Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or damages the natural environment, into the atmosphere.
The atmosphere is a complex, dynamic natural gaseous system that is essential to support life on planet Earth. Stratospheric ozone depletion due to air pollution has long been recognized as a threat to human health as well as to the Earth's ecosystems.
Sources:
An air pollutant is known as a substance in the air that can cause harm to humans and the environment. Pollutants can be in the form of solid particles, liquid droplets, or gases. In addition, they may be natural or man-made.[1]
Pollutants can be classified as either primary or secondary. Usually, primary pollutants are substances directly emitted from a process, such as ash from a volcanic eruption, the carbon monoxide gas from a motor vehicle exhaust or sulfur dioxide released from factories.
Secondary pollutants are not emitted directly. Rather, they form in the air when primary pollutants react or interact. An important example of a secondary pollutant is ground level ozone — one of the many secondary pollutants that make up photochemical smog.
Note that some pollutants may be both primary and secondary: that is, they are both emitted directly and formed from other primary pollutants.
About 4 percent of deaths in the United States can be attributed to air pollution, according to the Environmental Science Engineering Program at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Major primary pollutants produced by human activity include:
* Sulfur oxides (SOx) - especially sulfur dioxide, a chemical compound with the formula SO2. SO2 is produced by volcanoes and in various industrial processes. Since coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, their combustion generates sulfur dioxide. Further oxidation of SO2, usually in the presence of a catalyst such as NO2, forms H2SO4, and thus acid rain.[2] This is one of the causes for concern over the environmental impact of the use of these fuels as power sources.
* Nitrogen oxides (NOx) - especially nitrogen dioxide are emitted from high temperature combustion. Can be seen as the brown haze dome above or plume downwind of cities.Nitrogen dioxide is the chemical compound with the formula NO2. It is one of the several nitrogen oxides. This reddish-brown toxic gas has a characteristic sharp, biting odor. NO2 is one of the most prominent air pollutants.
* Carbon monoxide - is a colourless, odourless, non-irritating but very poisonous gas. It is a product by incomplete combustion of fuel such as natural gas, coal or wood. Vehicular exhaust is a major source of carbon monoxide.
* Carbon dioxide (CO2) - a greenhouse gas emitted from combustion but is also a gas vital to living organisms. It is a natural gas in the atmosphere.
* Volatile organic compounds - VOCs are an important outdoor air pollutant. In this field they are often divided into the separate categories of methane (CH4) and non-methane (NMVOCs). Methane is an extremely efficient greenhouse gas which contributes to enhanced global warming. Other hydrocarbon VOCs are also significant greenhouse gases via their role in creating ozone and in prolonging the life of methane in the atmosphere, although the effect varies depending on local air quality. Within the NMVOCs, the aromatic compounds benzene, toluene and xylene are suspected carcinogens and may lead to leukemia through prolonged exposure. 1,3-butadiene is another dangerous compound which is often associated with industrial uses.
* Particulate matter - Particulates, alternatively referred to as particulate matter (PM) or fine particles, are tiny particles of solid or liquid suspended in a gas. In contrast, aerosol refers to particles and the gas together. Sources of particulate matter can be man made or natural. Some particulates occur naturally, originating from volcanoes, dust storms, forest and grassland fires, living vegetation, and sea spray. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, power plants and various industrial processes also generate significant amounts of aerosols. Averaged over the globe, anthropogenic aerosols—those made by human activities—currently account for about 10 percent of the total amount of aerosols in our atmosphere. Increased levels of fine particles in the air are linked to health hazards such as heart disease, altered lung function and lung cancer.
* Persistent free radicals connected to airborne fine particles could cause cardiopulmonary disease.[2][3]
* Toxic metals, such as lead, cadmium and copper.
* Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) - harmful to the ozone layer emitted from products currently banned from use.
* Ammonia (NH3) - emitted from agricultural processes. Ammonia is a compound with the formula NH3. It is normally encountered as a gas with a characteristic pungent odor. Ammonia contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to foodstuffs and fertilizers. Ammonia, either directly or indirectly, is also a building block for the synthesis of many pharmaceuticals. Although in wide use, ammonia is both caustic and hazardous.
* Odors — such as from garbage, sewage, and industrial processes
* Radioactive pollutants - produced by nuclear explosions, war explosives, and natural processes such as the radioactive decay of radon.
Secondary pollutants include:
* Particulate matter formed from gaseous primary pollutants and compounds in photochemical smog .Smog is a kind of air pollution; the word "smog" is a portmanteau of smoke and fog. Classic smog results from large amounts of coal burning in an area caused by a mixture of smoke and sulfur dioxide. Modern smog does not usually come from coal but from vehicular and industrial emissions that are acted on in the atmosphere by sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine with the primary emissions to form photochemical smog.
* Ground level ozone (O3) formed from NOx and VOCs. Ozone (O3) is a key constituent of the troposphere (it is also an important constituent of certain regions of the stratosphere commonly known as the Ozone layer). Photochemical and chemical reactions involving it drive many of the chemical processes that occur in the atmosphere by day and by night. At abnormally high concentrations brought about by human activities (largely the combustion of fossil fuel), it is a pollutant, and a constituent of smog.
* Peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) - similarly formed from NOx and VOCs.
Minor air pollutants include:
* A large number of minor hazardous air pollutants. Some of these are regulated in USA under the Clean Air Act and in Europe under the Air Framework Directive.
* A variety of persistent organic pollutants, which can attach to particulate matter.
Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are organic compounds that are resistant to environmental degradation through chemical, biological, and photolytic processes. Because of this, they have been observed to persist in the environment, to be capable of long-range transport, bioaccumulate in human and animal tissue, biomagnify in food chains, and to have potential significant impacts on human health and the environment.
Sources of air pollution refer to the various locations, activities or factors which are responsible for the releasing of pollutants in the atmosphere. These sources can be classified into two major categories which are:
Anthropogenic sources (human activity) mostly related to burning different kinds of fuel
* "Stationary Sources" include smoke stacks of power plants, manufacturing facilities (factories) and waste incinerators, as well as furnaces and other types of fuel-burning heating devices
* "Mobile Sources" include motor vehicles, marine vessels, aircraft and the effect of sound etc.
* Chemicals, dust and controlled burn practices in agriculture and forestry management. Controlled or prescribed burning is a technique sometimes used in forest management, farming, prairie restoration or greenhouse gas abatement. Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and controlled fire can be a tool for foresters. Controlled burning stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, thus renewing the forest.
* Fumes from paint, hair spray, varnish, aerosol sprays and other solvents
* Waste deposition in landfills, which generate methane.Methane is not toxic; however, it is highly flammable and may form explosive mixtures with air. Methane is also an asphyxiant and may displace oxygen in an enclosed space. Asphyxia or suffocation may result if the oxygen concentration is reduced to below 19.5% by displacement
* Military, such as nuclear weapons, toxic gases, germ warfare and rocketry
Natural sources
* Dust from natural sources, usually large areas of land with little or no vegetation.
* Methane, emitted by the digestion of food by animals, for example cattle.
* Radon gas from radioactive decay within the Earth's crust. Radon is a colorless, odorless, naturally occurring, radioactive noble gas that is formed from the decay of radium. It is considered to be a health hazard. Radon gas from natural sources can accumulate in buildings, especially in confined areas such as the basement and it is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking.
* Smoke and carbon monoxide from wildfires.
* Volcanic activity, which produce sulfur, chlorine, and ash particulates.
Emission factors
Air pollutant emission factors are representative values that attempt to relate the quantity of a pollutant released to the ambient air with an activity associated with the release of that pollutant. These factors are usually expressed as the weight of pollutant divided by a unit weight, volume, distance, or duration of the activity emitting the pollutant (e.g., kilograms of particulate emitted per megagram of coal burned). Such factors facilitate estimation of emissions from various sources of air pollution. In most cases, these factors are simply averages of all available data of acceptable quality, and are generally assumed to be representative of long-term averages.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency has published a compilation of air pollutant emission factors for a multitude of industrial sources.[4] The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and many other countries have published similar compilations, as well as the European Environment Agency
Indoor Air Quality
A lack of ventilation indoors concentrates air pollution where people often spend the majority of their time. Radon (Rn) gas, a carcinogen, is exuded from the Earth in certain locations and trapped inside houses. Building materials including carpeting and plywood emit formaldehyde (H2CO) gas. Paint and solvents give off volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as they dry. Lead paint can degenerate into dust and be inhaled. Intentional air pollution is introduced with the use of air fresheners, incense, and other scented items. Controlled wood fires in stoves and fireplaces can add significant amounts of smoke particulates into the air, inside and out. Indoor pollution fatalities may be caused by using pesticides and other chemical sprays indoors without proper ventilation.
Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning and fatalities are often caused by faulty vents and chimneys, or by the burning of charcoal indoors. Chronic carbon monoxide poisoning can result even from poorly adjusted pilot lights. Traps are built into all domestic plumbing to keep sewer gas, hydrogen sulfide, out of interiors. Clothing emits tetrachloroethylene, or other dry cleaning fluids, for days after dry cleaning.
Though its use has now been banned in many countries, the extensive use of asbestos in industrial and domestic environments in the past has left a potentially very dangerous material in many localities. Asbestosis is a chronic inflammatory medical condition affecting the tissue of the lungs. It occurs after long-term, heavy exposure to asbestos from asbestos-containing materials in structures. Sufferers have severe dyspnea (shortness of breath) and are at an increased risk regarding several different types of lung cancer. As clear explanations are not always stressed in non-technical literature, care should be taken to distinguish between several forms of relevant diseases. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), these may defined as; asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma (generally a very rare form of cancer, when more widespread it is almost always associated with prolonged exposure to asbestos).
