.3%
4.3%
5.1%
2.2%
4.5%
3.4%
Asia-Pacific
7.3%
Middle East &
4.0% Africa
North America
4.9%
Western Europe
2.1%
Central &
3.8% Eastern Europe
206069
www.eMarketer.com
In writing about advertising, then, I am dealing with a very powerful influence on individuals and on society.
Advertising not only helps us choose brands of shoes and handbags and toothpaste, but also congressmen, sena- tors,
and presidents. It is the engine on contemporary consumer cultures and, as such, of great interest to scholars in many
disciplines.
In this chapter I will suggest ways to analyze a magazine advertisement to see what it reflects about American
culture and society. The question you must always ask yourself when interrogating an image that is of major
importance is, is it actually found in the image or are you reading something into it? One thing that complicates
analyzing some advertisements is that advertisements, like other kinds of texts, often have intertextual borrowings.
Analyzing Advertisements
Let me suggest some topics to consider when analyzing a print advertisement that has copy (textual material) and
people in it. This list draws upon, but is amplified, from one I made in my book Ads, Fads and Consumer Culture
5th edition, which has my analysis of a number of print advertisements and the famous “1984” Macintosh
commercial in it.
1. What is the design of the advertisement? Do we find axial balance or an asymmetrical relationship among the
elements in the advertisement? 2. How much written material is there relative to the amount of
pictorial matter? Is this relationship significant in any respect? 3. Is there a great deal of blank (white) space in the
advertisement or is it full of graphic and textual material? There is often a correlation between upscale products and
white or empty space in advertisements. 4. If there is a photograph in the advertisement, what angle is the
photograph shot at? Do we look up at the people in the advertisement, which makes them superior? Do we look
down at them, which makes us seem superior? Or do we look at them from a shoulder-level position? What
significance does the angle of the shot have? 5. How is the photograph lit? Is there a great deal of light or is there a
little light and very dark shadows (chiaroscuro lighting)? What
is the mood found in the advertisement? What role does the mood or tone of the advertisement play in convincing
people to purchase the product or service? 6. If the photograph in the advertisement is in color, what colors
dominate? What significance do these colors have? 7. How would you describe figures in the advertisement?
Consider such matters as facial expression, hair color, hair length, hair styling, fashions (clothes, shoes, eyeglass
design, and jewelry), various props (a cane, an umbrella), body shape, body language, age, gender, race, ethnicity,
signs of occupation, signs of educational level, relationships suggested between the males and females, objects in the
background, and so on. 8. What is happening in the advertisement? What does the “action” in the photo suggest?
Assume that we are seeing one moment in an ongoing narrative. Imagine what this narrative is. What does it reveal
about the figures? 9. What signs or symbols are in the photograph? What signifiers and signifieds do you find? What
symbols? What role do these signs and symbols play? 10. In the textual material, how is language used? What
arguments are made or implied about the people in the photograph and about the product being advertised? That is,
what rhetorical devices are used to attract readers and stimulate desire in them for the product or service? Does the
advertisement use metonyms/associations and/or metaphors/analogies or other techniques to make its point? 11.
What typefaces are used in the textual parts of the advertisement? What importance do the various typefaces have?
(Why these typefaces and not other ones?) 12. What are the basic “themes” in the advertisement? How do these
themes relate to the story implied by the advertisement? 13. What product or service is being advertised? Who is the
target audience for this product or service? What role does this product or service play in American culture and
society? 14. What values and beliefs are reflected in the advertisement? Sexual jealousy? Patriotism? Motherly love?
Brotherhood of man? Success? Power? Good taste? Show how these values are tied to the images and language
found in the text.
15. Is there any background information you need to make sense of the advertisement? How does American culture
(or some other culture) shape our understanding of the advertisement? Are there intertextual borrowings you can
find?
You have to place advertisements in the context of American society and consider what they reflect about the
audiences to which the advertisements are directed and American character and culture.
CHAPTER 7
Signs: Fashion
Abstract Basic concepts of semiotics are offered, including works of Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles S. Peirce, and
Umberto Eco. Definition of sign is offered, and arbitrary nature of relation between elements of signs, signifiers, and
signifieds is considered. Difference between connotation and denotation, and relation between semiotics and
discourse analysis are explained.
Application Works by sociologist Georg Simmel, cultural analyst Ruth P. Rubinstein, and sociologist Orrin Klapp
on fashion are dealt with. Semiotic aspects of fashion and relation between fashion and ideology are investigated.
