Semiotics 101

Fragmentos de: The Semiotic Method

Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon

from Signs of Life in the USA. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1994. 4-9.

1.

It was Barthes, too, who established the political dimensions of semiotic analysis. Barthes's point--and the point of semiotics in general--is that all social behavior is political in the sense that it reflects some kind of personal or group interest. Such interests are encoded in what are called "ideologies," which are essentially world views that express the values and opinions of those who hold them. Politics, then, is just another name for the clash of ideologies that takes place in any complex society where the interests of all those who belong to it are constantly in competition with each other.

2.

When analyzing any popular cultural phenomenon, always ask yourself questions like these: Why does this thing look the way it does? Why are they saying this? Why am I doing this? What are they really saying? What am I really doing? In short, take nothing for granted when analyzing any image or activity.

3.

Ordinarily, however, our interpretations stop at the threshold of the more probing questions; at the questions that ask not only whether something is fashionable but what it means that the thing is fashionable in the first place. That's what cultural semiotics is all about: going beyond what a sign is to explain what it means.