Week 3: Semiotics

This week we revisited Semiotics. As we know, Semiotics is concerned with anything that can stand for something else. Below is the key element to analyze the text:

SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN DENOTATION = literal description and meaning of a signifier or sign. CONNOTATION = the representation and concept of the sign. It is metaphor.

 

Signifier is the object or text itself. Signifier is formed by the 5 senses; sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. Meanwhile, signified is the mental concept or image from the signifier. Below is the example:

Sometimes one signifier has many signified, for instances:

A P P L E

=

an apple, or...

Apple Mac Book, or...

apple pie, or...

‘You are the apple of my eye’ - Love quote.

Denotation is basically describes the sign or image, while connotation is what the sign or image represents for. Connotation is what you think when you hear the text or look at the image. Below are some examples:

Denotation: a girl half naked surrounding by three boys who exposing their body. The girl is kissing with one of them who sitting on the couch while lay on top of the other guy, and the last guy is lay on the floor. All of them were closing their eyes.

Connotation: All models were half naked because to get people attention on their product i.e Calvin Klein Jeans. The image also shows how women been portrayed as an object. In addition, women were used for sexual activities. This commercial has been banned in Australia.

Denotation: A couple is kissing with a bright red umbrella covered their faces while they were at some kind of near the lake.

Connotation: The couple is kissing represents love and romance. The venue of the photo taken represents the calm, peace and romantic place suitable for lovers. The dull background except the bright red umbrella gives focus to nothing but the couple.

Semiotics provides understanding of how ideologies and discourses are been created via visual codes and rules. Codes are a set of rules agreed upon by a society which are used to interpret the signs.

We want to study fashion in Visual Communication because it helps us understand the hidden meaning of what we wear. Visual Communication helps us reveal the identities through fashion. For example, a pair of tight jeans symbolizes the idea of woman sexuality and braveness.

In order to understand Semiotics more clear, I tried to explore the term in the image below:

Signifier: African-American man, a White lady, basketball, tough, pretty.

Sign: A man with a ball and a beautiful woman in his arm.

Denotation: A tough muscular black man with tattoo in his right arm wearing dark sport attire while dribbling a ball and his mouth is wide open. He wrapped his arm around a pretty tall lady who is wearing a beautiful light ocean blue color dress while smiling.

Connotation: The African-American man represents the ideal type of being a top star athlete, while the lady represents the ideal type of being the World’s top models. Both of them are the role models.


references:

Dr. Chris Woo lecture notes.
facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/gestalt_principles.htm 

Week 2: Seeing and Perception.

Perception is universal, yet individual process. We perceive about the same situation differently. Each of us experiences and interprets the world differently from the others, assigning the meaning based on what we perceive. Different people can develop or change different perceptions and meanings, thus there is no fixed meaning of something. Below is an example:

Two people with different gender were looking at the glass filled with water in front of them. The girl said that the glass was half full, while the man said that the glass was half empty. It shows that different people interpret differently about the same things at the same situation.

The realist suggests that people are not just receiving information about anything through senses; rather it is an active process (C. Boeree, 2009). For example, taste requires movement. It gives you information about what you are taste. If you never taste the flavor before, you would never classify what flavor it is even if you taste it many times. Therefore, perception is not something done with any specific sense organ. It is a multi-sensory, full bodied thing: "A one-year-old child standing on the floor of a room will fall down if the walls are silently and suddenly moved forward a few inches, although nothing touches him." (Neisser, p. 116, referring to Lee and Aronson, 1974)

We know that different people perceive things differently, so can anything be classify as real when each people in the world have their own perception? We just see something in a particular way but it does not make it so.Our version of what is reality is only stated by our belief structure, and it is essentially our perception of it; not what is so. For instance, you have been to car accident. You can choose to see that event as something terrified and tragic, or you can see it as an experience to appreciate every second of moments of your life. There is nothing such as which one is right or which one is wrong. You can control of how to respond to something, it is up to you.

"We see the world, not as it is, but as we are." - Talmud

 

Culture and society does affect perception, because each culture and society shared their own bases of social action, their own codes, beliefs and ideas, therefore different cultures give different meaning to things. For example, we as Bruneians see the hand gesture as a ‘thumbs up’ in a good way. However, for the Middle East people, they see it as a mean of ‘up your ass’, as an idea to fight over the power especially against the westerners. This shows that the culture and society does affect perception because of what they can connote signs with.

references:

1. Amit Sodha, 2006. extract from www.unlimitedchoice.org/blog/meditations/perception-vs-reality/

2. Dr.C.George Boeree. Perception and Interaction. extract from www.webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/genpsyperception.html

3. Dr. Chris lecture slides, Seeing and Perception: The World is Flat because You've Never Seen  it Round.

4. www.worldtrans.org/TP/TP1TP1-9.HTML

5. www.theoryofknowledge.info/theories-of-perception/