THE SEMIOLOGICAL HERITAGE

THE SEMIOLOGICAL HERITAGE

In founding European semiology, Ferdinand de Saussure had made a key distinction between the manifest uses of language (parole) and its latent, underlying system (langue) (see the survey on structuralism and semiology in Chapter 1). Semiology was to become a science of sign systems and their social uses, focusing on the rule-governed, transindividual aspects of concrete signifying practices. In a later introduction to the first major collection of semiological analyses,

124 A handbook of qualitative methodologies

the French theorist Roland Barthes put special emphasis on the mass media as modern signifying practices, and suggested that sign systems also operate behind the various “images, gestures, melodic sounds, objects, and complexes of those substances to be found in rituals, ceremonies, or public spectacles” (Barthes, 1964:1). (The rise of mass communication itself may, in part, explain the development of a systemic, semiological mode of analysis. See the Introduction to this Handbook.) Mass-communicated messages may be experienced in immediate terms as an immensely differentiated complex of signs. But, in fact, the signs can be broken down analytically so as to capture the latent systems which generate the variety. Behind the parole of media texts lies a langue or a set of semantic elements and syntactical rules—a code which governs the production of meaning through media. For text-analytical purposes, this model suggests that the analyst will be able to reconstruct such latent codes, just like a person who has never played chess before would be able to reconstruct the rules underlying the infinite number of possible games by attentively following a finite number of concrete games.

The most rigorous formulation of guidelines for such an analysis is Roland Barthes’ Elements of Semiology (1984c). Semiological analysis, according to Barthes, should establish the “synchronic” state of a given signifying system, thus excluding considerations of how this system has developed historically, in the “diachronic” dimension. Furthermore, the analysis should examine a corpus of signifying objects from the point of view of their immanent meaning, leaving out or only later introducing “other determining factors of these objects (whether psychological, sociological or physical)” (Barthes, 1984c:95). With The Fashion System (1983), a meticulous study of texts from major French fashion magazines during one year, Barthes himself delivered an example of a synchronic analysis of this kind. However, the study also demonstrates one side-effect of working with such a fixed perspective of texts. While producing an extremely precise description of one langue, unless it is interpreted with reference to relevant historical, social, economic, psychological, and other contexts, the analysis remains “formal,” as formal, in some respects, as the quantitative approaches being replaced.

Early semiology, as exemplified by Barthes’ work, generally argues that the emphasis given to the “closure” of signifying objects around particular meanings was only an analytical strategy and a preliminary solution made necessary by the unfinished state of the general theory.

Fictional media content 125

Yet, the implicit argument frequently is that this formal, closed analysis is sufficient, so that one may proceed directly from the textual structures to consider their external, socio-historical determinations as well as their possible ideological effects. The underlying assumption is that the conceptual meanings (signifieds) of the text are relatively unified or homogeneous. In some cases, such homogeneity is ascribed to the industrial, standardized character of mass media production (see, for example, Eco, 1976:13). More often, however, the argument is premised on a particular conception of the relationship between texts and ideology. Again, Roland Barthes’ work provides an illuminating example.

In Mythologies (1973) Barthes analysed a variety of everyday phenomena (advertisements, popular films, sports events, etc.) and showed that they hold two kinds of meaning: one which is immediately understood, and another which is “carried” by the first meaning. To exemplify, the image of a black soldier saluting the French flag on the front page of Paris Match, on the one hand, means just that: “black,” “soldier,” “military salute,” and so forth. On the other hand, this, as it were, “natural” meaning is reappropriated in the production of a “cultural” or, to be precise, “ideological” message. When read within its sociohistorical context of consensual concepts and values, the Paris Match cover becomes a sign of “French imperialism.”

In later works, Barthes used the linguistic terms denotation and connotation to refer respectively to the “natural” and “ideological” meaning of a text. Emphasizing the ideological character of connotation even further, he argued, in “Rhetoric of the image” (1984a), that, even while texts may vary in terms of their signifiers, connotation

holds all its signifieds in common: the same signifieds are to be found in the written press, the image or the actor’s gestures…. This common domain of the signifieds of connotation is that of ideology, which cannot but be single for a given society and history, no matter what signifiers of connotation it may use.

(Barthes, 1984a:49)

In early semiology, then, this notion of a single ideology is the implicit reason for claiming that the analysis of media messages is a critical practice, in spite of the exclusion of historical and social circumstances.

126 A handbook of qualitative methodologies

In summary, there are striking parallels between the semiological heritage and the critical heritage of Kracauer and the Frankfurt School, both regarding the assumed homogeneity or closure of media content around one ideology and regarding the status of qualitative content analysis as social critique. At the same time, the parallels suggest that this may be a fairly common understanding of the relations between text, ideology, and society, rather than the consequence of the specific theoretical frameworks. Moving beyond the notion of ideological homogeneity to a differentiated conception of ideologies and social communication systems, later semiological analyses have proved their relevance as forms of social understanding and critique.