After reading Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes’ articles,
I couldn’t help relating these texts to other readings from the Visual and
Verbal Text Design course I took last semester. Some of the terms in the
material sounded incredibly familiar; hence, I searched for the material I had
previously read. There was Barthes again (I knew the name sounded familiar!).
Interestingly, my previous reading of Barthes (Rhetoric of the Image) had more
similarities to De Saussure’s text (instead of Barthes' own article), and Practices
of Looking, another text read for the class, also presented similar terms.
In De Saussure’s article, he explored the concept of language. He
argues that the link that form language comes from the relationship between
ideas (thoughts) and sounds. I think his concept of language is interesting
(although somewhat difficult to grasp). He explains, “[L]anguage
works units while taking shape between two shapeless masses” (De Saussure 2004,
6) and he also affirms that, in language, sound and word cannot be separated.
De Saussure then begins to explore the ideas of signified and signifier,
and finally the complete sign. Sturken and Cartwright also explored
these concepts in Practices of Looking, although their text emphasize their
applications in images rather than text. They state that the way images
affect us depends on their cultural meanings and the context in which they are
displayed. We, the audiences that view the images, are also
predisposed to perceive cultural codes, such as gendered and racial meanings.
Our process of interpretation comes from semiotics (a term
that appears that appears in the Introduction of Section 1: Semiology), since we
use its tools to understand meaning. For Barthes, denotation (the literal
meaning) and connotation (inferred cultural meanings) have signs and signifiers.
Signs can be images, words, or media. The signifier is the meaning, the concept
of the sign. Meanings and signs depend on the cultural context in which the
signs are created, on the image, and on the viewers. Even the same image can
produce different meaning depending on the context. Values of
images also change depending on different aspects. They receive value according
to their context. Naturally, the value will depend on what a certain society or group of people deems
important.
I see several similarities between the applications of these terms
when pertaining to language and when it applies to images. As in language,
signifiers and signifieds cannot be separated for the understanding of images.
Values are also terms that appear in both readings. In language, the value is
defined by the act of exchanging and the act of comparing,
and, similar to images, “The value of just any term is accordingly determined
by its environment” (De Saussure 2004, 8).
I found that by comparing these different texts and the
relationships of the signified and signifier in images and language, I was able to better understand these concepts.
If anyone is interested in checking out the texts I mentioned, the links are below.
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