COMS 2003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Erving Goffman, Existentialism, Semiotics
25 Nov 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 8 – Structuralism and Semiotics
• Abstract concepts have to do with meaning
o Jeans have a kind of meaning, no? They communicate something. There is
something meaningful about the fact that you are wearing them/chose to buy
them/where you wear them, etc.
o The meanings/connotations of jeans have changed over the years (used to be
farm-hands/casual can now be worn with blazer and collared-shirt, etc.)
o OMG he touched my hand <- What does it mean??? Does he like me??? OMG!!!
o What is the artist of a painting trying to say?
• How?
o The ways in which something occurred
o How something was made possible
• What makes meaning?
o Is it me that creates/associates meaning or is it something bigger than myself?
o How is meaning communicated?
o How is it that when you go to a genre movie, you already have a sense of what
you’re going to see? We know what they mean. We know what they are, what to
expect, and can therefore make assumptions about it.
• “Something bigger than myself”/Larger systems that might explain how things are what
they are: Structuralist Theories
o We are all part of a system that is external to our individual control that
determines meaning for us?
o There is also a psychological explanation: certain things are hard-wired into our
brain and they determine our actions.
o Technologies are so big that it’s possible that they can determine meaning
o These theories attempt to provide a scientific explanation of the systems for
structures that are present in all societies and which determine how people make
meaning and how that meaning is communicated.
• There are theories that emerge from linguistics (the study of structure and characteristics
of language)
o These theories think of language as systems that generate meaning
o These theories can be applied to other things (ex: culture)
o So things like films, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, etc. comes to be
thought of in much the same way as a language. These things become texts that
can be understood and picked apart
o Language is a great organizing system of meaning
▪ A sentence is a way of organizing the world in a way that creates meaning
▪ Humans have an endless capacity to generate an endless number of
sentences
▪ Each word has its own meaning, but the arrangement of those words are
important to the meaning of the whole (syntax structures how the meaning
is to be communicated). Because we know the rules of sentence-making
and grammar and syntax, we can understand meaning.
• Chess
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
