Week 4

"Semiotics involves the study of signs and formalises an attempt to establish the meaning of theses signs." (Inskip, MacFarlane and Rafferty, 2007, p. 693). Sign is the combination of signifiers and signified. A signifier has many signified. There's 3 different types sign, which is symbolic, indexical and iconic.

Then, there's Code, where its a set of rules agreed upon by a community. The knowledge about this code is important or else the interpretation of the sign can't be understood by others. Chris also thought us about Denotation and Connotation. "Denotation tend to be described as the defitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign."(Chandler, 2002, p.140). While Connotation is the representation and the concept of the sign.

Semiotic is used as a tool of analysis for visual communication. It explain how discourse and ideologies are usually constructed and also to help us to study culture and laws governing social life.

The study of signs guide us to understand the visual image which construct meaning for us and when certain signifiers are combined with others, it could create an entirely different meaning.

Anchorage, which is a very powerful tool used in Semiotic, where it shapes how we view and see things. It is use to "anchor" the meaning of the sign so that a more specific interpretation is use. If anchorage was absent, the definition of an image would go any direction.

Before officially ending the class, he told us that "You Don't Wear Clothes, But Clothes Wear You." What he meant was that the clothes are sign which are already embedded with meaning that is already coded by culture, therefore we are wearing meaning that are already construct. He then told us to update the blog on what we have learned today and asked us to do semiotics on a transcript or a picture. 

This picture's shows a man in a public male toilet,  and on the walls are picture of ladies with different poses which represents different meaning. If the man were to "pee" on the 1st toilet bowl, the women in the picture is looking at his penis with a magnifying glass, which is kinda demeaning. I say its demeaning because it say's that the guy, if that guy were to "pee" on the 1st toilet bowl, has a small penis. On the 2nd toilet bowl, shows a women smiling and giving a thumbs up, this shows that the women like what she's seeing on the guy. 

While on the 3rd toilet bowl, from the picture, shows the guy peeing there and turning his head to the left and the women, what I could see is holding a can of spray and she's tilting back slightly. I guess this shows that, the women thinks that the urine was really stinky that she had to spray it with perfume. On the last toilet bowl, shows a picture of a women handing out money, so I assume that this shows that if the guy were to do his business on this bowl, it shows that the guy is some sort male stripper or something. Why I say this is that , the guy is revealing his penis and the women is paying him. 

Reference List


Chandler, D. (2002). Semiotics: The Basics. New York; Routledge.


Inskip, C., MacFarlane, A. & Rafferty, P. (2008). Meaning, communication, music: towards a revised communication model. Journal of Documentation, 64(5), 693