Keywords Semiotics 4 Signs 4 Signifiers 4 Signifieds 4 Fashion 4 Ideology
I call the combination of a concept and a sound-image a sign, but in current usage the term generally designates only a
sound-image, a word, for example...I propose to retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole and to replace concept and
sound-image respectively by signified [signifie] and signifier [signifiant]; the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the
opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts. As regards sign, if I am satisfied with
it,
51
this is simply because I do not know of any word to replace it, the ordinary language suggesting no other.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1915/1966:67)
Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly
substituting for something else. This something else does not necessarily have to exist or actually be somewhere at the moment in
which a sign stands for it. Thus semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If
something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used “to tell” at all.
Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (1976:7)
Every sign is determined by its objects, either first by partaking in the characters of the object, when I call a sign an Icon;
secondly, by being really and in its individual existence connected with the individual object, when I call the sign an Index;
thirdly, by more or less approximate certainty that it will be interpreted as denoting the object, in conse- quence of a habit (which
term I use as including a natural disposition), when I call the sign a Symbol.
Charles S. Peirce (quoted by J.J. Zeman in Thomas Sebeok, Ed.
A Perfusion of Signs 1977:36)
Semiotics is the “science of signs,” a sign being, as Umberto Eco, a well- known semiotician and novelist explains,
anything that can be used to stand for something else, whether that something else actually exists or not. Words are
signs and for discourse analysts, one of the most important kind of signs. Eco also argues that signs can lie and if
they can’t be used to lie, they can’t be used to communicate at all.
The term “semiotics” comes from the Greek word sēmeîon, which means “signs.” Earlier, I discussed the work of de
Saussure, whose book A Course in General Linguistics was published in 1915. It was translated into English in
1966. The other founding father of semiotics, Peirce, argued that a sign is “something which stands to somebody for
something in some respect or capacity” (quoted in Zeman, 1977:27), which means that people play a major role in
understanding signs.
Saussure’s division of signs into sound-images or signifiers and concepts or signified is at the heart of his approach to
semiotics. Peirce’s trichotomy of iconic (signify by resemblance, as for example, a photograph of a person and that
person), indexical (signify by association, as for example, smoke,
7 SIGNS: FASHION 53
and fire), and symbolic (signify by being taught what is signified, for example a flag or a crucifix) is at the heart of his
approach.
Saussure offered a charter statement about semiology/semiotics in his book. He wrote (1915/1966:16):
Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes,
symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems.
A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of
general psychology; I shall call it semiology (from Greek sēmeîon “sign”). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what
laws govern them. Since the science does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place
staked out in advance.
This is the charter statement of semiotics, a statement that opens the study of discourse of all kinds to us. Not only
can we study symbolic rites and military signals, we can also study conversations, speeches, articles in newspapers
and magazines, radio and television commercials, soap operas, situation comedies, and almost anything else as “sign
systems.”
It is important that we realize that the relationship between the two components of signs, signifiers and signifieds, is
arbitrary and based on convention. This means that meaning of signs can change. For example, fifty years ago or so
long hair in men was associated with being artistic. Now, so many men have long hair that it has lost its meaning.
Hair length along with hair color and hair styling are signs and we have to learn how to interpret them and all kinds
of other signs. Thus, for example, many blond women (and now men) dye their hair blond. And that beautiful blond
woman you see, on the other side of a room you are in, may actually be a cross-dressing man, who is “lying” about
his gender by appropriating the signs of femininity for his purposes and needs.
Linguists make a distinction between connotation and denotation. Connotation refers to the cultural meanings that
become attached to words in discourse and historic and symbolic meanings connected to them. Denotation refers to
the explicit or literal meaning of words in discourse and other matters connected to them. Thus, the denotations of
Barbie Dolls are that it was a toy designed for girls that was 11.5 inches high, had measure- ments of 5.25 inches at
the bust, 3.0 inches at the waist, and 4.25 inches at
the hips (for the original 1959 version). The connotations of Barbie Doll are open to discussion. For some theorists,
Barbie Doll marks a change in the way girls were socialized. Instead of rehearsing for motherhood with baby dolls,
little girls learned to be courtesans and consumers, since Barbie Doll buys lots of clothes and has relationships with
Ken dolls. In 2016, Mattel introduced a number of different Barbie Dolls with different body shapes and ethnicities,
a sign that American culture is changing.
Discourse analysis, in conjunction with semiotics, psychoanalytic theory and Marxist ideological theory is now an
important part of cultural studies. Because of the focus semiotics has on signs, it is used in multimodal discourse
analysis—since images, videos, and language are all now very important and play a major role in social media such
as Facebook. Discourse analysis in
Drawing of Levi’s Patch
7 SIGNS: FASHION 55
conjunction with semiotics is interested in everything—in imaginary signs (in our dreams), in the manifest and latent
meaning of signs, in signs and lifestyles, in the role signs play in our constructing our identities, with signs that
confound (optical illusions), with no sign as a sign (the dog that didn’t bark in a Sherlock Holmes mystery), and with
just anything else in which meaning plays an important role. Roland Barthes used semiotics to explain the important
of professional wrestling to the French and other aspects of French culture such as “steak and frites,” margarine and
detergents. This explains why semiotics plays such an important role in discourse analysis. Semioticians are
imperialistic academics and tend to see everything as a subdiscipline of semiotics, including discourse theory.
