This Means This - This Means That (Sean Hall) - Notes

“Signs are always produced and consumed in the context of a specific society”

“In the western world we live in a society that is largely mechanistic and consumerist in outlook…we often use the mechanistic and consumerist metaphors that reflect the dominant views of our society.”

“Human beings…feel the need to tell stories.”

Key Semiotic Concept:

• ·       Sender (who)
• ·       Intention (with what aim)
• ·       Message (says what)
• ·       Transmission (by which means)
• ·       Noise (with what interface)
• ·       Receiver (to whom)
• ·       Destination (with what result)

Signifier represents the signified

Signifier is caused by the signified

The meaning of a symbol relates to the nature of the object. We need to know what the symbol stands for in advance if we are to understand it.

“It is hard not to be influenced in our judgements by what we take to be the intention behind it.”

“Messages are always transmitted through a medium. The medium carries the message from the sender to the receiver. 

The medium may be:

• Presentational: through the voice, the face (or parts of the face) or the body (or parts of the body).
• Representational: through paintings, books, photographs, drawings, writings and buildings.
• Mechanical: through telephones, the internet, television, radio and the cinema.

“There are numerous devices that we can employ to produce meanings of a non-literal kind: simile, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, irony, lies, impossibility, depiction and representation. All of these concepts can help us to produce new insights into the meanings of objects, images and texts.”

“When one thing is closely associated with – or directly related to – another, it can be substituted for it so as to create meaning… When one thing is substituted for another in a piece of communication we call it a metonym. Metonyms use indexical relationships to create meanings.”

“What is literally possible sets a limit for us. Possibilities (and impossibilities) that go beyond what is literal are rather less limited. In fact, it might be said that contemplating impossibilities is actually liberating, both intellectually and imaginatively.”

“What is fascinating about children is that while they are often literal in their approach to perception, they are naïve as regards the conventions of representation. This means that they may devise highly creative forms of representation that as adults we would never consider.”

“Stories always change in the telling. The facts may be altered, the characters improved, the details enhanced and the chronology of the events changed.”

“Turning-points consist in key moments when something occurs that brings about a change. In narratives this usually requires there to be a significant contrast between that which happened before a set of events and that which will happen after that. Often the turning-point is spectacular, exciting or extraordinary.”

“In stories, as in life, we want things to be resolved. In wanting resolution we might say that we fetishize the idea of things having endings… In wishing for these things to be resolved, though, we should not forget the value of the journey that takes us to the resolution itself… In fact, even when we reach the destination we may sometimes find ourselves miraculously back at the beginning.”