Biological sources of air pollution are also found indoors, as gases and airborne particulates. Pets produce dander, people produce dust from minute skin flakes and decomposed hair, dust mites in bedding, carpeting and furniture produce enzymes and micrometre-sized fecal droppings, inhabitants emit methane, mold forms in walls and generates mycotoxins and spores, air conditioning systems can incubate Legionnaires' disease and mold, and houseplants, soil and surrounding gardens can produce pollen, dust, and mold. Indoors, the lack of air circulation allows these airborne pollutants to accumulate more than they would otherwise occur in nature.
Health Effects of Air Pollution
The World Health Organization states that 2.4 million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air pollution, with 1.5 million of these deaths attributable to indoor air pollution. "Epidemiological studies suggest that more than 500,000 Americans die each year from cardiopulmonary disease linked to breathing fine particle air pollution. . ." A study by the University of Birmingham has shown a strong correlation between pneumonia related deaths and air pollution from motor vehicles.[13] Worldwide more deaths per year are linked to air pollution than to automobile accidents.[citation needed] Published in 2005 suggests that 310,000 Europeans die from air pollution annually.[citation needed] Direct causes of air pollution related deaths include aggravated asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, lung and heart diseases, and respiratory allergies.[citation needed] The US EPA estimates that a proposed set of changes in diesel engine technology (Tier 2) could result in 12,000 fewer premature mortalities, 15,000 fewer heart attacks, 6,000 fewer emergency room visits by children with asthma, and 8,900 fewer respiratory-related hospital admissions each year in the United States.
The worst short term civilian pollution crisis in India was the 1984 Bhopal Disaster. Leaked industrial vapors from the Union Carbide factory, belonging to Union Carbide, Inc., U.S.A., killed more than 2,000 people outright and injured anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 others, some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries.[citation needed] The United Kingdom suffered its worst air pollution event when the December 4 Great Smog of 1952 formed over London. In six days more than 4,000 died, and 8,000 more died within the following months.[citation needed] An accidental leak of anthrax spores from a biological warfare laboratory in the former USSR in 1979 near Sverdlovsk is believed to have been the cause of hundreds of civilian deaths.[citation needed] The worst single incident of air pollution to occur in the United States of America occurred in Donora, Pennsylvania in late October, 1948, when 20 people died and over 7,000 were injured.
The health effects caused by air pollutants may range from subtle biochemical and physiological changes to difficulty in breathing, wheezing, coughing and aggravation of existing respiratory and cardiac conditions. These effects can result in increased medication use, increased doctor or emergency room visits, more hospital admissions and premature death. The human health effects of poor air quality are far reaching, but principally affect the body's respiratory system and the cardiovascular system. Individual reactions to air pollutants depend on the type of pollutant a person is exposed to, the degree of exposure, the individual's health status and genetics.[citation needed]
A new economic study of the health impacts and associated costs of air pollution in the Los Angeles Basin and San Joaquin Valley of Southern California shows that more than 3800 people die prematurely (approximately 14 years earlier than normal) each year because air pollution levels violate federal standards. The number of annual premature deaths is considerably higher than the fatalities related to auto collisions in the same area, which average fewer than 2,000 per year.
Diesel exhaust (DE) is a major contributor to combustion derived particulate matter air pollution. In several human experimental studies, using a well validated exposure chamber setup, DE has been linked to acute vascular dysfunction and increased thrombus formation
Effects on children
Cities around the world with high exposure to air pollutants have the possibility of children living within them to develop asthma, pneumonia and other lower respiratory infections as well as a low initial birth rate. Protective measures to ensure the youths' health are being taken in cities such as New Delhi, India where buses now use compressed natural gas to help eliminate the “pea-soup” smog.Research by the World Health Organization shows there is the greatest concentration of particulate matter particles in countries with low economic world power and high poverty and population rates. Examples of these countries include Egypt, Sudan, Mongolia, and Indonesia. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, however in 2002 at least 146 million Americans were living in areas that did not meet at least one of the “criteria pollutants” laid out in the 1997 National Ambient Air Quality Standards.Those pollutants included: ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead. Because children are outdoors more and have higher minute ventilation they are more susceptible to the dangers of air pollution.
Most Polluted World Cities by PM[50]
Particulate
matter,
μg/m³ (2004) City
169 Cairo, Egypt
150 Delhi, India
128 Kolkata, India (Calcutta)
125 Tianjin, China
123 Chongqing, China
109 Kanpur, India
109 Lucknow, India
104 Jakarta, Indonesia
101 Shenyang, China
Total CO2 emissions
Main article: List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions
Countries with the highest CO2 emissions
Country Carbon dioxide emissions per
year (106 Tons) (2006) Percentage of global total
China 6,103 21.5%
United States 5,752 20.2%
Russia 1,564 5.5%
India 1,510 5.3%
Japan 1293 4.6%
Germany 805 2.8%
United Kingdom 568 2.0%
Canada 544 1.9%
South Korea 475 1.7%
Italy 474 1.7%
Countries with the highest per capita CO2 emissions
Country Carbon dioxide emissions per year
(Tons per person) (2006)
Qatar 56.2
United Arab Emirates 32.8
Kuwait 31.2
Bahrain 28.8
Trinidad and Tobago 25.3
Luxembourg 24.5
Netherlands Antilles 22.8
Aruba 22.3
United States 19
Australia 18.1
Monday, February 22, 2010
Environmental journalism
Environmental journalism is the collection, verification, production, distribution and exhibition of information regarding current events, trends, issues and people that are associated with the non-human world with which humans necessarily interact. To be an environmental journalist, one must have an understanding of scientific language and practice, knowledge of historical environmental events, the ability to keep abreast of environmental policy decisions and the work of environmental organizations, a general understanding of current environmental concerns, and the ability to communicate all of that information to the public in such a way that it can be easily understood, despite its complexity.
Environmental journalism falls within the scope of environmental communication, and its roots can be traced to nature writing. One key controversy in environmental journalism is a continuing disagreement over how to distinguish it from its allied genres and disciplines.
History
While the practice of nature writing has a rich history that dates back at least as far as the exploration narratives of Christopher Columbus, and follows tradition up through prominent nature writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the late 19th century, John Burroughs and John Muir in the early 20th century, and Aldo Leopold in the 1940s, the field of environmental journalism did not begin to take shape until the 1960s and 1970s.
The growth of environmental journalism as a profession roughly parallels that of the environmental movement, which became a mainstream cultural movement with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and was further legitimized by the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Grassroots environmental organizations made a booming appearance on the political scene in the 1960s and 1970s, raising public awareness of what many considered to be the “environmental crisis,” and working to influence environmental policy decisions. The mass media has followed and generated public interest on environmental issues ever since.
The field of environmental journalism was further legitimized by the creation of the Society of Environmental Journalists in 1990, whose mission “is to advance public understanding of environmental issues by improving the quality, accuracy, and visibility of environmental reporting.” Today, academic programs are offered at a number of institutions to train budding journalists in the rigors, complexity and sheer breadth of environmental journalism.
Advocacy debate
There exists a minor rift in the community of environmental journalists. Some, including those in the Society of Environmental Journalists, believe in objectively reporting environmental news, while others, like Michael Frome, a prominent figure in the field, believe that journalists should only enter the environmental side of the field if saving the planet is a personal passion, and that environmental journalists should not shy away from environmental advocacy, though not at the expense of clearly relating facts and opinions on all sides of an issue. This debate is not likely to be settled soon, but with changes in the field of journalism filtering up from new media being used by the general public to produce news, it seems likely that the field of environmental journalism will lend itself more and more toward reporting points of view akin to environmental advocacy.
Genres
Environmental communication is all of the forms of communication that are engaged with the social debate about environmental issues and problems.[1]
Also within the scope of environmental communication are the genres of nature writing, science writing, environmental literature, environmental interpretation and environmental advocacy. While there is a great deal of overlap among the various genres within environmental communication, they are each deserving of their own definition.
Nature writing
Nature writing is the genre with the longest history in environmental communication. In his book, This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing, Thomas J. Lyon attempts to use a “taxonomy of nature writing” in order to define the genre. He suggests that his classifications, too, suffer a great deal of overlap and intergrading. “The literature of nature has three main dimensions to it: natural history information, personal responses to nature, and philosophical interpretation of nature” (Lyon 20). In the natural history essay, “the main burden of the writing is to convey pointed instruction in the facts of nature,” such as with the ramble-type nature writing of John Burroughs (Lyon 21). “In essays of experience, the author’s firsthand contact with nature is the frame for the writing,” as with Edward Abbey’s contemplation of a desert sunset (Lyon 23). In the philosophical interpretation of nature, the content is similar to that of the natural history and personal experience essays, “but the mode of presentation tends to be more abstract and scholarly” (Lyon 25). The Norton Book of Nature Writing adds a few new dimensions to the genre of nature writing, including animal narratives, garden essays, farming essays, ecofeminist works, writing on environmental justice, and works advocating environmental preservation, sustainability and biological diversity. Environmental journalism pulls from the tradition and scope of nature writing.
Science writing
Science writing is writing that focuses specifically on topics of scientific study, generally translating jargon that is difficult for those outside a particular scientific field to understand into language that is easily digestible. This genre can be narrative or informative. Not all science writing falls within the bounds of environmental communication, only science writing that takes on topics relevant to the environment. Environmental journalism also pulls from the tradition and scope of science writing.
Environmental journalism falls within the scope of environmental communication, and its roots can be traced to nature writing. One key controversy in environmental journalism is a continuing disagreement over how to distinguish it from its allied genres and disciplines.
History
While the practice of nature writing has a rich history that dates back at least as far as the exploration narratives of Christopher Columbus, and follows tradition up through prominent nature writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the late 19th century, John Burroughs and John Muir in the early 20th century, and Aldo Leopold in the 1940s, the field of environmental journalism did not begin to take shape until the 1960s and 1970s.
The growth of environmental journalism as a profession roughly parallels that of the environmental movement, which became a mainstream cultural movement with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and was further legitimized by the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Grassroots environmental organizations made a booming appearance on the political scene in the 1960s and 1970s, raising public awareness of what many considered to be the “environmental crisis,” and working to influence environmental policy decisions. The mass media has followed and generated public interest on environmental issues ever since.
