Signification: Denotation and Connotation

COMM 101
Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Semiotics is the science of signs.

• The study of semiotics is important because
it is the most scientific study of graphic
design that exists.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Saussure’s theories on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic

relations of the sign take us only so far towards understanding
how signs work.
• Saussure was interested primarily in the linguistic system,
secondarily in how that system related to the reality to which
it referred, and hardly at all in how it related to the reader
and his or her socio-cultural position.
• He was interested in the complex ways in which a sentence
can be constructed and in the way its form determines its
meaning; he was much less interested in the fact that the
same sentence may convey different meanings to different
people in different situations.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• In other words, he did not really envisage meaning

as being a process of negotiation between
writer/reader and text.
• He emphasized the text, not the way in which the
signs in the text interact with the cultural and
personal experience of the user (and it is not
important here to distinguish between writer and
reader), nor the way that the conventions in the
text interact with the conventions experienced and
expected by the user.
Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• On the other hand, Roland Barthes, who first

set up a systematic model by which this
negotiating, interactive idea of meaning could
be analysed.
• At the heart of Barthes’s theory is the idea of
two orders of signification.
Signification: Denotation and Connotation
Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Denotation
• A sign’s primary meaning.
• “dictionary definition”
• “just the facts, ma’am”
• What you see is pictured is the primary meaning.
• Denotation (dee-no-tation) is the primary
meaning that we give a word or an image.
• Denotation: What you see is the primary
meaning.
Signification: Denotation and Connotation
• Connotation
• A sign’s secondary meanings.
• Leverages the viewer’s past experiences, learned social rules and
conventions.
• Not just what is pictured, but how it is pictured.
• Opposed to denotation, is connotation, the secondary meanings
and associations that you have with a sign.
• It is interesting because we bring to it our own past experiences
as a viewer, including the social rules and conventions that we
have learned over time.
• It is not just what is pictured, but how it is pictured (or with
language it is how that word is said.)
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Denotation
• The first order of signification is the one on which
Saussure worked. It describes the relationship between
the signifier and signified within the sign, and of the
sign with its referent in external reality.
• Barthes refers to this order as denotation. This refers to
the common-sense, obvious meaning of the sign. A
photograph of a street scene denotes that particular
street; the word ‘street’ denotes an urban road lined
with buildings. But I can photograph this same street in
significantly different ways.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Connotation
• Connotation is the term Barthes uses to describe one
of the three ways in which signs work in the second
order of signification. It describes the interaction that
occurs when the sign meets the feelings or emotions
of the users and the values of their culture.
• This is when meanings move towards the subjective,
or at least the intersubjective: it is when the
interpretant is influenced as much by the interpreter
as by the object or the sign.
Signification: Denotation and Connotation
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• For Barthes, the critical factor in connotation

is the signifier in the first order. The first-
order signifier is the sign of the connotation.
Our imaginary photographs are both of the
same street; the difference between them lies
in the form, the appearance of the
photograph, that is, in the signifier.
• Connotation and Denotation are important
concepts in Semiotics.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Barthes (1977) argues that in photography at least,

the difference between connotation and
denotation is clear. Denotation is the mechanical
reproduction on film of the object at which the
camera is pointed.
• Connotation is the human part of the process: it is
the selection of what to include in the frame, of
focus, aperture, camera angle, quality of film, and
so on. Denotation is what is photographed;
connotation is how it is photographed.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Our tone of voice, how we speak, connotes the

feelings or values about what we say; in music.
• The choice of words is often a choice of
connotation—‘dispute’ or ‘strike’, ‘oiling the
wheels of commerce’ or ‘bribery’.
• These examples show-emotional or subjective
connotations, although we have to assume
that others in our culture share at least a large
part of them, that they are intersubjective.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Basically,
• Denotation is description.
• Connotation is comment.
Signification: Denotation and Connotation
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• 'Denotation' tends to be described as the

definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or
'commonsense' meaning of a sign. In the case
of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is
what the dictionary attempts to provide.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• The term 'connotation' is used to refer to the

socio-cultural and 'personal' associations
(ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign. These
are typically related to the interpreter's class,
age, gender, ethnicity and so on.
• Connotation works on the subjective level.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Signs are more 'polysemic‘ (more meaning) -

more open to interpretation - in their
connotations than their denotations.
‘Denotation’ is sometimes regarded as
a digital code and ‘Connotation’ as
an analogue code.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• In semiotics, denotation and connotation are

terms describing the relationship between
the signifier and its signified, and an analytic
distinction is made between two types of
signifieds: a denotative signified and
a connotative signified. Meaning includes
both denotation and connotation.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Related to connotation is what Roland Barthes

refers to as Myth.
• We usually associate myths with classical
fables about the exploits of gods and heroes.
But for Barthes myths were the dominant
ideologies of our time.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• A myth is a story by which a culture explains

or understands some aspect of reality or
nature. Primitive myths are about life and
death, men and gods, good and evil. Our
sophisticated myths are about masculinity and
femininity, about the family, about success,
about the British policeman, about science.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• A myth, for Barthes, is a culture’s way of thinking about

something, a way of conceptualizing or understanding
it.
• MYTH - In ancient Greece myth (muthos) came to mean
a fiction. Nowadays usually associated with fictions
which include the gods or supernatural forces, myth also
has the general meaning of the major fictional stories
that have abided since ancient times.
• Thus myth, while denoting what is fictional, also tends
to refer to stories that have an apparently timeless and
universal appeal and truth.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Barthes’s use of the word myth is therefore

particularly telling in that what he designates
by the term presents itself as natural and even
timeless but is, in fact, an expression of a
historically specific ideological vision of the
world.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• For Barthes, myths serve the ideological

function of naturalization.
• Their function is to naturalize the cultural - in
other words, to make dominant cultural and
historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem
entirely 'natural', 'normal', self-evident,
timeless, obvious 'common-sense' - and thus
objective and 'true' reflections of 'the way
things are'.
 Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Contemporary sociologists argue that social

groups tend to regard as 'natural' whatever
confers privilege and power upon themselves.
• Barthes saw myth as serving the ideological
interests of the bourgeoisie. 'Bourgeois
ideology... turns culture into nature,' he
declares.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=sp4f7WnaaAs
Signification: Denotation and Connotation

• Some signs are used to represent a more

complex concept, such as the shared values
and ideologies of a particular culture or group.
This is the second order of meaning, or
signification, which Barthes called myth.