Discourse theorists are also imperialistic and see everything else (including semiotics) as part of discourse theory.
That explains why we find a chapter on semiotics in van Dijk’s edited book Discourse as Structure and Process.
APPLICATION: FASHION
Whatever else fashion may be, it uses articles of clothing, jewelry, watches, accessories, and other things as
signs—indicating who we are or who we think we are. (A woman in a typical Neiman Marcus advertisement is very
beautiful, has lots of jewelry and is very upscale fashionable.) Or who we want others to think we are. Or who we
want to be. Fashion is of interest to social scientists and qualitative researchers like discourse analysts because it is a
form of collective behavior and has certain imperatives connected to it. The term “fashion” is derived from the Latin
term “faction,” which can mean either “to make or do” or “faction.” Faction suggests differentiation which is one of
the major components of fashion. The language in fashion ads—what little there is, most of the time—is also of
interest to discourse analysts. Fashion ads, which often combine words and images, require a multimodal discourse
analysis approach.
Susan Kaiser, Howard G. Schutz, and Joan L. Chandler offer an insight into the relation between fashion and
ideology in their article “Cultural Codes and Sex-Role Ideology: A Study of Shoes.” They write (in The American
Journal of Semiotics, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1987:14):
In recent years, scholars in a variety of areas of study (cultural studies, semiotics, sociology, textiles and clothing, to mention a
few) have pursued the study of mundane objects that emerge as representative codes of everyday culture. These objects take on a
symbolic dimension, connoting not only
style-specificity to a particular social group but also...social-political ideology. Hebdige (1979:13) has noted that ideology often
thrives beneath the social consciousness, and the “perceived-accepted-suffered”nature of cultural objects provides a means for
detangling the underlying power structure of society.
The term fashion can be used for various products but it is generally used to deal with different styles of clothes and
accessories which become popular for a time and then become superseded by the next style.
Georg Simmel, a German sociologist (1858–1918), had some perceptive things to say about fashion in his article
“The Philosophy of Fashion.” He writes in David Frisby and Mike Featherstone (Eds.), Simmel on Culture
(1997:192):
The essence of fashion consists of the fact that it should always be exercised by only part of a given group, the great majority of
whom are merely on the road to adopting it. As soon as fashion has been universally adopted, that is, as soon as anything that was
originally done only by a
Georg Simmel drawing
7 SIGNS: FASHION 57
few has really come to be practiced by all—as is the case in certain elements of clothing and various forms of social conduct—we
no longer characterize it as fashion. Every growth of fashion drives it to its doom, because it thereby cancels out its
distinctiveness... Fashion’s question is not that of being, but rather it is simultaneously being and non-being; it always stands on
the watershed of the past and the future and, as a result, conveys to us, at least while it is at its height, a stronger sense of the
present than do most other phenomena.
His point is that fashion is always in a state of being born, but once it is accepted by large numbers of people, it loses
its power to differentiate fashionable people from others, and must be replaced, so it is continually being born and
dying. People who are not fashionable adopt the latest fashions because they approve of them and are envious of
those who are fashionable.
From a semiotic perspective, clothes and other objects subject to fashion are signs that convey information about
the people who are fashionable. In Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture, Ruth P. Rubinstein
writes (1995:3):
Most social scientists take it for granted that an individual’s clothing expresses meaning. They accept the old saw that “a picture is
worth a thousand words” and generally concede that dress and ornament are elements in a communication system. They
recognize that a person’s attire can indicate either conformity or resistance to socially defined expectations for behavior. Yet few
scholars have attempted to explain the meaning and relevance of clothing systematically. They often mistake it for fashion (in a
person’s desired appearance) whereas clothing refers to established patterns of dress. As a result, neither clothing images nor the
rules that govern their use have been adequately identified or explained.
We see fashion as messages in the dress styles of adolescents and young adults, to whom fashion is a way of
communicating messages to those who know how to decode them. We can say the same thing to gay and lesbian
clothing styles, cross-dressers, surfers, bikers, orthodox Jews, members of youth gangs, and so on. Fashion in
clothing, in jewelry, in handbags and briefcases, and other objects subject to fashion becomes a means of asserting
one’s identity.