The field of environmental journalism was further legitimized by the creation of the Society of Environmental Journalists in 1990, whose mission “is to advance public understanding of environmental issues by improving the quality, accuracy, and visibility of environmental reporting.” Today, academic programs are offered at a number of institutions to train budding journalists in the rigors, complexity and sheer breadth of environmental journalism.
Advocacy debate
There exists a minor rift in the community of environmental journalists. Some, including those in the Society of Environmental Journalists, believe in objectively reporting environmental news, while others, like Michael Frome, a prominent figure in the field, believe that journalists should only enter the environmental side of the field if saving the planet is a personal passion, and that environmental journalists should not shy away from environmental advocacy, though not at the expense of clearly relating facts and opinions on all sides of an issue. This debate is not likely to be settled soon, but with changes in the field of journalism filtering up from new media being used by the general public to produce news, it seems likely that the field of environmental journalism will lend itself more and more toward reporting points of view akin to environmental advocacy.
Genres
Environmental communication is all of the forms of communication that are engaged with the social debate about environmental issues and problems.[1]
Also within the scope of environmental communication are the genres of nature writing, science writing, environmental literature, environmental interpretation and environmental advocacy. While there is a great deal of overlap among the various genres within environmental communication, they are each deserving of their own definition.
Nature writing
Nature writing is the genre with the longest history in environmental communication. In his book, This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing, Thomas J. Lyon attempts to use a “taxonomy of nature writing” in order to define the genre. He suggests that his classifications, too, suffer a great deal of overlap and intergrading. “The literature of nature has three main dimensions to it: natural history information, personal responses to nature, and philosophical interpretation of nature” (Lyon 20). In the natural history essay, “the main burden of the writing is to convey pointed instruction in the facts of nature,” such as with the ramble-type nature writing of John Burroughs (Lyon 21). “In essays of experience, the author’s firsthand contact with nature is the frame for the writing,” as with Edward Abbey’s contemplation of a desert sunset (Lyon 23). In the philosophical interpretation of nature, the content is similar to that of the natural history and personal experience essays, “but the mode of presentation tends to be more abstract and scholarly” (Lyon 25). The Norton Book of Nature Writing adds a few new dimensions to the genre of nature writing, including animal narratives, garden essays, farming essays, ecofeminist works, writing on environmental justice, and works advocating environmental preservation, sustainability and biological diversity. Environmental journalism pulls from the tradition and scope of nature writing.
Science writing
Science writing is writing that focuses specifically on topics of scientific study, generally translating jargon that is difficult for those outside a particular scientific field to understand into language that is easily digestible. This genre can be narrative or informative. Not all science writing falls within the bounds of environmental communication, only science writing that takes on topics relevant to the environment. Environmental journalism also pulls from the tradition and scope of science writing.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Asim Rafiqui visits MGCPS
About Asim Rafiqui
International photographer Asim Rafiqui visited Modern Girls College of Professional Studies and interacted with students giving them an hour-long talk on Photography as a career, new avenues and starter tips.Currently working on the Idea of India Project, Asim provided an enlightened afternoon and detailed his latest work....
THE IDEA OF INDIA PROJECT
Summary
In the last few decades we have become accustomed to news of sectarian violence on the Indian sub-continent. In particular, there is a widening and violent rift between India’s Hindu and Muslim communities. But religious and cultural pluralism is a prominent feature of Indian life and has been her heritage for centuries. I am documenting this culture of pluralism and tolerance, and how it today has become an act of resistance to the sectarians and a means of building peace between the communities.
__________
“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’(Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.”
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations 1969
India’s sectarian view of its history begins not in modern day India but in pre-partition India. Influenced by European nationalist movements and dismissing nearly 1000 years of their own heterogeneous heritage, a group of Indian intellectuals became convinced of the irreconcilability of India’s Muslim and Hindu ‘nations’. The state of Pakistan, carved out of India in 1947, was one consequence of this largely political and ahistorical belief. It cemented a questionable theory into a geo-political reality.
A recent manifestation of the idea has been the Hindutva project, a right wing Hindu movement that aims at cleansing India of her non-Hindu influences, rewriting her history as a purely Hindu one and intimidating her minorities – particularly her Muslims – into acquiescing to its political and cultural demands. The Hindutva movement has used academics to rewrite history, political leaders to impose its idea of a ‘Hindu’ society at the national level and violence to intimidate those who resist it.
In 1992 the Bharata Janata Party (BJP), the Hindutva’s political arm, orchestrated the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, rallying people by claiming that the mosque had been built over a temple to the god Ram. The campaign touched a popular note and helped the party win the 1998 parliamentary elections. More violence against the Muslims followed, the worst occurred in 2002 when over 2000 Muslims were killed in Ahmedabad, Gujarat as the local police and politicians looked on. In the aftermath of such communal violence many previously mixed neighborhoods were divided into sectarian enclaves. Despite losing power in 2004, the BJP remains a powerful opposition party and the Hindutva’s network of schools, welfare associations and militant groups continue to influence popular conceptions about India’s history and culture.
Today an ‘Islamic’ militancy is emerging and is targeting Hindu communities in acts of revenge. Bombs have torn through busy markets and neighborhoods in Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Delhi. And to further complicate matters the state of Orissa has been engulfed in violence as rampaging Hindu mobs accuse the local Christians of trying to convert local Hindus to Christianity. Over 6 weeks of violence has seen thousands displaced and dozens of churches burnt.
Victims of distorted histories, the people of India (and Pakistan) are trapped in a dialog of violence and confrontation.
The Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore once said that the “idea of India” itself militated against a culturally separatist view—”against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others.” He would be quite dismayed to see the state of affairs in India today. So am I, a Kashmiri Muslim whose own pluralist heritage (Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist) has become a victim of a sectarian militancy. But Tagore would be right in his conviction that India’s own history speaks against the chauvinism of sectarianism. Contemporary India offers a vivid example of how a people resist sectarian extremism, and the imposed division of their communities.
My project is a visual and narrative documentation of this ‘idea of India’ as I explore
1. Pluralist landscapes where traditions of social and religious sharing still exist, and those where it may already have been lost. I will also include sites that were once centers of such tolerance and whose histories offer us important lessons and understandings today
2. Shared sacred sites like major Sufi dargahs where Hindus and Muslims cross paths and which today and in the past have acted as important sources of healing and reconciliation. I will also focus on sites where Hindu and Christian beliefs have fused and syncretic rituals have emerged.
3. Shared cultural traditions including religious festivals that have evolved past their sectarian sources and broadened to welcome participants of all beliefs.
4. Efforts at reconciliation within divided communities for example those in Gujarat and in Kashmir, where victims of sectarian violence and cleansing are working with former neighbors, activists and concerned citizens to find a way back to their homes.
This project then is a journey though an alternative India; of lived experiences, of lives and imaginations not bound by sectarianism. In some instances I document real, lived acts of resistance and cultural sharing. In other instances I explore social spaces that point to worlds more complex, beautiful and vital than those offered by the threadbare hate mongering of the sectarians. In other words, I am using photography not only as a means of evidence, but also as a vessel for the imagination.
Religious fundamentalism is a threat faced by democracies around the globe. India offers an example of the struggle between people who are prepared to live with and respect others who are different, and those who seek the comfort of homogeneity and the domination of a single ‘pure’ religious and ethnic tradition. In the aftermath of the hatreds and violence that led to the partition of India, an act that was expected to solve the Hindu-Muslim question by separating the two, we find that that the quest for peace and reconciliation is a delicate process that may continue to unfold for decades. In India it remains a determined and continuing struggle, worthy of more attention than it has hitherto received.
This project is supported by The Aftermath Project founded by photographer Sara Terry.
The project is supported by The Blue Earth Alliance.
More about Asim Farouqui
Photo By Kurihara, Tokyo 2007
Photo By Kurihara, Tokyo 2007
Grants/Stipends
Blue Earth Alliance Sponsorship 2009
Aftermath Grant (2009) for ‘The Idea of India’
Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting Grant (2008)
Finalist Aftermath Grant (2007)
Awards/Nominations
Nominated Visa d’Or News, Visa pour L’image (2005)
Nominated “Fujifilm Young Photographer Award”, Visa pour L’image (2005)
Exhibitions (Independent & Joint):
Paris Photo, Gaza Undone, 2009
The Empty Quarter Gallery, Dubai, 2009 ‘Blow Out’
Gage Gallery, Roosevelt University, 2008 ‘Aftermath of War’
Noorderlicht, Groningen, 2007: ‘Acts of Faith’
Visa pour L’image, Perpignan, France, 2005: ‘Haiti’s Struggle for Democracy’
Visa pour L’image, Perpignan, France, 2004: ‘The Unconsoled: Rafah, Gaza’
Galleri Kontrast, Stockholm Sweden 2002: ‘Afghanistan: Restart’
Education (Photographic & Other)
Columbia University, New York City, 1988 (B.Sc) and 1995 (M.B.A.)
Missouri Photo Workshop, Fulton, MO, Helge Scholarship
Friday, September 4, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Indian media Vs China--the winning edge
It's advantage India all the way when it comes to attracting investors in the media.
There are three main reasons for this which we shall deliberate upon:
The Indian Democracy :
The fact that India is the world's largest secular democracy gives its people the right to read, write, publish, make watch listen to whatever they want. It gives investors arangeof options and the market a depth unlike other Asian markets. The biggest contender for this top post, China, loses out largely because of its closed governance and state-owned enterprise. In print as in TV most investors have to make do with joint ventures with state-owned enterprises. SO far China has seen very little strategic investment and almost nothing in content. A Balaji or UTV kind of listing is unthinkable vis a vis China.As an indication of the yawning demand-supply gap one fact suffices: For every ten hours of programming required of Chinese films or TV, only one hour is available. Therefore all investment made by media companies in infrastructure is lying unutilised. Political stability has also helped rake in investment to India.
