CMNS 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Semiotics
2 Dec 2014
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Document Summary
Semiotics is traditionally described as the study of signs, and sometimes as the science of signs. Social condition and cultural history are more important than individual signs. Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. Each sign is already chafed with cultural and social signi cations. Every content embodies certain cultural values, to understand the features is most important. Every product symbolized certain cultural and political features. The codes into which these signs are organized and. The way these codes are related to culture and society. The culture in which codes and signs operate. What things mean is a matter of interpretation, how things mean is a matter of structure. Meanings are associated with signs, but they do not reside in, nor are they forever attached to, those signs. Meanings exist in the agreements (arbitrary) shared among the users of sign systems. When semioticians refer to agreement, convention, or tradition, they are really referring to usage.
