Updated: 04/11/2002

When we looked a narrative structure, we were essentially looking at what we call FORMAL CRITICISM.  As we discussed earlier, it's much like literary criticism.  And, if we had applied those same elements of the text to how it might impact the culture, we'd have been doing NEOCLASSICAL Criticism. Now we're switching criticism forms....

DECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM

This form of criticism takes apart the pieces of the television text -- the script, acting, lighting, camera work, costuming, etc. and examines it for what each of those things is saying about life, the culture, and the situation in which the characters find themselves.  Deconstructive criticism developed theoretically from the concepts that reality is constructed; therefore to understand our understanding of it, we DEconstruct our representations of it.

This perspective is reflective of postmoderism, a philosophy which hold that truth does not exist, but rather is constructed by each person, making everything relative, dependent upon human beings' perception, preference and interpretation.  While semiotics and deconstructive criticism offer valuable insight into understanding television texts, many people see inherent logical and philosophical problems with the worldview on which it is based.  While those weaknesses are not the purview of this class, it is important that any discussion of deconstruction be qualified for the novice.   Don't just accept without careful consideration the concept of constructed reality.  We human beings may construct our perception of reality, but many would disagree that we construct reality.  If I run my van into your car, I may perceive the dent in your fender to be an inconsequential scratch.  You probably won't agree, especially when the body shop estimates repair costs at $2000.  Whether I perceive it or not, the reality is that I seriously damaged your car.  I don't think that you'll be arguing that reality or truth is a "construct" at that point.  The dent is real. The bill is real. My responsibility is real, whether I perceive it to be or not.

Deconstructive criticism can halp us see, however, how an individual creator of television text views the world.  What does that program say about life, right and wrong, individual roles in the society, what is important and what is not?  By learning to read the signs and symbols that make up any communication,  electronic or otherwise, we can see more than the story.  We can better understand the characters, the underlying assumptions and themes behind the story and we can appreciate the skill and craftsmanship which created the programs.

One note:  One concept that helped me understand this process better was to look at the word "represent."  We assume that what we see on television or  movies represents some from of reality.  If it's not believable, we won't suspend our "disbelief" and we won't be engaged in the story.  So the fundamental assumption is that someone's reality is being represented in some way by the television or film text.  What what does it mean to "represent." It means to "re-present."  To present again.

Television texts are "presenting again" someone's reality or their idea of reality. 

Deconstructive forms of criticism  see communication as a means transferring a meaning from one person to another, but rather that the meaning is actually generated by both the sender and the receiver. 

The television program then, is is not a message but a text which is constructed and then can be deconstructed.  I had a cousin who took things apart.  When he was little, his mom had to watch him constantly because he'd try to take apart anything. He took the vacuum cleaner apart. She found him with the portable radio in pieces.  She went looking for the phone in her bedroom and found him sitting on the floor with the phone in pieces.  He wanted to know how it was put together, what made it work.  The funny thing was, even at age six or seven, he could generally put the things he took apart back together.  He put the phone back together, and it worked!  We do the same thing with TV shows in this class.  We're taking them apart to see what's inside. What makes them work?  What is connected to what and why?  And, if you can successfully take one apart, it stands to reason you'll be more able to put one together.  That's the plan.  That's a big reason why we teach this course.

Terminology

Semiotics is the study of signs.

Sign: Is something we can percieve with our senses.  It refers to something physical and different than itself.  A sign is not a sign unless it is recognized and understood.

We don't think about how signs function in a culture to actually define it.  Language is a key sign system that we all use and understand, and language (signs) define our understanding of our culture.  If you look at the words "man" and "woman", they're not really that different.  Malcomb Sillars, points out that the thing that really makes the signs different is what they stand for.  Or take the names John and Joan.  One letter makes those signs different.  On paper, it doesn't seem that significant, but there are lots of differences in what they stand for.  Or take the words "president" and "precedent" -- again, the difference is in the thing represented by the sign.

Signs have two parts:

• Signifier:  the physical representation (letter, picture, sound, etc.)

• Signified: the thing represented by the sign.

Remember, signs refer concepts not things.

Meaning: Meaning to the semiotic critic is not a thing but a process.  Meaning is negotiated or created.

You  might ask, how do you "negotiate" meaning?  That's what you're doing now as you read this lecture.  You're reading it, or maybe (hopefully) you heard it in class, and as you listened or read, you're thinking to yourself -- to I understand this? Does it mean this or that.....What about....? And so on.. If you've ever had an argument with a boyfriend or girlfriend, you were "negotiating" your differences; negotiating meaning.

Semiotics critics will sometimes go so far as to make the following assumptions:

• Man is an animal which uses symbols and that makes us different from other species. (Some recent research demonstrates that some apes and sea mammals are capable of using signs.)

• Symbols are made up of signs and those signs don't necessarily have a connection to the thing they represent. Signs are therefore arbitrary.

• Humans make distinctions in nature as we organize it with signs and symbols. Those distinctions don't exist without human beings. (Somehow I think there was a difference between hot and cold, soil and water and dinosaurs and protozoa even before people were here to label them.)  Certainly the semiotic critics are correct when they say that signs are necessary to label and categorize those distinctions and to pass them down to future generations.  The words "table" and "chair" or "bird" and "fish" are labels which must be learned.