Simmel offers us an insight into why so many people follow or adopt fashions so slavishly. It is, he suggests,
because of their weak social position. As he explains (1997:196):
If fashion both gives expression towards the impulse towards equalization and individualization, as well as to the allure of
imitation and conspicuous- ness, this perhaps explains why it is that women, broadly speaking, adhere especially strongly to
fashion. Out of the weakness of their social position to which were condemned throughout the greater part of history there arises
there close relationship to all that is “custom,” to that which is “right and proper,” to the generally valid and approved form of
existence. Those who are weak steer clear of individualization; they avoid dependence upon the self, with its responsibilities and
the necessity of defending oneself unaided.
Following fashions enables people to disappear into the crowd and avoid people’s attention. We can see those who
are slaves to fashion as a signifier of a sense of weakness and an unwillingness to stand out. There are others, of
course, who want to stand out—what Orrin Klapp calls “ego screamers,” who use fashion to draw attention to
themselves. He discusses a number of matters relative to fashion in his The Collective Search for Identity (1969:75):
1. the sheer variety of “looks” (types) available to the common man; 2. the explicitness of identity search (for the real
you); 3. ego-screaming: the plea “look at me!”; 4. style rebellion (style uses as a means of protest or defiance); 5.
theatricalism and masquerading on the street; 6. pose as a way of getting to the social position one wants; 7.
dandyism: (living for style, turning away from the Horatio Alger
model of success); 8. dandyism of the common man as well as the aristocrat; 9. pronounced escapism in many styles
(such as those of beatniks,
hippies, surfers... ); 10. a new concept of the right to be whatever one pleases, regardless of
what others think (the new romanticism); 11. the breakdown of status symbols, the tendency of fashions to mix
and obscure classes rather than differentiate them.
7 SIGNS: FASHION 59
The existence of many “knock-offs” helps obscure class relations as shown by branding and fashion, in general. And
some people who opt out of the imperatives of fashion prevent us from always making a connection between
fashion, high-status brands, and social identity.
We can think of brands, from a discourse analysis perspective, as iconic signifiers. Brands often identify themselves
by icons, which show that people wearing a particular brand of object—eyeglasses, purses, etc.—can afford the item
and can differentiate themselves from people who wear less expensive brands or no brand (commodity) fashion
items. And by the language they use, which helps distinguish the fashion item from others and the brand from
others. What brands try to do is differentiate themselves from other brands and from generic products. Brands use
advertising to tell stories—to establish an image about the kind of people who use their products. From a Saussurean
perspective we can say “in brands, there are only differences.” Brands primarily compete with one another but also
with generic no-brand products or commodities.
Laura R. Oswald, in her article “Semiotics and Strategic Brand Management,” discusses the role of semiotics in
creating brands (http:// www.media.illinois.edu/advertisng/semiotics_oswald.pdf). She writes:
Over the past ten years or so, brand strategy researchers have come to recognize the importance of brand communication in
building and sustain- ing brand equity, the value attached to a brand name or log that supersedes product attributes and
differentiates brands in the competitive arena... The contribution of brand meanings and perceptions to profitability—the Coca
Cola brand is valued at over $70 billion—testifies to the power of symbolic representation to capture the hearts and minds of
consumers by means of visual, audio, and verbal signs. The semiotic—or symbolic—dimension of brands is therefore
instrumental for building awareness, positive associations, and long-term customer loyalty, and contributes to trademark own-
ership and operational advantages such as channel and media clout. Consequently, managing brand equity means managing brand
semiotics.
It is discourse analysis and semiotics that enable us to understand what brands are, how brands work, and the role
brand language plays in consumer decision making.
We might ask the following questions when studying the language in fashion advertisements:
What words were used? If no words are used, why? Are there any metaphors and similes in the text? (analogies) Are
there any metonymies and synecdoches? (associations) What affirmations are made and negations stated? What is
the tone of the language used? Why was this tone adopted? What logical arguments and emotional appeals are
made? What slogans are used? How are headlines used? What questions are asked and answered in the textual
material? What is the style of the language used? What was this style used? Where can one by the products being
sold? Do they cities where they are sold tell us anything?
We have to recognize that the language used in ads for upscale fashion products is different from that used in
advertisements for inexpensive ones.What’s important about brand-name products is that when we see a person
wearing a certain brand or collection of brands, we get, we believe, a sense of what the person using the brands is
like—if, that is, we have seen advertisements for the brand and know something about it. Branded luxury objects are
status symbols and help confer high status upon those who use them. If a self is a kind of conversation we have with
ourselves, what happens when we get tired of certain brands and switch to others? Is there a kind of dissociation that
occurs as we take on a new self based on new brands that we now find attractive? That is a problem we all have to
wrestle with—if that is, we use brand products and feel strongly about the brands we use.