Language:
India has a large population of young urban professionals fluent in English. This, when compared with other South Asian nations is what gives India the cutting edge. It makes it all the more easier for western media professionals to interact and understand Indian counterparts as compared to other countries like Thailand, China, Indonesia etc.
Globalisation & Liberalisation.
The M&E liberalisation in 2003 ushered a new era. This freed publishing to get institutional finance, seek FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) and resulted in DTH licences being issued. Film companies have now been professionalising for over 5 yrs now and publishers expanding all over the country entering regional markets. Broadcasters have ore options like DTH and Broadband to sell television rights and radio is finally free of licencing fees.
The scope this has opened is tremendous. At Rs 420 odd billion or over $ 9 billion the Indian market is but a tiny fraction pf its global counterpart that is set to touch $ 1375 billion in 2005 . However within Asia Pacific, India is one of the fastest growing media markets.
There are three main reasons for this which we shall deliberate upon:
The Indian Democracy :
The fact that India is the world's largest secular democracy gives its people the right to read, write, publish, make watch listen to whatever they want. It gives investors arangeof options and the market a depth unlike other Asian markets. The biggest contender for this top post, China, loses out largely because of its closed governance and state-owned enterprise. In print as in TV most investors have to make do with joint ventures with state-owned enterprises. SO far China has seen very little strategic investment and almost nothing in content. A Balaji or UTV kind of listing is unthinkable vis a vis China.As an indication of the yawning demand-supply gap one fact suffices: For every ten hours of programming required of Chinese films or TV, only one hour is available. Therefore all investment made by media companies in infrastructure is lying unutilised. Political stability has also helped rake in investment to India.
Language:
India has a large population of young urban professionals fluent in English. This, when compared with other South Asian nations is what gives India the cutting edge. It makes it all the more easier for western media professionals to interact and understand Indian counterparts as compared to other countries like Thailand, China, Indonesia etc.
Globalisation & Liberalisation.
The M&E liberalisation in 2003 ushered a new era. This freed publishing to get institutional finance, seek FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) and resulted in DTH licences being issued. Film companies have now been professionalising for over 5 yrs now and publishers expanding all over the country entering regional markets. Broadcasters have ore options like DTH and Broadband to sell television rights and radio is finally free of licencing fees.
The scope this has opened is tremendous. At Rs 420 odd billion or over $ 9 billion the Indian market is but a tiny fraction pf its global counterpart that is set to touch $ 1375 billion in 2005 . However within Asia Pacific, India is one of the fastest growing media markets.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Contextual Studies-- Semiology and Semiotics
Semiology/ Semiotics
The study of the function of signs and symbols in human communication, both in language and by various nonlinguistic means. Beginning with the notion of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure that no word or other sign (signifier) is intrinsically linked with its meaning (signified), it was developed as a scientific discipline, especially by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. Signs and symbols can also be used in design drawings such as electrical circuits or computer flowcharts.
Semiotics has combined with structuralism in order to explore the ‘production’ of meaning in language and other sign systems and has emphasized the conventional nature of this production.
Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.
This discipline is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. However, some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science. They examine areas belonging also to the natural sciences - such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis.
Syntactics is the branch of semiotics that deals with the formal properties of signs and symbols.[1]
Semiology // Semiotics
by Robert M. Seiler
We can define semiology or semiotics as the study of signs. We may not realize it, but in fact semiology can be applied to all sorts of human endeavours, including cinema, theatre, dance, architecture, painting, politics, medicine, history, and religion. That is, we use a variety of gestures (signs) in everyday life to convey messages to people around us, e.g., rubbing our thumb and forefinger together to signify money.
We should think of messages (or texts) as systems of signs, e.g., lexical, graphic, and so on, which gain their effects via the constant clashes between these systems. For example, the menu we consult in a restaurant has been drawn up with reference to a structure, but this structure can be filled differently, according to time and place, e.g., breakfast or dinner (Barthes, 1964, p. 28).
In the notes that follow, I will say a few words about structuralism, an intellectual movement which flourished during the 1950s and the 1960s, and semiology, which has been one of the chief modes of this intellectual movement. The major figures in this movement include Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Thomas Sebeok, Julia Kristeva, and Umberto Eco. For reasons that will become obvious, I will focus on Saussure and Barthes, the pioneers. All believed semiology is the key to unlocking meaning of all things.
the basic elements of structuralism
To begin with, we should think of structuralism as a mode of thought, a way of conceptualizing phenomena. Whereas in the past, determinists like Aristotle saw things in terms of cause and effect, structuralists look for structures:
• From the 15th century, the word "structure" was used as a noun: the process of building (Williams, 1976).
• During the 17th century, the term developed in two main directions: towards the product of building, as in "a wooden structure," and towards the manner of construction generally. Modern developments flow from (b). The sense of the latter is: the mutual relation of the constituent parts of a whole which define its nature, as in "internal structure."
• The term entered the vocabulary of biology in the 18th century, as in the structure of the hand.
• The term entered the vocabulary of language, literature, and philosophy in the 19th century, to convey the idea of internal structure as constitutive, as in matters of building and engineering. Scholars would talk (1863) about the structural differences that separate man from gorilla say.
We need to know this history if we are to understand the development of structural and structuralist thinking in the 20th century, as in linguistics and anthropology. We note that this theoretical construct dominated intellectual life in France, extending into the literary arts, during the period from WW I to WW II. Linguists in North America had to discard the presuppositions of Indo-European linguistics when they studied the languages of American Indians. They developed procedures for studying language as a whole, i.e., deep internal relations. Thus, we now distinguish function (performance) from structure (organization), as in structuralist linguistics and functional anthropology.
According to (orthodox) structuralism, these structures range from kinship to myth, not to mention grammar, one permanent constitutive of human formations: the defining features of human consciousness (and perhaps the human brain), e.g., Id, Ego, Superego, Libido, or Death-Wish in psychology. Of course, the assumption here is that the structuralist is an objective observer, independent of the object of consideration. In this context, we use words like code (hidden relations) to describe sign-systems (like fashion).
We should note that structuralism challenges common sense, which believes that things have one meaning and this meaning is pretty obvious. Common sense tells us that the world is pretty much as we perceive it. In other words, structuralism tells us that meaning is constructed, as a product of shared systems of signification.
Semiology: Two Pioneers
Again, semiology can be defined as the study of signs: how they work and how we use them. We note again that almost anything can signify something for someone. Saussure developed the principles of semiology as they applied to language; Barthes extended these ideas to messages (word-and-image relations) of all sorts.
1. Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857-1913
Saussure was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to a family celebrated for its accomplishments in the natural sciences. Not surprisingly, he discovered linguistic studies early in life.
In 1875, he entered the University of Geneva as a student of physics and chemistry, taking course in Greek and Latin grammar as well. This experience convinced him that his career lay in the study of language. In 1876, he entered the University of Leipzig to study Indo-European languages. Here, he published (1878) a monograph on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages. He was awarded the Ph.D. for his thesis on the genitive case in Sanskrit.
After completing his thesis, he moved to Paris, where he taught Sanskrit, as well as Old High German. For 10 years, he focused on specific languages--as opposed to general linguistics. In 1891, he returned to Geneva, to teach taught Sanskrit and historical linguistics at the university. The university provided the catalyst for shaping semiology--he was asked to teach (1906-11) a course of lectures in general linguistics. He died in February of 1913.
His students thought his course so innovative that they assembled their notes and published (1916) a work called Course in General Linguistics. In this work, Saussure focuses on the linguistic sign, making a number of crucial points about the relationship between the signifier (Sr) and the signified (Sd). Below I summarise the key ideas:
• Language (Saussure, 1916) is a self-contained system, one which is made up of elements which perform a variety of functions, based on the relations the various elements have one with another. We can think of syntax and grammar as organizing principles of langauge. We have no trouble recognizing the grammatical sense of the following construction: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• We can think of language (p. 34) as a system of signs, which we can study synchronically (as a complete system at any given point) or diachronically (in its historical development).
• A signifier (Sr), the sound-image or its graphical equivalent, and its signified (Sd), the concept or the meaning, make up the sign (pp. 36-38). For example, we can say that, to an English speaking person, the three black marks c-a-t serve as the signifier which evokes the "cat."
• The relation between Sr and Sd is arbitrary (pp. 37-38). Different languages use different words for the same thing. No physical connection links a given signifier and a signified.
• Described in these terms, language is a system of formal relations. This means that the key to understanding the structure of the system lies in difference. One sound differs from another sound (as p and b); one word differs from another (as pat and bat); and one grammatical forms differs from another (as has run from will run). No linguistic unit (sound or word) has significance in and of itself. Each unit acquires meaning in conjunction with other units. We can distinguish (p. 29) formal language (Saussure calls it langue) from the actual use of language (which he calls parole).
• Every expression we use is based on collective behavior or convention. We can say that a sign is motivated when we perceive a connection between Sr and Sd, e.g. in instances of onomatopoeia like "bow-wow" and "tick-tock" (pp. 39-30).
2. Roland Barthes, 1915-80
This cultural theorist and analyst was born in Cherbourg, a port-city northwest of Paris. His parents were Louis Barthes, a naval officer, and Henriette Binger. His father died in 1916, during combat in the North Sea. In 1924, Barthes and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended (1924-30) the Lycee Montaigne. Unfortunately, he spent long periods of his youth in sanatoriums, undergoing treatment for TB. When he recovered, he studied (1935-39) French and the classics at the University of Paris. He was exempted from military service during WW II (he was ill with TB during the period 1941-47). Later, when he wasn't undergoing treatment for TB, he taught at a variety of schools, including the Lycees Voltaire and Carnot. He taught at universities in Rumania (1948-49) and Egypt (1949-50) before he joined (in 1952) the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted his time to sociology and lexicology.
