Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Chapter 3: Semiotic Approaches to
Material Culture
- Semiotics
- Science of signs, and a
semiotic approach to
material culture regards
artifacts as signs whose
meaning and
significance have to be
determined by the use
of semiotic concepts
- Studies sings in
society, it is a
social science and
explains what
signs are and how
they function
- Founding
Fathers of
Semiotics
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Language is a self-contained system whose
interdependent parts function and acquire value
through their relationship to the whole
- concepts derive their meaning from their opposites
- "Sound-image"
- An object or signifier
- Charles Sanders Peirce
- Signs have to supply some of
the meanings. Something
which stands to somebody
for something in some
respect or capacity.
- Iconic Signs
- Signify by resemblance
- Indexical Signs
- signify by cause and effect
- Symbolic signs
- meaning must be learned
- Nothing has meaning in itself;
an object's meaning always
derives from the network of
relations in which it is
embedded
- Language
- System of signs that express ideas
- Semiology
- Shows what constitutes a sign
- Signify
- Objects carry not only information, also
constitute structured systems of signs
- Object
- somethings used for
something, function as the
vehicle of meaning
- Umberto Eco
- Theory of the lie
- Signs can be used to mislead others, must
always approach objects with a note of caution
- Denotation
- When dealing with artifacts, involves detailed
descriptions and measurements
- Conotation
- Involves the cultural meanings and myths connected to them