PART II
Texts
CHAPTER 8
Narratives: Fairy Tales
Abstract Ideas of Michel de Certeau and Seymour Chatman on narratives are explored. Narratives are suggested to
be one of the most important ways we learn about the world, along with the logico-scientific mode. Ideas of Aristotle
on narratives are considered along with his notion that art is based on imitation and his ideas about the nature of
plot. M. M. Bakhtin’s theories about intertextuality are explored.
Application Theories by Bruno Bettelheim about importance of fairy tales to children’s development are explained,
and basic elements of fairy tales are listed. Readers are asked to do a discourse analysis of a fairy tale, “Little Red
Cap” (aka “Little Red Riding Hood”) focusing on the language and dialogue in the story.
Keywords Narratives 4 Logico-scientific mode 4 Aristotle 4 Fairy tales
Captured by the radio (the voice is the law) as soon as he awakens, the listener walks all day long through the forest of
narrativities from journalism, advertising, and television narrativities that still find time, as he is getting ready for bed, to slip a
few final messages under the portals of sleep. Even more than the God told about by the theologians of earlier days, these stories
have a providential and predestining function: they organize in advance our work, our celebrations, and even our dreams. Social
life multiplies the gestures and modes of behavior (im)printed by
63
narrative models; it ceasely [sic] reproduces and accumulates “copies” of stories. Our society has become a recited society, in
three senses: it is defined by stories (recits, the fables constituted by our advertising and informational media), by citations of
stories, and by the interminable recitation of stories. These narrations have the twofold and strange power of transforming seeing
into believing, and of fabricating realities out of appearances.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, (1984:186)
Narrative discourse consists of a connected sequence of narrative statements, where “statement” is quite independent of the
particular expressive medium... What is communicated is story, the formal content element of narrative, and it communicated by
discourse, the formal expression element. The discourse is said to“state” the story, and these statements are of two kinds:
processand stasis—according to whether someone did something or something happened; or whether something simply existed
in the story... Process statements are in the mode of DO or HAPPEN...Stasis statements are in the mode of IS. A text that
consisted entirely of stasis statements, that is, stated only the existence of a set of things, could only imply a narrative. Events are
either logically essential, or not (“kernels” versus “satellites”).
Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse. (1978:31–32)
Michel de Certeau
8 NARRATIVES: FAIRY TALES 65
As Michel de Certeau, an important French media theorist, points out in the epigraph, our societies are pervaded by
narratives and these narratives play a role in shaping the way we think and live. If we spend around two hours a day
listening to the radio and five hours a day in the United States watching television, that means we are exposed to
countless micro-narratives (in commercials) and regular narratives (in news shows, dramas, crime shows, etc.).
These narratives are mostly based on scripts and have a considerable amount of dialogue in them—dialogue that we
can use in our research.
Chatman, the linguistics professor from the University of California in Berkeley whose ideas I discussed earlier,
offers us insights into the structure of narratives. He explains that there are two kinds of events in narratives:
logically essential events, which he calls “kernels” and events that are not essential for the narrative, which he calls
“satellites.” In analyzing narratives, it is useful to determine whether events are basic to the narrative line or of
secondary importance and focus one’s attention on the kernels.
Narratives are of interest to discourse analysts because much of the work they do deals with sequential
communication of one kind or another, such as clauses, sentences, paragraphs, conversations, and so on, up the
ladder to literary and sub-literary texts. Sometimes narratives have a narrator, who helps tell the story, but often the
characters in stories, through their dialogue and actions, act out the story. We find narratives in conversations, in
jokes, in dreams, in fairy tales, in myths, in comic strips and graphic novels, in songs, in plays, in novels, and any
kind of text that is sequential in nature.
Discourse theorists argue that the language we use in our conversations, and to which we are exposed in the media,
plays an important role in the way we relate to others and even in how we achieve an identity. But narratives cover
more territory than conversations, speech, and stories, for there is a narrative structure to texts such as news shows
and sports contests. Think, for example, at the tension we find in the last minutes of football games where, if one
team can kick a field goal or score a touchdown, it will win the game.
Laurel Richardson, an American social scientist, explains that narratives are one of the most important ways we
learn about the world and our place in it. She writes about the significance of narratives in our lives in her essay
“Narrative and Sociology” from the Journal of Contemporary Ethnology (1990:118):
Narrative is the primary way through which humans organize their experiences into temporally meaningful episodes... Narrative
is both a mode of reasoning and a mode of representation. People can “apprehend” the world
narratively and people can “tell” about the world narratively. According to Jerome Bruner... narrative reasoning is one of the two
basic and universal human cognition modes. The other mode is the logico-scientific... the logico-scientific mode looks for
universal truth conditions, whereas the narrative mode looks for particular connections between events. Explanation in the
narrative mode is contextually embedded, whereas the logico-scientific explanation is extracted from spatial and temporal events.
