Semiotics Analysis

The study of semiotics, which is a general science of signs and is also dedicated to the structural systems of signification, concerns the theoretical proximity of the terms “significance”, “subject” and “symbolic order” within the importance of language and linguistics which makes “discourse” apparent for human culture and daily social life (Silverman 1983). In the book Course in General Linguistics, published in 1915 (cited in Wollen 1972, Silverman 1983), Saussure dedicated a new science, the science of semiology,

66 in which he not only constructed and recognised linguistics/language along semiotic principles, but also showed how its lines can be applied to all aspects of culture and society:

Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems.

A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology; I shall call it semiology.…Semiology would show what constitute signs, what laws govern them. Since the science does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts. (cited in Silverman 1983:4–5)

In this sense, signs should be studied from the social viewpoint, and language/linguistics is a social institution. Moreover, semiology indicates that language/linguistics is called the “code” pre-existing in the “message”. In Saussure’s use of the term, the sign is “unmotivated” as it is the “arbitrary nature of the sign” in which “[t]he signifier…has no natural connection with the signified” (Wollen 1972:117). Roland Barthes, an author of Writing Degree Zero (1953) and Elements of Semiology (1964), researching the language of costume, concluded that “[i]t is only in very rare cases that non-verbal systems present without auxiliary support from the verbal code” (Wollen 1972:118). In other words, words/languages enter a discourse of “other orders to contribute to the meaning which is either ambiguous…or to contribute to the meaning that cannot otherwise be communicated” (Ibid.). These conceptions can also be applied to other highly developed “signification” systems, such as fine art, music, dance, and of course cinema.

The practice of cinema indicates that a great complexity of meaning can be formed and expressed through the image and its systems. Cinematic semiotics is an attempt to elucidate a structural coherence to cinema (Nichols 2000), and is the study of signification via codes or systems in film texts. The pioneering work on cinematic semiology was done by Christian Metz. Metz’s understanding of film semiotics posits that cinema is structured like a language, and this draws attention to how cinema is constructed through its codes and conventions, in which “a logic of implication” is offered in which “image becomes language” (Metz 1974). Cinema is indeed a language, because it is text and it provides a meaning discourse. As Beller (2006:10) notes, “cinema took the formal properties of the assembly line and introjected them

67 as consciousness. This introjection inaugurated huge shifts in language function.” However, in Metz’s thinking, it is not transparent to consider how conception of “a logic of implication” should be gathered into the theoretical practice of semiology. This indicates that more discussion is needed on what we mean by a “sign”, and the series of words used to describe signs offered by Saussure, Barthes and Metz. Peirce, fortunately, has set out the different classifications of signs, in what is called “the second trichotomy of signs” – a sign is in an icon, an index, or a symbol, respectively (Wollen 1972). Cinema can be seen as a fantastic medium of communication and expression in social reality, in that it contains all three classifications of the sign: iconic, indexical, and symbolic, from natural to cultural, and from coded to uncoded.

Combining the notions of Malraux’s “montage” theory and Delluc’s “the pure cinema”, Bazin has pointed out that cinema could be understood within the ontology of the photographic image which photography takes of an impression, and the uses of light (Wollen 1972). This emphasises the existential frame between the sign and its object, which echoes Peirce’s definition of the features of the sign as an index, as well as the existential relations between reality and image, society and film, and social space and film space which is included in most of Bazin’s cinematic aesthetics. I agree to say that in my research, the cinematic aesthetic is based on the indexical characters of the photographic image provided by Bazin, as well as Metz’s conception of cinema being meaningful and symbolic. Through cinematic semiotics, the research will focus on two film languages: mise en scène and cinematography. As has been mentioned in the earlier section on Textual/Contextual analysis,

mise en scène concerns what has been put/shown on the scene; for example, setting, costume,

light and framing. On the other hand, cinematography involves framing a vantage point on an action/image; movement of the frame such as angle, height and distance from subject; and focus. These cinematic signs/languages can be seen as verbal languages consisting not only of the iconic and indexical characters (the signifiers), but also the symbolic meaning/signification (the signified).