Barthes' academic career fell into three phases. During the first phase, he concentrated on demystifying the stereotypes of bourgeois culture (as he put it). For example, in Writing degree Zero (1953), Barthes examined the link between writing and biography: he studied the historical conditions of literary language and the difficulty of a modern practice of writing. Committed to language, he argued, the writer is at once caught up in particular discursive orders, the socially instituted forms of writing, a set of signs (a myth) of literature--hence the search for an unmarked language, before the closure of myth, a writing degree zero.
During the years 1954-56, Barthes wrote a series of essays for the magazine called Les Lettres nouvelles, in which he exposed a "Mythology of the Month," i.e., he showed how the denotations in the signs of popular culture betray connotations which are themselves "myths" generated by the larger sign system that makes up society. The book which contains these studies of everyday signs--appropriately enough, it is entitled Mythologies (1957)--offers his meditations on many topics, such as striptease, the New Citroen, steak and chips, and so on. In each essay, he takes a seemingly unnoticed phenomenon from everyday life and deconstructs it, i.e., shows that the "obvious" connotations which it carries have been carefully constructed. This account of contemporary myth involved Barthes in the development of semiology.
During the second phase, the semiotics phase dating from 1956, he took over Saussure's concept of the sign, together with the concept of language as a sign system, producing work which can be regarded as an appendix to Mythologies. During this period, Barthes produced such works as Elements of Semiology (1964), and The Fashion System (1967), adapting Saussure's model to the study of cultural phenomena other than language. During this period, he became (in 1962) Directeur d'Etudes in the VIth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, where he devoted his time to the "sociology of signs, symbols, and representations."
The third phase began with the publication of S/Z (1970), marking a shift from Saussurean semiology to a theory of "the text," which he defined as a field of the signifier and of the symbolic. S/Z is a reading of Balzac's novel Sarrasine, plotting the migration of five "codes," understood as open groupings of signifieds and as points of crossing with other texts. The distinction between "the writable" and "the readable," between what can be written/rewritten today, i.e., actively produced by the reader, and what can no longer be written but only read, i.e., passively consumed, provides a new basis for evaluation. Barthes extends this idea in The Pleasure of the Text (1973) via the body as text and language as an object of desire. During this period, he wrote books as fragments, suggesting his retreat from what might be called the discourse of power, as caught in the subject/object relationship and the habits of rhetoric. He tried to distinguish "the ideological" from "the aesthetic," between the language of science, which deals with stable meanings and which is identified with the sign, and the language of writing, which aims as displacement, dispersion. He offers a "textual" reading of himself in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975). In 1976, he became professor of "literary semiology" at the College de France. In his last book, Camera Lucinda (1980), he reflects on the levels of meaning of the photograph.
Barthes died on 26 March 1980, having been knocked over by a laundry van (reports suggest that the driver was drunk).
In the notes that follow, I summarise the principle he forumlates in Elements of Semiology:
the basic elements of semiology
The goal of semiological analysis is to identify the principle at work in the message or text, i.e., to determine the rhetoric or the grammar tying together all the elements. I gloss the chief terms used by analysts in the section below, and I provide a short guide to semiological analysis in the very last section.
1. axes of language
We get a sense of how language works as a system (Barthes, 1983, p. 58) if we think of language as a pair of axes or two planes of mental activity, the vertical plane being the selective principle (vocabulary) and the horizontal dimension being the combinative principle (sentences). For example, we might select items (words) from various categories in the vertical (associative) dimension, such as kitten, cat, moggy, tom, puss, mouser; sat, rested, crouched; mat, rug, carpet and so on, and link them in the horizontal (combinative) plane to formulate statements like The cat sat on the mat.
The idea is to think of language (Saussure, 1916) as a system of signs. Let me say a few words about this important concept. By "system" we mean an organized whole, involving a number of parts in some non-random relationship with one another. In other words, a system is a set of entities that interact with one another to form a whole. We speak of mechanical, biological, psychological, or socio-cultural systems. A machine is a system. We think of the brake system in a car. An organism like the body is a system. We think of the nervous system. With regard to social units, we think of the family. The members of the family are the objects of the system. Their characteristics as individuals are the attributes; their interaction forms constitute the relationships. A family exists in a social and cultural environment, which affects and is shaped by, the members.
The following example will help clarify three related terms: The system of traffic signals performs the function of controlling traffic; the structure of this system is the binary opposition of red and green lights in alternating sequence.
To make a long story short, we should think of texts as systems, e.g., lexical, graphic, and so on, which gain their effects via the constant clashes between these systems.
2. Signs
As we have seen, de Saussure--the founder of semiology--was the first to elaborate the tripartite relationship
signifier + signified = sign
According to Saussure, the linguistic sign unites a sound-image and a concept. The relationship between Sr and Sd is arbitrary. It should be remembered that neither of these entities exist outside the construct we call a sign. We separate these entities for convenience only.
• The signifier--which has a physical existence--carries the meaning. This is the sign as we perceive it: the marks on the paper or the sounds in the air.
• The signified is a mental concept that is the meaning. It is common to all members of the same culture who share the same language.
• The sign is the associative total of the two: we speak of it as a signifying construct.
During the 1960s, long hair on a man, especially if it was dirty (the signifier) usually suggested counterculture (the signified), whereas short hair on a man (the signifier) suggested the businessman or "square" (the signifier). Of course, these meanings vary according to place and time.
3. motivation
The terms motivation and constraint describe the extent to which the signified determines the signifier. In other words, the form that a photograph of a car can take is determined by the appearance of the specific car itself. The form of the signifier of a generalized car or a traffic sign is determined by the convention that is accepted by the users of the code.
motivated signs
Motivated signs are iconic signs; they are characterized by a natural relation between signifier and signified. A portrait or a photograph is iconic, in that the signifier represents the appearance of the signified. The faithfulness or the accuracy of the representation--the degree to which the signified is re-presented in the signifier--is an inverse measure of how conventionalized it is. A realistic portrait (painting) is highly conventionalized: this means that to signify the work relies on our experience of the sort of reality it re-presents. A photograph of a street scene communicates easily because of our familiarity with the reality it re-presents. It is important to recognize that (i) in signs of high motivation, the signified is the determining influence, and (ii) in signs of low motivation, convention determines the form of the signifier.
unmotivated signs
In unmotivated signs, the signifieds relate to their signifiers by convention alone, i.e., by an agreement among the users of these signs. Thus, convention plays a key role in our understanding of any sign. We need to know how to read a photograph or a sculpture, say. Convention serves as the social dimension of signs. We may not understand the unmotivated verbal sign for car that the French use, but we understand the road signs in France in so far as they are iconic. The arbitrary dimension of the unmotivated sign is often disguised by the apparent natural iconic motivation; hence, a man in a detective story showing the inside of his wallet is conventionally a sign of a policeman identifying himself and not a sign of a peddler of pornographic postcards.
4. denotation and connotation
Saussure concentrated on the denotative function of signs; by contrast, Barthes pushed the analysis to another level, the connotative. Simply put, these two terms describe the meanings signs convey.
denotation
By denotation we mean the common sense, obvious meaning of the sign. A photograph of a street scene denotes the street that was photographed. This is the mechanical reproduction (on film) of the object the camera points at. For example, I can use color film, pick a day of pale sunshine, and use a soft focus lens to make the street appear warm and happy, a safe community for children. I can use black and white film, hard focus, and strong contrast, to make the street appear cold, inhospitable. The denotative meanings would be the same.
connotation
By connotation we mean the interaction that occurs when the sign and the feelings of the viewer meet. At this point, meanings move toward the subjective interpretation of the sign (as illustrated by the above examples). If denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed.
5. paradigms and syntagms
Saussure defined two ways in which signs are organized into codes (Fiske, 1982, pp. 61-64):
paradigm
A paradigm is a vertical set of units (each unit being a sign or word), from which the required one is selected, e.g., the set of shapes for road signs: square, round and triangular.
syntagm
A syntagm is the horizontal chain into which units are linked, according to agreed rules and conventions, to make a meaningful whole. The syntagm is the statement into which the chosen signs are combined. A road sign is a syntagm, a combination of the chosen shape with the chosen symbol.
Paradigms and syntagms are fundamental to the way that any system of signs is organized. In written language, the letters of the alphabet are the basic vertical paradigms. These may be combined into syntagms called words. These words can be formed into syntagms called phrases or sentences, i.e., according to the rules of grammar.
Syntagms--like sentences--exist in time: we can think of them as a chain. But syntagms of visual signs can exist simultaneously in space. Thus, a sign of two children leaving school, in black silhouette, can be syntagmatically combined with a red triangle or a road sign to mean: SCHOOL: BEWARE OF CHILDREN.
6. difference
The term "difference" describes the relationship between the elements at work in any given message. They work as rhetorical figures, such as the figures of addition, where the elements are added to a word, sentence, or image; or the figures of suppression, where elements are suppressed, concealed, or excluded. The key to understanding the structure of a system of signs, then, lies in understanding the relationship(s) the system utilizes. We are interested in the techniques of additions primarily, which include:
• Repetition is the repetition of the same element: word, sound or image;
• Similarity is similarity of form, as in rhyme, or on similarity of content, as in comparisons;
• Accumulation refers to a number of different elements conveying the idea of abundance or profusion, verging on disorder and chaos; and
• Opposition occurs at the level of form (an ad set in two different countries) and the level of content (an advertisement for detergent featuring a man in white smocking sitting on a heap of coal).
Thus, difference might be a function of contrast or opposition in terms of:
balance - instability;
symmetry - asymmetry
harmony - confusion
regularity - irregularity
understatement - exaggeration
predictability - spontaneity
expensive - cheap
high quality - low quality
exciting - boring
The idea is that nothing in and of itself has meaning: rather, meaning is a function of some relationship.