Both modes are “rational” ways of making meaning.
Narrative, then, plays an important role in the way we learn about the world, along with the logico-scientific mode,
which also uses narratives in explaining things to people.
Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, had a good deal to say about narratives in his Poetics, written about 330 B.C.
His book deals with poetry, but he uses the term in a very general sense to talk about literature and narratives. He
begins by suggesting that literary works are imitations of reality (the mimetic theory of art) and discussed three
topics relative to imitation: first, the medium of imitation (print versus film, for example); second, the objects
imitated (people); and third, the mode of imitation.
Aristotle drawing
He points out that some arts, prose or verse, only use language while others employ a number of different media.
(Think, for example, of the difference between a novel and a film made from that novel. The novel just has words,
while the film has actors, dialogue, settings, sound, music and various other things.) Then Aristotle discusses the
objects of imitation:
Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character
mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we
must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are.
There are, logically speaking, only three possibilities: we can portray people as they are, as better than they are or as
worse than they are. We must keep in mind that we are dealing with “men in action” as he puts it—that is, people
doing things. This he describes as Plot.
This is followed by his analysis of his third topic, the manner of imitation. He explains:
... the poet may imitate by narration, in which case he can either take another personality, as Homer does, or speak in his own
person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving.
Aristotle has offered us an overview of the nature of literary works and the way in which they can be structured:
1. we can assume another’s identity, which means one writes in the
third person. 2. we can speak in our own person, which means one writes in the first
person. 3. we can have our characters tell the story by interacting with one another.
It is also possible to mix things up. It is possible to start a novel or a play with a narrator but move into a situation in
which the narrator withdraws and the characters in the story take over.
Aristotle then differentiates comedy from tragedy. Comedy is:
an imitation of persons inferior—not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the
ugly. It consists of some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive.
Tragedy, on the other hand, “is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude.”
Aristotle deals with some of the most important aspects of narrative theory as it relates to texts—the plot, the
characters, and the dialogue (which is more or less what he meant by diction); but most important of all, he insists, is
the plot—the “the structure of the incidents.” But, he reminds us, what the characters do is connected to what they
are like and how they think. This explains why in novels and other kinds of narrative texts we must find out at
certain times (via various literary techniques used by authors) what characters think in addition to following what
they say and what they do. Discourse theorists might argue with Aristotle about the relationship between dialogue
and plot, because discourse theory suggests that a character’s language reflects his or her personality and it is the
personalities of the characters that shape the dialogue and the plot. Aristotle believed that tragedy involved an
imitation of an action that is whole, complete, and unified, suggesting that if any one of the components of a work
is missing, the work will be “disjointed and disturbed.” In addition, the poet deals not only with what has happened
but also with what may happen, or, as Aristotle puts it, “what is possible according to the law of probability or
necessity.” Since works should have unity, Aristotle does not like episodic plots, ones in which “episodes or acts
succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence.”
His notion that the poet must deal with what has happened and what may happen is very close to the Russian
communication theorist
M.M. Bakhtin
Bakhtin’s ideas about dialogue and conversation. As Bakhtin explains in The Dialogic Imagination (1981:280):
The word in living conversation is directly, blatantly oriented toward a future answer-word: it provokes an answer, anticipates it,
and structures itself in the answer’s direction. Forming itself in an atmosphere of the already spoken, the word is at the same time
determined by that which has not yet been said but which is needed and in fact anticipated by the answering word. Such is the
situation in any living dialogue.
It is not much of a leap from Bakhtin’s ideas to the concept of intertextuality, which I’ve mentioned in various
places in this book.
Aristotle distinguishes between simple plots, which involve changes of fortune without reversals or recognition by
the major characters as to what has happened and complex plots that involve changes of fortune with reversals or
recognitions, or both. By recognition Aristotle means “a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or
hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.” The best tragic plots have both reversals and
recognition and involve changes of fortune from good too bad that arouse both fear and pity.
This material summarizes the most important points Aristotle makes in his Poetics about the nature of narratives. We
must remember that Aristotle had tremendous authority and his ideas influenced the thinking of writers and critics
for thousands of years and are still influential, to this day, though they don’t have the authority they once had.
Aristotle’s theories about the nature of narratives played a role in a famous research project by the linguist William
Labov.
He asked a group of New Yorkers to answer the question, “Were you ever in a situation where you were in serious
danger of being killed?” He recorded their answers and discovered that some of them had the components of
Aristotle’s definition of a narrative—that is, they had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Other answers went beyond
that and had the following components: an abstract (for example, a friend pulled a knife on me), an orientation (this
happened at a New Year’s Eve party), a complicating action (some friend’s grabbed him), an evaluation (I was
terrified) a resolution (he cooled down), and a coda (we shook hands and that ended that confrontation). These
components are, Labov suggested, found in most conversations.
