An Introduction to

Semiotics and Applied

Semiotics
Courses elaborated by: Dr. Ibersiene-
Achili Nora
2021/2022
 Content
I.Definitions, Origins, and Fields of Study
1.Definitions
2.Semiotics vs Applied semiotics
3.Fields of study
4.Sign definition
5.Origins
6.Major figures
7.Forms of sign: Icon, Index, Symbol, Metasymbol,
Name.
I. Semiotics and Visual Codes in Media
Texts
1. The Semiotics of Colour in Media Texts/
Advertisment
2. The Semiotics of Colour in Film trailers
Media Texts/ Advertisment
II. Semiotics and its Application in Films
1. Stuart Hall’s Representation theory/
Practice
2. Roland Barthes’ theories/ Practice
I. Definitions, Origins,
and Fields of Study
1. Definitions
• Semiotics is classifiable as that
pivotal branch of an integrated
science of communication
• Its concerns include considerations
of how messages are, successively,
generated, encoded, transmitted,
decoded, and interpreted, and how
this entire transaction (semiosis) is
worked upon the context.
 2. Semiotics vs.
Applied Semiotics
• Applied semiotics is a branch of semiotics.
It is an evidence-based problem-solving
tool for insight generation and meaning
management. It is not just a philosophy,
but always involves rigorous object or
media analysis.
• It is not just a point of view of the
Semiotician or an idiosyncratic
interpretation. It always involves rigorous
analysis of texts – be they objects,
products, ads, or other forms of content.
• Applied semiotics is deployed
predominantly by agencies
and consultants in brands and
marketing since
communications and design is
where semiotic insights have
thus far proved to be of most
value.
• The best semioticians qualitatively
interpret and synthesize a plethora
of data sources and ‘texts’ in order to
equip business owners and decision-
makers with provocative, actionable
perspectives on their brand and
competitive set, category dynamics
or changes in the prevailing
consumer culture.
 3. Fields of Study
• Semiotic theories are applied in various
domains namely:
• Arts
• Literature
• Anthropology
• Mass media
• Films
• Computing ……………………
4. Sign definition
5. Origins
• Semiotics arose from the scientific study of the
physiological symptoms induced by particular
diseases or physical states. It was Hippocrates
(460-377 B.C.), the founder of Western medical
science, who established semeiotics as a branch
of medicine for the study of symptoms- a
symptom being, in effect, a semeion 'mark, sign'
that stands for something other than itself.
• The physician's primary task, Hippocrates claimed,
was to unravel what a symptom stands for. For
example, a dark bruise, a rash, or a sore throat
might stand respectively for a broken finger, a skin
allergy, a cold.
• The medical problem is, of course, to
infer what that something is. Medical
diaghosis is, in effect, semiotic science,
since it is based on the principle that the
physical symptom stands not for itself
but for an inner state or condition.
• The physician Galen of Pergamum (A.D. 1
39-199) further en- . trenched semeiotics
into medical practice several centuries
later.
• The study of signs in non-medical terms
became the target of philosophers around the
time of Aristotle ( 384-322 B.C.) and the Stoic
philosophers.
• Aristotle defined the sign as consisting of
three dimensions:
(1) the physical part of the sign itself (e.g., the
sounds that make up the word cat) ;
(2) the referent to which it call attention (a
certain category of feline mammal); and
(3) its evocation of a meaning (what the referent
entails psychologically and socially).
• The next major step forward in the study
of signs was the one taken by St
Augustine (A.D. 354-430), the
philosopher and religious thinker who
was among the first to dist inguish clearly
between natural (symptoms, animal
signals, etc.) and conventional (human
made signs, and to espouse the view that
there is an inbuilt interpretive
component to the whole process of
representation
• John Locke (1632-1 704) , the English
philosopher who set out the
principles of empiricism, introduced
the formal study of signs into
philosophy in his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1690) ,
anticipating that it would allow
philosophers to understand the
interconnection between
representation and knowledge
• But the task he laid out remained virtually unnoticed until the
ideas of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure ( 1 857-1 9 1
3) and the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce ( 1 839-1
914) became the basis for circumscribing" an autonom6us
field of inquiry which sought to understand the structures
that undergird both the production and interpretation of
signs.
• The premise that guides" structuralist, semiotics is, in fact,
that the recurring patterns that characterize sign systems are
reflective " of innate structures in the sensory, emotional,
ancl intellectual composition of the human body and the
human psyche.
• This would explain why the forms of expression that humans
create and to which they respond instinctively the world over
are so meaningful and so easily understandable across
cultures
• In his Cours de linguistique generale (1916) , a
textbook put together after his death by two of his
university students, Saussure used the term semiology
to designate the field he proposed for studying these
structures.
• But while his term is still used somewhat today, the
older term semiotics is the preferred one.
• Saussure emphasized that the study of signs should be
divided into two branches - the synchronic and the
diachronic.
• The former refers to the study of signs at a given point
in time, normally the present, and the latter to the
investigation of how signs change in form and meaning
over time.
• Semiotics is both a science, with its own corpus
of findings and its theories, and a technique for
studying anything that produces signs.
• This is why Charles Peirce defined semiotics, as
did the philosopher John Locke before him, as
the 'doctrine' of signs (Peirce 1 958/2: 228) .
• The word doctrine was not used by Peirce in its
religious sense, but rather in its basic meaning
of 'system of principles.‘
• Suffice it to say here that all have worked under
the frameworks developed by Saussure and
Peirce.
6. Major figures
 More influential figures

• Derrida
• Eco
• Todorov
• Benveniste
• Propp
 NAME
• A human name is a sign that
identifies the person in terms of
such variables as ethnicity and
gender.
• Added names (surnames,
nicknames, etc. ) further refine
the 'identity referent' of the
name.
 SOURCES
• Semiotics for beginners. www.Slideshare.net
• Semiotics. www.Slideshare.net
• Sebeok, T.A. (2001). Signs: An Introduction to
Semiotics (2nd Ed). Online source
• Semiotic analysis. Online source
• Colour and Consumer Behaviour
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/colour-cons
umer-behaviour-170306022401/95/colour-per
ception-and-consumer-behaviour-1-638.jpg?c
b=1488767151