7. Metaphor and Metonymy
These terms--used by Roman Jakobson, the linguist--define the two fundamental modes by which the meanings of signs are conveyed.
metaphor
Metaphor involves a transposition or displacement from signified to signifier, together with the recognition that such a transposition implies an equivalence between these two elements of the sign. Likewise, "visual metaphors" are constructed, e.g., a portrait of a man is constructed in such a way as to convince us that the two dimensional visual representation is equivalent to its three-dimensional reality. Similarly, a map signifies the reality to which it refers by constructing an equivalent form in whose features we can recognize those of the object itself. Thus, both verbal and non-verbal, arbitrary and iconic signs can be metaphorical.
metonymy
In metonymy, the signification depends upon the ability of a sign to act as a part which signifies the whole. Television advertisers are particularly adept at exploiting both metaphoric and metonymic modes in order to cram as much meaning as possible into a short period of time. For example, the sign of a mother pouring out a particular breakfast cereal for her children is a metonym of all her maternal activities of cooking, cleaning, and so on, but a metaphor for the love and the security she provides. As we have suggested, the structural relationship between these modes can be visualized as operating on two axes, one vertical and one horizontal in character.
8. three orders of signification
In the study of signs, we can speak of different levels of meaning or orders of signification.
first order
In the first order of signification, the sign is self-contained: the photograph means the individual car. This is the denotative order of signification.
second order
In the second order, this simple motivated meaning meets a whole range of cultural meanings that derive not from the sign itself but from the way society uses and values the Sr and the Sd. This is the connotative order of signification. In our society, a car--or a sign for a car--can signify virility or freedom. According to Barthes (1964), signs in the second order of signification operate in two distinct ways: as mythmakers and as connotative agents.
• When signs move to the second order of signification, they carry cultural meanings as well as representational ones, i.e., the signs become the signifiers of CULTURAL MEANINGS. Barthes calls the cultural meanings of these signs MYTHS. The sign loses its specific signified and becomes a second-order signifier, i.e., a conveyor of cultural meaning.
• We can explain the connotative order of signification with a simple example. A general's uniform denotes his rank (first-order sign) but connotes the respect we show it (second-order sign). Say that by the end of the war film we are watching the general's uniform is tattered and torn; it still denotes his rank; however, the connotative meaning will have changed.
Thus, in the connotative order, signs signify values, emotions, and attitudes. Camera angle, lighting, and background music, for example, are used in film and television to connote meaning. The connotative meaning of a televised painting can be changed by the background music accompanying it.
third order
The range of cultural meanings that are generated in this second order cohere in the third order of signification into a cultural picture of the world. It is in this order (the third) that a car forms part of the imagery of an industrial, materialist, and rootless society. The myths which operate as organizing structures, e.g., the myth of the neighborhood policeman as keeper of the peace and friend of all residents of the community, are themselves organized into a pattern which we might call MYTHOLOGY or IDEOLOGY. In the third order of signification, ideology reflects the broad principles by which a culture organizes and interprets the reality with which it has to cope. This mythology is a function of the social institutions and the individuals who make up these institutions.
9. semiological analysis
Barthes (1964) points out that semiological analysis involves two operations: dissection and articulation. The first operation (dissection) includes looking for fragments (elements) which when associated one with another suggest a certain meaning. The analyst looks for paradigms, i.e., classes or groups from which elements have been chosen (and endowed with specific meaning).
The units or elements in this group or class share a number of characteristics. Two units of the same paradigm must resemble one another so that the difference which separates them becomes evident, e.g., to a foreigner, American automobiles seem to look alike, yet they differ in make and color.
The second operation (articulation) involves determining the rules of combination. This is the activity of articulation. In summary: The analyst takes the object, decomposes it and then re-composes it. The analyst makes something appear which was invisible or unintelligible.
10. Concluding Remarks
Like structuralism, semiology decenters the individual, who is no longer the source of meaning. Semiology (Barthes, 1964) refuses the obvious meaning of a work: it does not take the message at face value. We are concerned with MESSAGES and the preferred ways to READ them.
I conclude these notes with a guide to a semiological analysis, based on Barthes' (1977) seminal essay, "The Rhetoric of the Image."
a guide to a semiological analysis
This guide identifies the key activities analysts undertake when they conduct a semiological critique of a text, such as an advertisement, a tv program, a movie, a painting, etc.
1. Offer your reader a brief overview of the message
The idea is to provide a brief description of the advertisement (say) so that the reader can visualize the message.
2. Identify the key signifiers and signifieds.
Ask questions like: What are the important signifiers and what do they signify? What is the system (of signs) that gives the text meaning? What ideological and sociological matters are involved?
3. Identify the paradigms that have been exploited.
Ask questions like: What is the central opposition in the text? What paired opposites fit under the various categories? Do these oppositions have any psychological or social significance?
4. Identify the syntagms that come across.
Ask questions like: What statements or messages (directly and implied) can you identify? Answer this question by considering
(a) the linguistic message
This message is made up of all the words, denotations and connotations.
(b) the non-coded iconographic (literal) message
This message is made up of the denotations in the photograph.
(c) the coded iconographic (symbolic) message
This message is made up of the visual connotations we detect in the arrangement of photographed elements.
5. Finally, identify the principle at work in the message or text. Remember, the goal of analysis is to determine the rhetoric or the grammar tying together all the elements.
References
Barthes, R. 1964. "The Structuralist Activity." From Essais Critiques, trans. R. Howard. In Partisan Review 34 (Winter):82-88.
---. 1967. Writing Degree Zero, trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith. 1953; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1967. Mytholgies, trans. A. Lavers. 1957; rptd. London: Hill and Wang.
---. 1967. Elements of Semiology, trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith. 1964; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1974. S/Z, trans. R. Howard. 1970; rptd. Oxford: Blackwell.
---. 1975. The Pleasure of the Text, trans. R. Howard. 1973; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1977. Roland Barthes on Roland Barthes, trans. R. Howard. 1975; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1977. "The Rhetoric of the Image." In his book Image-Music-Text, trans. S. Heath. 1964; rpt. London: Wm. Collins Sons and Co., pp. 32-51.
---. 1981. Camera Lucinda, trans. R. Howard. 1980; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1983. The Fashion System, trans. M. Ward and R. Howard. 1967; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1960. Course in General Linguistics. 1916; rpt. London: Peter Owen.
Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fiske, John. 1982. Introduction to Communication. London: Methuen.
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. "Linguistics and Poetics." In Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 350-77.
Williams, Raymond. 1976. "Structural." In Key Words. London: Fontana, pp. 253-59.
The study of the function of signs and symbols in human communication, both in language and by various nonlinguistic means. Beginning with the notion of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure that no word or other sign (signifier) is intrinsically linked with its meaning (signified), it was developed as a scientific discipline, especially by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. Signs and symbols can also be used in design drawings such as electrical circuits or computer flowcharts.
Semiotics has combined with structuralism in order to explore the ‘production’ of meaning in language and other sign systems and has emphasized the conventional nature of this production.
Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.
This discipline is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. However, some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science. They examine areas belonging also to the natural sciences - such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis.
Syntactics is the branch of semiotics that deals with the formal properties of signs and symbols.[1]
Semiology // Semiotics
by Robert M. Seiler
We can define semiology or semiotics as the study of signs. We may not realize it, but in fact semiology can be applied to all sorts of human endeavours, including cinema, theatre, dance, architecture, painting, politics, medicine, history, and religion. That is, we use a variety of gestures (signs) in everyday life to convey messages to people around us, e.g., rubbing our thumb and forefinger together to signify money.
We should think of messages (or texts) as systems of signs, e.g., lexical, graphic, and so on, which gain their effects via the constant clashes between these systems. For example, the menu we consult in a restaurant has been drawn up with reference to a structure, but this structure can be filled differently, according to time and place, e.g., breakfast or dinner (Barthes, 1964, p. 28).
In the notes that follow, I will say a few words about structuralism, an intellectual movement which flourished during the 1950s and the 1960s, and semiology, which has been one of the chief modes of this intellectual movement. The major figures in this movement include Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Thomas Sebeok, Julia Kristeva, and Umberto Eco. For reasons that will become obvious, I will focus on Saussure and Barthes, the pioneers. All believed semiology is the key to unlocking meaning of all things.
the basic elements of structuralism
To begin with, we should think of structuralism as a mode of thought, a way of conceptualizing phenomena. Whereas in the past, determinists like Aristotle saw things in terms of cause and effect, structuralists look for structures:
• From the 15th century, the word "structure" was used as a noun: the process of building (Williams, 1976).
• During the 17th century, the term developed in two main directions: towards the product of building, as in "a wooden structure," and towards the manner of construction generally. Modern developments flow from (b). The sense of the latter is: the mutual relation of the constituent parts of a whole which define its nature, as in "internal structure."
• The term entered the vocabulary of biology in the 18th century, as in the structure of the hand.
• The term entered the vocabulary of language, literature, and philosophy in the 19th century, to convey the idea of internal structure as constitutive, as in matters of building and engineering. Scholars would talk (1863) about the structural differences that separate man from gorilla say.
We need to know this history if we are to understand the development of structural and structuralist thinking in the 20th century, as in linguistics and anthropology. We note that this theoretical construct dominated intellectual life in France, extending into the literary arts, during the period from WW I to WW II. Linguists in North America had to discard the presuppositions of Indo-European linguistics when they studied the languages of American Indians. They developed procedures for studying language as a whole, i.e., deep internal relations. Thus, we now distinguish function (performance) from structure (organization), as in structuralist linguistics and functional anthropology.
According to (orthodox) structuralism, these structures range from kinship to myth, not to mention grammar, one permanent constitutive of human formations: the defining features of human consciousness (and perhaps the human brain), e.g., Id, Ego, Superego, Libido, or Death-Wish in psychology. Of course, the assumption here is that the structuralist is an objective observer, independent of the object of consideration. In this context, we use words like code (hidden relations) to describe sign-systems (like fashion).
We should note that structuralism challenges common sense, which believes that things have one meaning and this meaning is pretty obvious. Common sense tells us that the world is pretty much as we perceive it. In other words, structuralism tells us that meaning is constructed, as a product of shared systems of signification.