APPLICATION: OUR FIRST STORIES—FAIRY TALES
Fairy tales are among the first and, if Bruno Bettelheim is correct, most important kinds of narratives to which we
are exposed when we are children. As he explains in The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of
Fairy Tales (1977:25):
In a fairy tale, internal processes are externalized and become compre- hensible as represented by the figures of the story and its
events. This is the reason why in traditional Hindu medicine a fairy tale giving form to his particular problem was offered to a
psychically disoriented person, for his meditation. It was expected that through contemplating the story the disturbed person
would be led to visualize both the nature of the impasses from which he suffered, and the possibility of its resolution. From what
a particular tale implied about man’s despair, hopes, and methods of overcoming tribulations, the patient could discover not only
a way out of his distress but also a way to find himself, as the hero of the story did.
What this means is that the narrative elements in fairy tales have a ther- apeutic function, which helps explain why
they have been popular for so many hundreds—if not thousands—of years.
Fairy tales have certain elements:
1. Usually they begin with a statement like “Once upon a time,” which sets the narrative in the past and distinguishes
it from stories that take place in the present time. 2. They usually end with a happy resolution as the heroes triumph
over the villains and end with phrases such as “And they all lived happily ever after.” Bettelheim suggests that this
closing brings children back from the fantasy of the fairy tale to reality. 3. Fairy tales have a simple bi-polar
structure, with extremes of good and evil. Young children find it difficult to deal with shadings of evil and goodness.
4. The focus in fairy tales is on the actions of the heroes and heroines, who tend to be young, weak, and ordinary. We
generally know them by their first names, like Jack and Tom and Mary. Children can identify with such characters
easily.
5. In fairy tales, good and evil are present all the time and the differences between them are sharply drawn, so
children don’t have any difficulty in identifying with the good heroes and heroines and relishing the defeat of the
villains and villainesses. The heroes often have helpers and magic objects to aid them in their battles with the evil
figures in the fairy tales.
There are often variations in the way fairy tales are told but what is important is the story—what happens in the
tale—not the texts, which may vary in different minor ways.
Bruno Bettelheim explains that these tales, which were passed down over the millennia, became increasingly refined
and able to communicate to the uneducated minds of little children. He writes (1977:6):
Applying the psychoanalytic model of the human personality, fairy tales carry important messages to the conscious, the
preconscious and the unconscious mind, on whatever level each is functioning at the time. By dealing with universal human
problems, particularly those which preoccupy the child’s mind, these stories speak to his budding ego and encourage its
development, while at the same time relieving preconscious and unconscious pressures. As the stories unfold, they give
conscious credence and body to id pressures and show ways to satisfy these that are in line with ego and superego requirements.
Thus, fairy tales play an important role in children’s development and children who do not read fairy tales do not get
the many psychological benefits these tales confer.
Not only are fairy tales often the first stories young children are told, fairy tales can be seen as UR-Narratives, by
which I mean they contain the seeds of many genres.
1. They often have dragons and other kinds of monsters which leads to
horror stories. 2. There is often a search for a kidnapped princess or some other kind
of search which leads to detective stories. 3. Often the heroes and sometimes the villains have magic objects, there
may be flying carpets and that kind of thing which leads to science fiction stories.
4. There are fights with dragons and evil figures which leads to action-
adventure stories. 5. The hero often marries someone he has rescued at the end of the
story which leads to the romance novel.
It is reasonable to suggest, then, that elements of fairy tales can be extended and form our most important popular
culture genres.
Bettelheim mentions in his book that Hindu healers, after they spent time with their patients and learned about their
problems, composed individualized fairy tales for them, which helped their patients overcome their problems.
APPLICATION: DO A D ISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF LITTLE RED CAP (AKA AS RED RIDING HOOD)
Using concepts from discourse theory discussed earlier, analyze the language and dialogue in this story (from the
Brothers Grimm), remembering that is meant for young children. If you are interested in a psychoanalytic
interpretation of this story, you can read Bettelheim’s discussion of it in The Uses of Enchantment.
Little Red Cap
Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her
grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red
velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. So she was always called little red-cap.
One day her mother said to her, come, little red-cap, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them to your
grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk
nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will
get nothing. And when you go into her room, don’t forget to say, good-morning, and don’t peep into every corner
before you do it.
I will take great care, said little red-cap to her mother, and gave her hand on it. The grandmother lived out in the
wood, half a league from the village, and just as little red-cap entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red-cap did not
know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.
“Good-day, little red-cap,” said he. “Thank you kindly, wolf.”. “Whither away so early, little red-cap?”. “To my
grandmother’s.”. “What have you got in your apron?”.
