Dictionary of Semiotics
By Bronwen Martin
* Publisher: Continuum International Publishing
* Number Of Pages: 188
* Publication Date: 1999-12-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0304706361
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780304706365
Product Description:
A much-needed guide to the terms and models used in the semiotic approach. Over the past few decades, semiotics has increasingly gained in popularity and yet, to many, the very term remains an enigma. But, until now, there has never been a dictionary that
Summary: College level material
Rating: 4
I have been trying to find ideas that might be useful within the DICTIONARY OF SEMIOTICS by Bronwen Martin and Felizitas Ringham. This dictionary is intellectual enough to have a Bibliography and an index, and could direct you to other books that would be helpful, but the first seven items in the Bibliography appear to be in French. People who speak French might know what to expect in this dictionary if they already know the meaning of L'Espace, Semantique structurale, semio-linquistique, and semiotique. People whose literary experiences have been in English will want to have a knowledge of fairy tales or action type movies which fall into the "Canonical narrative scheme" (p. 32) plot structure for understanding what is being discussed in most of the definitions of this book.
An application, "A Semiotic Analysis of Sleeping Beauty" (pp. 143-167) is provided for those who need to see an example of the form of discourse that semiotics produces in practice. In a world in which entertainment seems to be the most commercially successful form of communication, an intellectual field like semiotics may provide intellectuals with a framework in which they can attempt to understand the significance of actions which might otherwise seem as mind-numbing as hours of video games. I have not been spending much time on video games lately, but I had a tendency to play games that simulated activities on an assembly line or playing field that continued to proceed smoothly as long as the game player could keep pace with whatever was on the screen. The "Semiotic square" (pp. 116-118) attempts to diagram forms of opposition in a way that produces something more complicated than linear thought, and time within the story of "Sleeping Beauty" (slightly less than two and a half pages) is analyzed in a manner that identifies fifteen figurative isotopies from "once" to "finally." The DICTIONARY OF SEMIOTICS includes a description of semiotics in the entry for Metalanguage: "Semiotics itself is a metalanguage, in other words, the term refers to the language or concepts that define the manner meaning is produced." (p. 83).
If suddenly activities like video games could replace communication, the need or use for semiotics would disappear. Particularly in the field of editorial cartoons, the subtle switch from comic books or movies about invading Mars being replaced by video games based on a Martian invasion by earthlings seems to point the way to a future in which this might be the main thing.
If my reviews of books on philosophy have sometimes been a catastrophe, it could be because I have usually been more concerned with what this DICTIONARY OF SEMIOTICS defines as "Epistemic modalities" than with how much a normal reader might enjoy any particular book. Within the field of epistemic concerns, "the modalities connected involve certainty/uncertainty and probability/improbability." (p. 59). Some of our greatest doubts are about history and what came before, so it seems possible to me that at the time of the founding of Athens, and possibly until the fall of ancient Athens and the hemlock for Socrates, there was a civilization in India that was a matriarchy, or which had displaced matriarchal societies to marginal areas which did not attempt to support large populations. This civilization could have had great cities that were destroyed by invaders who lived in huts and left no trace of the cities. I spent a year of my life in huts, away from large cities, and a number of Americans are still taking part in that kind of activity. September 11 was an event involving the destruction of buildings, and the American reaction has taken a form that seems to rely on video game reflexes far more than on epistemic modalities.
"In semiotic terms, epistemic modalities form part of the competence needed by an enunciatee to evaluate a proposition. In order to establish an enunciative contract (implicit or explicit), an enunciator attempts to persuade (faire croire) the enunciatee, who, for his/her part, seals his/her own interpretative doing with an epistemic judgement, that is, with either believing (croire) the enunciator or doubting (ne pas croire) his/her statements." (p. 59).
This book was published in 2000, but problems in stories correspond to the means used to evaluate where history is taking us.
"The epistemic judgement in this instance refers to the assessment of the narrative subject's performance being in accordance with the initial contract. It also relates to cognitive sanction in that it distributes belief or disbelief in statements made within a narrative. . . . Scientific discourse in particular is characterized by a surfeit of epistemic modalization which appears to take the place of verifying procedures. The same goes for the experimental sciences and all discourse whose hypotheses are difficult to verify." (p. 60).
In this book, politics does not appear in the index or as an entry in the main text, but it would fall between " oetic or aesthetic function" (pp. 102-103) and Polysemy" (p. 103). Close enough for government work is:
"The word `head' is polysemic, as it would appear in the dictionary as (a) a part of the body or (b) a leader, as in `Head of State'." (p. 103). |
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