Semiology: Two Pioneers
Again, semiology can be defined as the study of signs: how they work and how we use them. We note again that almost anything can signify something for someone. Saussure developed the principles of semiology as they applied to language; Barthes extended these ideas to messages (word-and-image relations) of all sorts.
1. Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857-1913
Saussure was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to a family celebrated for its accomplishments in the natural sciences. Not surprisingly, he discovered linguistic studies early in life.
In 1875, he entered the University of Geneva as a student of physics and chemistry, taking course in Greek and Latin grammar as well. This experience convinced him that his career lay in the study of language. In 1876, he entered the University of Leipzig to study Indo-European languages. Here, he published (1878) a monograph on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages. He was awarded the Ph.D. for his thesis on the genitive case in Sanskrit.
After completing his thesis, he moved to Paris, where he taught Sanskrit, as well as Old High German. For 10 years, he focused on specific languages--as opposed to general linguistics. In 1891, he returned to Geneva, to teach taught Sanskrit and historical linguistics at the university. The university provided the catalyst for shaping semiology--he was asked to teach (1906-11) a course of lectures in general linguistics. He died in February of 1913.
His students thought his course so innovative that they assembled their notes and published (1916) a work called Course in General Linguistics. In this work, Saussure focuses on the linguistic sign, making a number of crucial points about the relationship between the signifier (Sr) and the signified (Sd). Below I summarise the key ideas:
• Language (Saussure, 1916) is a self-contained system, one which is made up of elements which perform a variety of functions, based on the relations the various elements have one with another. We can think of syntax and grammar as organizing principles of langauge. We have no trouble recognizing the grammatical sense of the following construction: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• We can think of language (p. 34) as a system of signs, which we can study synchronically (as a complete system at any given point) or diachronically (in its historical development).
• A signifier (Sr), the sound-image or its graphical equivalent, and its signified (Sd), the concept or the meaning, make up the sign (pp. 36-38). For example, we can say that, to an English speaking person, the three black marks c-a-t serve as the signifier which evokes the "cat."
• The relation between Sr and Sd is arbitrary (pp. 37-38). Different languages use different words for the same thing. No physical connection links a given signifier and a signified.
• Described in these terms, language is a system of formal relations. This means that the key to understanding the structure of the system lies in difference. One sound differs from another sound (as p and b); one word differs from another (as pat and bat); and one grammatical forms differs from another (as has run from will run). No linguistic unit (sound or word) has significance in and of itself. Each unit acquires meaning in conjunction with other units. We can distinguish (p. 29) formal language (Saussure calls it langue) from the actual use of language (which he calls parole).
• Every expression we use is based on collective behavior or convention. We can say that a sign is motivated when we perceive a connection between Sr and Sd, e.g. in instances of onomatopoeia like "bow-wow" and "tick-tock" (pp. 39-30).
2. Roland Barthes, 1915-80
This cultural theorist and analyst was born in Cherbourg, a port-city northwest of Paris. His parents were Louis Barthes, a naval officer, and Henriette Binger. His father died in 1916, during combat in the North Sea. In 1924, Barthes and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended (1924-30) the Lycee Montaigne. Unfortunately, he spent long periods of his youth in sanatoriums, undergoing treatment for TB. When he recovered, he studied (1935-39) French and the classics at the University of Paris. He was exempted from military service during WW II (he was ill with TB during the period 1941-47). Later, when he wasn't undergoing treatment for TB, he taught at a variety of schools, including the Lycees Voltaire and Carnot. He taught at universities in Rumania (1948-49) and Egypt (1949-50) before he joined (in 1952) the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted his time to sociology and lexicology.
Barthes' academic career fell into three phases. During the first phase, he concentrated on demystifying the stereotypes of bourgeois culture (as he put it). For example, in Writing degree Zero (1953), Barthes examined the link between writing and biography: he studied the historical conditions of literary language and the difficulty of a modern practice of writing. Committed to language, he argued, the writer is at once caught up in particular discursive orders, the socially instituted forms of writing, a set of signs (a myth) of literature--hence the search for an unmarked language, before the closure of myth, a writing degree zero.
During the years 1954-56, Barthes wrote a series of essays for the magazine called Les Lettres nouvelles, in which he exposed a "Mythology of the Month," i.e., he showed how the denotations in the signs of popular culture betray connotations which are themselves "myths" generated by the larger sign system that makes up society. The book which contains these studies of everyday signs--appropriately enough, it is entitled Mythologies (1957)--offers his meditations on many topics, such as striptease, the New Citroen, steak and chips, and so on. In each essay, he takes a seemingly unnoticed phenomenon from everyday life and deconstructs it, i.e., shows that the "obvious" connotations which it carries have been carefully constructed. This account of contemporary myth involved Barthes in the development of semiology.
During the second phase, the semiotics phase dating from 1956, he took over Saussure's concept of the sign, together with the concept of language as a sign system, producing work which can be regarded as an appendix to Mythologies. During this period, Barthes produced such works as Elements of Semiology (1964), and The Fashion System (1967), adapting Saussure's model to the study of cultural phenomena other than language. During this period, he became (in 1962) Directeur d'Etudes in the VIth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, where he devoted his time to the "sociology of signs, symbols, and representations."
The third phase began with the publication of S/Z (1970), marking a shift from Saussurean semiology to a theory of "the text," which he defined as a field of the signifier and of the symbolic. S/Z is a reading of Balzac's novel Sarrasine, plotting the migration of five "codes," understood as open groupings of signifieds and as points of crossing with other texts. The distinction between "the writable" and "the readable," between what can be written/rewritten today, i.e., actively produced by the reader, and what can no longer be written but only read, i.e., passively consumed, provides a new basis for evaluation. Barthes extends this idea in The Pleasure of the Text (1973) via the body as text and language as an object of desire. During this period, he wrote books as fragments, suggesting his retreat from what might be called the discourse of power, as caught in the subject/object relationship and the habits of rhetoric. He tried to distinguish "the ideological" from "the aesthetic," between the language of science, which deals with stable meanings and which is identified with the sign, and the language of writing, which aims as displacement, dispersion. He offers a "textual" reading of himself in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975). In 1976, he became professor of "literary semiology" at the College de France. In his last book, Camera Lucinda (1980), he reflects on the levels of meaning of the photograph.
Barthes died on 26 March 1980, having been knocked over by a laundry van (reports suggest that the driver was drunk).
In the notes that follow, I summarise the principle he forumlates in Elements of Semiology:
the basic elements of semiology
The goal of semiological analysis is to identify the principle at work in the message or text, i.e., to determine the rhetoric or the grammar tying together all the elements. I gloss the chief terms used by analysts in the section below, and I provide a short guide to semiological analysis in the very last section.
1. axes of language
We get a sense of how language works as a system (Barthes, 1983, p. 58) if we think of language as a pair of axes or two planes of mental activity, the vertical plane being the selective principle (vocabulary) and the horizontal dimension being the combinative principle (sentences). For example, we might select items (words) from various categories in the vertical (associative) dimension, such as kitten, cat, moggy, tom, puss, mouser; sat, rested, crouched; mat, rug, carpet and so on, and link them in the horizontal (combinative) plane to formulate statements like The cat sat on the mat.
The idea is to think of language (Saussure, 1916) as a system of signs. Let me say a few words about this important concept. By "system" we mean an organized whole, involving a number of parts in some non-random relationship with one another. In other words, a system is a set of entities that interact with one another to form a whole. We speak of mechanical, biological, psychological, or socio-cultural systems. A machine is a system. We think of the brake system in a car. An organism like the body is a system. We think of the nervous system. With regard to social units, we think of the family. The members of the family are the objects of the system. Their characteristics as individuals are the attributes; their interaction forms constitute the relationships. A family exists in a social and cultural environment, which affects and is shaped by, the members.
The following example will help clarify three related terms: The system of traffic signals performs the function of controlling traffic; the structure of this system is the binary opposition of red and green lights in alternating sequence.
To make a long story short, we should think of texts as systems, e.g., lexical, graphic, and so on, which gain their effects via the constant clashes between these systems.
2. Signs
As we have seen, de Saussure--the founder of semiology--was the first to elaborate the tripartite relationship
signifier + signified = sign
According to Saussure, the linguistic sign unites a sound-image and a concept. The relationship between Sr and Sd is arbitrary. It should be remembered that neither of these entities exist outside the construct we call a sign. We separate these entities for convenience only.
• The signifier--which has a physical existence--carries the meaning. This is the sign as we perceive it: the marks on the paper or the sounds in the air.
• The signified is a mental concept that is the meaning. It is common to all members of the same culture who share the same language.
• The sign is the associative total of the two: we speak of it as a signifying construct.
During the 1960s, long hair on a man, especially if it was dirty (the signifier) usually suggested counterculture (the signified), whereas short hair on a man (the signifier) suggested the businessman or "square" (the signifier). Of course, these meanings vary according to place and time.
3. motivation
The terms motivation and constraint describe the extent to which the signified determines the signifier. In other words, the form that a photograph of a car can take is determined by the appearance of the specific car itself. The form of the signifier of a generalized car or a traffic sign is determined by the convention that is accepted by the users of the code.
motivated signs
Motivated signs are iconic signs; they are characterized by a natural relation between signifier and signified. A portrait or a photograph is iconic, in that the signifier represents the appearance of the signified. The faithfulness or the accuracy of the representation--the degree to which the signified is re-presented in the signifier--is an inverse measure of how conventionalized it is. A realistic portrait (painting) is highly conventionalized: this means that to signify the work relies on our experience of the sort of reality it re-presents. A photograph of a street scene communicates easily because of our familiarity with the reality it re-presents. It is important to recognize that (i) in signs of high motivation, the signified is the determining influence, and (ii) in signs of low motivation, convention determines the form of the signifier.
unmotivated signs
In unmotivated signs, the signifieds relate to their signifiers by convention alone, i.e., by an agreement among the users of these signs. Thus, convention plays a key role in our understanding of any sign. We need to know how to read a photograph or a sculpture, say. Convention serves as the social dimension of signs. We may not understand the unmotivated verbal sign for car that the French use, but we understand the road signs in France in so far as they are iconic. The arbitrary dimension of the unmotivated sign is often disguised by the apparent natural iconic motivation; hence, a man in a detective story showing the inside of his wallet is conventionally a sign of a policeman identifying himself and not a sign of a peddler of pornographic postcards.
