This document provides an introduction to social semiotics. It defines key terms like semiotics, sign, meaning, context, code, and framing. Semiotics is the science that studies the life of signs within society. A sign is the union of a signifier and signified. Meaning depends on context and codes that provide rules to give meaning. Framing techniques like color, space, and layout are used to distinguish and relate elements. The potential meanings of signs depends on context and the choices people make from the semiotic potential.

1. Introduction to Social
Semiotics
Matthew Tyler Giobbi, Ph.D.

2. SUGGESTED
REQUIRED

3. SEMIOTICS
• “A science that studies the
life of signs within society.”
-Ferdinand de Saussure
• Semeion (Gr) sign

4. • Semiotic resource (Halliday)- grammar
of a language is not a code, not a set of
rules for producing correct sentences,
but a “resource for making Meanings”.
• Also called signs.
• Pens, paper, computer, facial
expression… gestures.

5. • Sign- union of a signifier & a signified.

6. • Semiotic potential- what possibilities
there can be for meaning for a sign
(Halliday).
Meanings not meaning.
Meanings used in a society.

7. • Affordance- (Gibson) The potential uses
for a given object.
• Meaning is both subjective & objective.
• Meanings not yet recognized by society.

8. • Context determines meanings.
• The code is the context.
• Code- rules that give meaning.

9. • Inventorizing
• Use Description
• Semiotic Innovation (Lecture 2)

10. • Semiotic Inventories

11. Collections
• Semiotic inventories begin with
collections.
• Video taped (overt or covert).
• Clips from TV, film, video.
• Text, magazines, newspapers, lyrics
• New media

12. • Framing- lines, space, color, text, font,
image.
• Distinguishes likeness & difference.

13. Framing
• Color rhyming
• Contextualizing
• De-contextualizing
• Gradient
• Diegetic (part of)
• Non-diegetic (superimposed)

16. diegetic

17. • Segregation-two or more elements
occupy entirely different territories, and
this indicates that they should be seen
as belonging to different orders.

18. • Separation- two or more elements are
separated by empty space, and this
suggests that they should be seen as
similar in some respects and different in
others.
“ separation will always signify that the separated elements are the same or similar in some
respects, and different in others.”

19. • Integration- text and picture occupy the
same space- either the text is integrated
in (for example superimposed on) the
pictorial space, or the picture in the
textual space.

20. • Overlap- frames may be porous- for
example, part of the picture may break
through the frame or letters my be half
in the pictorial space and half in the
textual space.

21. • Rhyme- two elements, although
separate, have a quality in common-
what that quality is depends on the
common feature (color, shape, angle).

22. • Contrast- two elements differ in terms of
a quality.

23. Meaning potential
Specific meaning

24. “In different contexts, people make
different choices form the same overall
semiotic potential and make different
meanings with these choices.”

25. Semiotic register- the set of choices that
typify a given context.