“Cake and wine. Yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her
stronger.”
“Where does your grandmother live, little red-cap?”
“A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood. Her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees
are just below. You surely must know it,” replied little red-cap.
The wolf thought to himself, what a tender young creature. What a nice plump mouthful, she will be better to eat
than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both. So he walked for a short time by the side of little
red-cap, and then he said, “see little red-cap, how pretty the flowers are about here. Why do you not look round. I
believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing. You walk gravely along as if you were
going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is merry.”
Little red-cap raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty
flowers growing everywhere, she thought, suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay. That would please her too. It
is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time. And so she ran from the path into the wood to look for
flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it,
and so got deeper and deeper into the wood.
Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother’s house and knocked at the door.
“Who is there?” “Little red-cap,” replied the wolf. “She is bringing cake and wine. Open the door.” “Lift the latch,” called out the
grandmother, “I am too weak, and cannot get up.”
The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother’s bed,
and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap, laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.
Little red-cap, however, had been running about picking flowers, and when she had gathered so many that she could
carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her.
She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange
feeling that she said to herself, oh dear, how uneasy I feel to-day, and at other times I like being with grandmother
so much. She called out, “good morning,” but received no answer. So she went to the bed and drew back the curtains.
There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face, and looking very strange.
“Oh, grandmother,” she said, “what big ears you have.” “The better to hear you with, my child,” was the reply. “But,
grandmother, what big eyes you have,” she said. “The better to see you with, my dear.” “But, grandmother, what
large hands you have.” “The better to hug you with.” “Oh, but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have.”
“The better to eat you with.”
And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up red-cap.
When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very loud.
The huntsman was just passing the house, and thought to himself, how the old woman is snoring. I must just see if
she wants anything. So he went into the room, and when he came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying in it. Do
I find you here, you old sinner, said he. I have long sought you. Then just as he was going to fire at him, it occurred
to him that the wolf might have devoured the grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so he did not fire, but
took a pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach of the sleeping wolf. When he had made two snips, he saw
the little red-cap shining, and then he made two snips more, and the little girl sprang out, crying, ah, how frightened
I have been. How dark it was inside the wolf. And after that the aged grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely
able to breathe. Red-cap, however, quickly fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf’s belly,
and when he awoke, he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed at once, and fell dead.
Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf’s skin and went home with it. The grandmother ate
the cake and drank the wine which red-cap had brought, and revived, but red-cap thought to herself, as long as I live,
I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.
It is also related that once when red-cap was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her,
and tried to entice her from the path. Red-cap, however, was on her guard, and went straightforward on her way, and
told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he had said good-morning to her, but with such a wicked
look in his eyes, that if they had not been on the public road she was certain he would have eaten her up. Well, said
the grandmother, we will shut the door, that he may not come in. Soon afterwards the wolf knocked, and cried, open
the door, grandmother, I am little red-cap, and am bringing you some cakes. But they did not speak, or open the
door, so the grey-beard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last jumped on the roof, intending to wait until
red-cap went home in the evening, and then to steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But the grandmother
saw what was in his thoughts. In front of the house was a great stone trough, so she said to the child, take the pail,
red-cap. I made some sausages yesterday, so carry the water in which I boiled them to the trough. Red-cap carried
until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages reached the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped
down, and at last stretched out his neck so far that he could no longer keep his footing and began to slip, and slipped
down from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned. But red- cap went joyously home, and no one
ever did anything to harm her again.
CHAPTER 9
Texts: Hamlet
Abstract Problematic nature of term “text” is examined, with reference to work of semiotician Yuri Lotman and
several contemporary discourse analysts. Different definitions of the term “text” are offered, with notion of
“structural cohesion”suggested as very important in determining what makes a collection of words a text. Role of
contexts in shaping meaning of texts is considered.
Application Numerous and conflicting explanation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and nature of hero of the play, Hamlet,
and other characters are described. Semiotic-structural analysis of play, with polar opposites, is also offered.
Keywords Text 4 Structural cohesion 4 Context 4 Hamlet 4 Hamlet
Language use is of course not limited to spoken language, but also involves written (or printed) language, communication, and
interaction, as is the case when we read our daily newspaper, our textbooks, our mail (on paper of e-mail), or the myriad of
different text types that have to do with our academic or other work. Although many discourse analysts
77

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APPLIED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Arthur Asa Berger

Arthur Asa Berger Applied Discourse Analysis

Introduction: Li’l Abner and Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Communication: What Objects Tell Us

Language: Speed Dating

Metaphor: Love Is a Game

APPLICATION: LOVE IS A G AME

Words: Freud on Dreams

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