4. denotation and connotation
Saussure concentrated on the denotative function of signs; by contrast, Barthes pushed the analysis to another level, the connotative. Simply put, these two terms describe the meanings signs convey.
denotation
By denotation we mean the common sense, obvious meaning of the sign. A photograph of a street scene denotes the street that was photographed. This is the mechanical reproduction (on film) of the object the camera points at. For example, I can use color film, pick a day of pale sunshine, and use a soft focus lens to make the street appear warm and happy, a safe community for children. I can use black and white film, hard focus, and strong contrast, to make the street appear cold, inhospitable. The denotative meanings would be the same.
connotation
By connotation we mean the interaction that occurs when the sign and the feelings of the viewer meet. At this point, meanings move toward the subjective interpretation of the sign (as illustrated by the above examples). If denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed.
5. paradigms and syntagms
Saussure defined two ways in which signs are organized into codes (Fiske, 1982, pp. 61-64):
paradigm
A paradigm is a vertical set of units (each unit being a sign or word), from which the required one is selected, e.g., the set of shapes for road signs: square, round and triangular.
syntagm
A syntagm is the horizontal chain into which units are linked, according to agreed rules and conventions, to make a meaningful whole. The syntagm is the statement into which the chosen signs are combined. A road sign is a syntagm, a combination of the chosen shape with the chosen symbol.
Paradigms and syntagms are fundamental to the way that any system of signs is organized. In written language, the letters of the alphabet are the basic vertical paradigms. These may be combined into syntagms called words. These words can be formed into syntagms called phrases or sentences, i.e., according to the rules of grammar.
Syntagms--like sentences--exist in time: we can think of them as a chain. But syntagms of visual signs can exist simultaneously in space. Thus, a sign of two children leaving school, in black silhouette, can be syntagmatically combined with a red triangle or a road sign to mean: SCHOOL: BEWARE OF CHILDREN.
6. difference
The term "difference" describes the relationship between the elements at work in any given message. They work as rhetorical figures, such as the figures of addition, where the elements are added to a word, sentence, or image; or the figures of suppression, where elements are suppressed, concealed, or excluded. The key to understanding the structure of a system of signs, then, lies in understanding the relationship(s) the system utilizes. We are interested in the techniques of additions primarily, which include:
• Repetition is the repetition of the same element: word, sound or image;
• Similarity is similarity of form, as in rhyme, or on similarity of content, as in comparisons;
• Accumulation refers to a number of different elements conveying the idea of abundance or profusion, verging on disorder and chaos; and
• Opposition occurs at the level of form (an ad set in two different countries) and the level of content (an advertisement for detergent featuring a man in white smocking sitting on a heap of coal).
Thus, difference might be a function of contrast or opposition in terms of:
balance - instability;
symmetry - asymmetry
harmony - confusion
regularity - irregularity
understatement - exaggeration
predictability - spontaneity
expensive - cheap
high quality - low quality
exciting - boring
The idea is that nothing in and of itself has meaning: rather, meaning is a function of some relationship.
7. Metaphor and Metonymy
These terms--used by Roman Jakobson, the linguist--define the two fundamental modes by which the meanings of signs are conveyed.
metaphor
Metaphor involves a transposition or displacement from signified to signifier, together with the recognition that such a transposition implies an equivalence between these two elements of the sign. Likewise, "visual metaphors" are constructed, e.g., a portrait of a man is constructed in such a way as to convince us that the two dimensional visual representation is equivalent to its three-dimensional reality. Similarly, a map signifies the reality to which it refers by constructing an equivalent form in whose features we can recognize those of the object itself. Thus, both verbal and non-verbal, arbitrary and iconic signs can be metaphorical.
metonymy
In metonymy, the signification depends upon the ability of a sign to act as a part which signifies the whole. Television advertisers are particularly adept at exploiting both metaphoric and metonymic modes in order to cram as much meaning as possible into a short period of time. For example, the sign of a mother pouring out a particular breakfast cereal for her children is a metonym of all her maternal activities of cooking, cleaning, and so on, but a metaphor for the love and the security she provides. As we have suggested, the structural relationship between these modes can be visualized as operating on two axes, one vertical and one horizontal in character.
8. three orders of signification
In the study of signs, we can speak of different levels of meaning or orders of signification.
first order
In the first order of signification, the sign is self-contained: the photograph means the individual car. This is the denotative order of signification.
second order
In the second order, this simple motivated meaning meets a whole range of cultural meanings that derive not from the sign itself but from the way society uses and values the Sr and the Sd. This is the connotative order of signification. In our society, a car--or a sign for a car--can signify virility or freedom. According to Barthes (1964), signs in the second order of signification operate in two distinct ways: as mythmakers and as connotative agents.
• When signs move to the second order of signification, they carry cultural meanings as well as representational ones, i.e., the signs become the signifiers of CULTURAL MEANINGS. Barthes calls the cultural meanings of these signs MYTHS. The sign loses its specific signified and becomes a second-order signifier, i.e., a conveyor of cultural meaning.
• We can explain the connotative order of signification with a simple example. A general's uniform denotes his rank (first-order sign) but connotes the respect we show it (second-order sign). Say that by the end of the war film we are watching the general's uniform is tattered and torn; it still denotes his rank; however, the connotative meaning will have changed.
Thus, in the connotative order, signs signify values, emotions, and attitudes. Camera angle, lighting, and background music, for example, are used in film and television to connote meaning. The connotative meaning of a televised painting can be changed by the background music accompanying it.
third order
The range of cultural meanings that are generated in this second order cohere in the third order of signification into a cultural picture of the world. It is in this order (the third) that a car forms part of the imagery of an industrial, materialist, and rootless society. The myths which operate as organizing structures, e.g., the myth of the neighborhood policeman as keeper of the peace and friend of all residents of the community, are themselves organized into a pattern which we might call MYTHOLOGY or IDEOLOGY. In the third order of signification, ideology reflects the broad principles by which a culture organizes and interprets the reality with which it has to cope. This mythology is a function of the social institutions and the individuals who make up these institutions.
9. semiological analysis
Barthes (1964) points out that semiological analysis involves two operations: dissection and articulation. The first operation (dissection) includes looking for fragments (elements) which when associated one with another suggest a certain meaning. The analyst looks for paradigms, i.e., classes or groups from which elements have been chosen (and endowed with specific meaning).
The units or elements in this group or class share a number of characteristics. Two units of the same paradigm must resemble one another so that the difference which separates them becomes evident, e.g., to a foreigner, American automobiles seem to look alike, yet they differ in make and color.
The second operation (articulation) involves determining the rules of combination. This is the activity of articulation. In summary: The analyst takes the object, decomposes it and then re-composes it. The analyst makes something appear which was invisible or unintelligible.
10. Concluding Remarks
Like structuralism, semiology decenters the individual, who is no longer the source of meaning. Semiology (Barthes, 1964) refuses the obvious meaning of a work: it does not take the message at face value. We are concerned with MESSAGES and the preferred ways to READ them.
I conclude these notes with a guide to a semiological analysis, based on Barthes' (1977) seminal essay, "The Rhetoric of the Image."
a guide to a semiological analysis
This guide identifies the key activities analysts undertake when they conduct a semiological critique of a text, such as an advertisement, a tv program, a movie, a painting, etc.
1. Offer your reader a brief overview of the message
The idea is to provide a brief description of the advertisement (say) so that the reader can visualize the message.
2. Identify the key signifiers and signifieds.
Ask questions like: What are the important signifiers and what do they signify? What is the system (of signs) that gives the text meaning? What ideological and sociological matters are involved?
3. Identify the paradigms that have been exploited.
Ask questions like: What is the central opposition in the text? What paired opposites fit under the various categories? Do these oppositions have any psychological or social significance?
4. Identify the syntagms that come across.
Ask questions like: What statements or messages (directly and implied) can you identify? Answer this question by considering
(a) the linguistic message
This message is made up of all the words, denotations and connotations.
(b) the non-coded iconographic (literal) message
This message is made up of the denotations in the photograph.
(c) the coded iconographic (symbolic) message
This message is made up of the visual connotations we detect in the arrangement of photographed elements.
5. Finally, identify the principle at work in the message or text. Remember, the goal of analysis is to determine the rhetoric or the grammar tying together all the elements.
References
Barthes, R. 1964. "The Structuralist Activity." From Essais Critiques, trans. R. Howard. In Partisan Review 34 (Winter):82-88.
---. 1967. Writing Degree Zero, trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith. 1953; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1967. Mytholgies, trans. A. Lavers. 1957; rptd. London: Hill and Wang.
---. 1967. Elements of Semiology, trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith. 1964; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1974. S/Z, trans. R. Howard. 1970; rptd. Oxford: Blackwell.
---. 1975. The Pleasure of the Text, trans. R. Howard. 1973; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1977. Roland Barthes on Roland Barthes, trans. R. Howard. 1975; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1977. "The Rhetoric of the Image." In his book Image-Music-Text, trans. S. Heath. 1964; rpt. London: Wm. Collins Sons and Co., pp. 32-51.
---. 1981. Camera Lucinda, trans. R. Howard. 1980; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
---. 1983. The Fashion System, trans. M. Ward and R. Howard. 1967; rptd. New York: Hill and Wang.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1960. Course in General Linguistics. 1916; rpt. London: Peter Owen.
Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fiske, John. 1982. Introduction to Communication. London: Methuen.
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. "Linguistics and Poetics." In Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 350-77.
Williams, Raymond. 1976. "Structural." In Key Words. London: Fontana, pp. 253-59.
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