• Meanings are socially constructed.   Since signs are arbitrary and their meanings are concrete, then they can change and they must be learned. The people who use them decide what they will mean.  "Bad" doesn't necessary mean a horrible thing and a "hot" girl or guy isn't necessarily perspiring. But in 10 years, "bad" could again mean "awful" and "hot" could mean "a high body temperature."

Semiotics also considers how signs work in cultures and how cultures impact the sign and its meaning.  Some of the concepts that influence this process are demonstrated through conventions.  Remember conventions are rules, written or unwritten, about how signs work together in a society or a specific part of it.  Some of the conventions that are influential are related to:

• values

• myths

• ideologies

All of those can impact the way a sign my be perceived.  For example, if I say "true blue" you know I'm probably not taking about a color ( convention of values).  If I refer to a "blue ox" you have to make the association with the Paul Bunion tall tales (myth). Some would argue that Star Trek and Star Wars are modern myths or morality plays, and they certainly have influenced our culture's signs. "Beam me up, Scotty" and "The Force Be With You" are known and understood by every member of American culture (at least those who haven't been living under a rock for 30 years.). And if we say "freedom of speech" that means far more to us than it might to some one in another culture.  It may mean even more to someone in news or entertainment industries than it does in to someone in the home building industry because of the ideological training media practitioners receive in colleges and universities.

TYPES OF SIGNS:

It is very important that you be able to recognize the key differences among signs categories.  It's not hard once you think about it. 

Icon : A sign that looks like what it represents.  It can resemble what it represents in other ways as well.  For example, the classical piece Flight of the Bumble Bee makes music which sounds like a bee buzzing and flying and about.  Some words sound like what they mean: splash, buzz, burp, bubble, rumble, roar, trickle, etc. (Onomatopoeia ) Those words make language iconic.  In your text book, Butler even refers to the wood furnishings and decor of the Cheers bar as iconic of Sam Malone's masculinity and character.  In the same way, we might say that Carla's swagger, frizzy hair and no-nonsense style of dress are iconic of her character's personality -- no-nonsense, tough, "down to earth", and feisty with a little soft side. A simpler example would be the simple drawings of a man or woman on a restroom door.  We know which room is the one we want because of the picture...

Index: This sign implies its meaning.  There is a logical or causal relationship between the sign and the thing it represents. So if there's smoke, there must be a fire somewhere.  If there's a flashing light, there must be danger or an emergency of some kind....If you have a temperature, you must be sick.

Symbol: There is no direct relationship between the thing represented and its sign.  Who decided a stop sign needed to octagonal or a yield sign is an upside-down triangle?  We have learn those meanings because they're very hard, if not impossible, to figure out. 

Sillars simplifies these definitions with a diagram similar to this one:

Conventions:

Conventions are rules or agreed upon ways of using signs.  There are formal conventions (like grammar or rules in football) and informal conventions (like blue means loyal..).  All types of signs are governed by social conventions including those that relate to natural laws, grammar, and societal norms.

For example, we know a racial slur when we hear one and we recognize "ain't got no" as indicative of lack of education: 

FORMAL conventions have specific rules to govern their use.  Some examples would be

•     grammar

•     conventions of ballet

•     rules of basketball

•     etiquette 

INFORMAL conventions are much harder to nail down.  They may be

• symbols  (the lady in red vs. the lady in white or black)

• emotion-locked words ("High-tech lynching")  

Informal conventions are more numerous and they are the most important kind for the semiotic critic.  

Signs are organized into CODES and codes are organized into SIGN SYSTEMS

Codes:  Collection of signs

Sign Systems:  Collection of codes.

• Codes link together the signs in a way that reflect the interpretation of a set of cultural values

• Signs and the codes into which they organized are the basis for defining the community  (Remember our discussion of Postman in ethics and how he discusses how language frees us from the here and now and defines how concepts are organized in a society?)

• A Code or sign system doesn't have to be shared by the entire community to be effective; it is enough that some people do understand it.

Sometimes signs may be operative without some people even realizing what's going on.   If a news story is presented with a spokesperson for two sides of a particular issue and one person is well-dressed and articulate and the other is unshaven,  wearing blue jeans, a Mountain Dew t-shirt with his belly sticking out, there's not much question about who will have the most credibility.   News media stress objectivity, but it's fairly easy to show bias, as Bernard Goldstein demonstrated recently in his book, Bias.  

Codes perform several functions:

• They reveal the view of a society a person has  (I believe it's important to wear my "Sunday best" to church", thereby indicating that church is important.  

• They also influence what our view will be.  I know that in some churches, certain types of dress are appropriate at certain services. 

• They create frames through the use of symbol systems or sign systems -- like a picture frame, they determine the angle or perspective through which we must view the scene

• They may be both private and public

• But they are never totally shared....

  • multiple meanings may be operating at the same time

  • dependent upon what those who read the texts bring to the "reading" 

Texts:  A book, television show, commercial, or film are all collections of signs that utilize specific codes and sign systems to communicate meaning.  They can be "read" by diverse members of the society who will be able to draw common meaning from the text. 

Reading a "text" is a complex cultural process, which requires experience, training and understanding of cultural symbols.  (That's one of the reasons why you are required to take general ed classes.  How can you "read" the texts of your culture -- the very texts which define your culture -- if you don't have enough information to decode them properly?) 

Texts are examined on multiple levels by audiences, whether audience members really think about what they're doing in the process or not.  Look at a commercial and evaluate the following components of the text:

Look at a commercial, a television program opening, part of a newscast and see what kinds of elements are present in the reading of the text.  Do those elements reinforce each other, contrast, offer irony,?  How do they all contribute to the overall communicated message. 

Sillars also discusses the multiple ways in which a text can be analyzed:

Situational Variance: A sign that is acceptable in one place might not be acceptable in another situation.  It's okay to wear a Lionette outfit on the football field, but not many Lionettes are comfortable wearing the uniform to class...

Perceptual Variance:  If you are ignorant of the characteristics or rules governing a part of the text, you won't be able to evaluate it very well. A deaf person cannot appreciated the details of pitch and tone, even though they may perceive rhythm or amplitude through their other senses.

Polysemy: This is another concept introduced by John Fiske  (1987) in his book Television Culture.  The term refers to multiple readings which may be possible from a single text. When you read Alice in Wonderland as a kid, you saw one level of meaning, but when you reread it as an adult, hopefully you will see more specific and sophisticated meanings.

Polyvalence:  In this derivation of meaning, two people might read the text pretty much the same way but disagree regarding the appropriateness of the text.  FX has a new program, The Shield, which is drawing fire for content which pushes the envelope.  The producers think its fine; the Parents' Television Council and others have a totally different opinion.

Multivocality: Each text may have a number of discourses represented within it.  For example, Star Trek: The Next Generation  contains discourses about heroism, gender roles, the nature of humanity, parenting, tolerance, etc.

Recoding:  Some programs become so important, they are recoded.  The Miss America Pageant has been recoded as statement on the position of women in the culture.  Amos 'n' Andy was recoded from a sitcom to a symbol of repressive racial stereotypes which demeaned and discriminated against African Americans. 

Language is not free of value. In fact, Day wrote in Communication Ethics that all communication is sermonic....It all persuades. Consider the words we use to describe the people who enforce our laws:

• police officer

• men in blue

• safety officials

• officers of the law

• traffic officers

• police personnel

• heroes

• cops

• fuzz

• (in the 60s...) pigs

• New York's finest

All of those word reflect different codes of interpretation or cultural understanding.

Sillars lists a number Factors Which Influence Meaning:

Connotations:  Remember that signs don't have inherent meaning.  We have to learn most of them.  Connotations occur when the sign meets the feelings or emotions of the user and the values of the culture

• names:  jock; leader, bureaucrat, leader, criminal

• adjectives: crooked, shyster, intelligent, happy, fierce

Metonymy:  When the metaphor comes to automatically refer to the thing it represents.  (I know, that's awkward)  For example:  When newsmedia refer to the "White House says...." we know the building didn't talk.  "White House"  = President.

This can happen in news when what the media elect to show come to represent the entire event.  When Bailey Almond's picture was taken as she was carried by a firefighter from the wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, her picture came to represent the innocent lives lost in that terrorist event.  In fact, some of the other parents were hurt that her family received so much attention, as though their suffering was unnoticed.  Those insensitivities weren't on purpose, but they were the result of the metonymy of that famous photo.

All news video are metonymies because for the audience, they represent the entire event and are dependent upon arbitrary selection of elements.

Values:  Expressions in the language of generally reflect the users concept of what is good and what is not good.

Ideology:  These refer to the beliefs of a culture which are revealed in the messages the words signs in the texts express.  Ideology is what all deconstructive critics try to achieve.  Ideological critics see everything as ideological.

Myths:  Myths are stories that members of a particular culture use to explain the values of the culture and how to live in it.   Every culture has them, and most of the participants in the culture understand them.

Tokens:   These are objects to which various meaning and cultural values are associated.  A flag is an example.

In deconstruction, the meaning of a text occurs in the interaction between the critic and the text; it doesn't exist independently of such interaction.  This is one way in which deconstructive criticism is different from formal criticism.

John Fiske (1987) has done some of the seminal work on deconstructive criticism, but he is not alone.  At universities all over the world, graduate degrees are offered in media criticism.  But these are highly specialized degree, and unfortunately the average student doesn't have much training in how to "read" a televisual text. 

Fiske offers a well-recieved approach to codes.  We'll call them Fiske's Television Code System:

Code: "a link between a producer's texts and audience's ; a rule-governed system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a culture and which is used to generate meanings and for that culture"

Codes for Television fall into three categories:

This about the viewing exercises we've done in class.... How were costuming, lighting, make-up, set-design organized into codes and on what level? Be sure you can identify those.  

Go to Semiotics Part II

Resources for this lecture will be listed at the end of Part II.

Copryright , 2002

Dr. Janet McMullen