semiotics&content analysis

8/12/2019 Semiotics&Content Analysis

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2007 Dr Brenda Murphy 1

Communications Overview

Semiotics and Content Analysis

Dr Brenda Murphy

Semiotics and Content Analysis is a theoretical and a methodological course.Semiotics is a qualitative approach to textual analysis and Content Analysis isa quantitative approach to textual analysis.

Semiotics tells us things we already know in a language we will never understand -Paddy Whannel

Semiotics The Basics by Daniel Chandler is the main reading text for thiscourse. Chandler also hosts a wonderful web site -http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/ -

Semiotics can be applied to anything which can be seen as signifyingsomething. Even within the context of the mass media you can apply semioticanalysis to any media texts, including television and radio programmes, films,cartoons, newspaper and magazine articles, posters and other ads.

Swiss linguist Ferdinand DeSaussure is considered to be the father ofsemiotics. He argued that: Language inheres, not in the material substance of the words but inthe longer and abstract system of signs of which words are the barest tip.

Signs and their relations are what linguists study and the nature ofsigns and the relationship between them is also seen to be structural. Thelinguistic sign is characterised in terms of the relationship which exists

between its duel aspects of concept and of sound image or in Saussuresterms, signifier and signified.

The sign is made up of these two elements (see table below)signifier = the sound image or the physical conceptsignified = the concept/the mental conceptand this leads to signification i.e. the external reality or meaning


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SIGN

composed of

Signifier + Signifiedphysical existence of the sign mental concept .

Semiotics is concerned with the sign and it has 3 main areas of study1. The sign itself2. The codes or systems into which the signs are organised3. The culture within which these codes and signs operate

The sign relates to reality only through the concepts of the people who useit.

So the word D O G as marks on paper or sounds in air - has a mentalconcept attached to it. Mine will be broadly the same as yours but there can beproblems - while we all may agree on the denotative cultural meaning i.e.domestic quadruped, my connotative meaning may be cute little snoopy, my

pet dogwhere as yours may be yipe, Im terrified of dogs ever since one bit me as achild. Any concept with broad connotative values will be problematic when

trying to locate common ground for meaning e.g., colour, any ism etc.

the overall characteristic of this relationship is ... arbitrary. There exists nonecessary fitness in the link between the sound-image, or signifier tree, theconcept, or signified that it involves, and the actual physical tree growing inthe earth. The word tree, in short, has no natural or tree-like qualities. ...The very arbitrariness of the linguistic sign protects it from change [Hawkes1977:25]

Semiotics focuses its attention on the text

In semiotics the receiver/reader plays an active role in the construction ofmeaning

The reader creates meaning in the text by bringing to it her/his experience,attitudes and emotions.


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A sign has three essential characteristics:1. it must have a physical form2. it must refer to something other than itself3. and it must be used and recognised by people as a sign.

Barthes gives the example of a rose: a rose is normally just a flower, but if ayoung man presents it to his girl friend it becomes a sign, for it refers to hisromantic passion, and she recognises that it does.

Signs, and the ways they are organised into codes or languages, are thebasis of any study of communication. They can have a variety of forms, suchas words, gestures, photographs or architectural features. Semiotics which isthe study of signs, codes and culture, is concerned to establish the essentialfeatures of signs, and the ways they work in social life.

Content Analysis

Some definitions:

Berelsonfamously defined Content Analysis as

a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitativedescription of the manifest content of communication 1952:147in Deacon et al 1998

Klaus Krippendorff defines content analysis as "a research technique formaking replicable and valid inferences from texts (or data) to a context oftheir use." That is, it refers to methods for inferring meaning from the text.

Content analysis has been defined as a systematic, replicable technique forcompressing many words of text into fewer content categories based onexplicit rules of codingBerelson, 1952; GAO, 1996; Krippendorff, 1980; & Weber, 1990.

Holsti(1969) offers a broad definition of content analysis as,"any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematicallyidentifying specified characteristics of messages" (p. 14).

Some situational notes:Some differences between Content Analysis and Semiotics

content analysis is deductive not inductive

content analysis assumes a universal objective


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content analysis has an empirically validated base of evidence uponwhich to rest its theory

content analysis is designed to produce an objective measurableverifiable account of the manifest content of messages

it analysis the denotative order of signification

it works best on a large scale. The more it has to deal with the moreaccurate it is.

It works through identifying and counting chosen units in acommunication system.

Units counted can be anything that the researcher wishes toinvestigate. Eg. representation of ethnic minorities, age differences insoap opera, incidents of eating in TV drama vs authentic portrayal ofreal life, use of emotive language in reporting a news story in the press(e.g. comparative study of The Times and the Sun)

The History:

Content analysis, in the form that is more familiar to us today, began asa quantitatively-oriented textual analysis method for studying masscommunications.

In the early 1900smass production of newspapers lead to an interest inpublic opinion and in such ethical issues as the accountability of thosewho reported the news.

It was not just positivists and politicians who saw value in developinga systematic and broad ranging method for analysis trends in masscommunication. In an address to the German Sociological Associationin 1910, Max Weber one of the most influential historical advocates ofinterpretative social research proposed a new sociology of the pressthat would be founded upon quantitative textual analysis.

Content analysis was first used in 1910 by Weber, to examine presscoverage of political issues in Germany.

The analytical techniques that utilised systematic, objective andquantitative description came out of Journalism schools under thename of quantitative newspaper analysis

Carney, 1972, Krippendorff 1980 as reported in Gallagher et al. 2000

1920-30switnessed an increase in the use of CA as researchers workedout methods and new approaches.The real basis had been laid by Lazarsfeld (1901-1979) and Lasswell(1902-1978) in the USA and they laid out a theoretical basis of

quantitative CA and the first text book about his method waspublished.


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Then the method shifted to cover emerging forms of media such asradio and movies. A second impetus coincided with the growth of newmass media industries pre WW2. (Remember at the time it was

believed that mass audiences were susceptible to manipulation bymedia messages, and quant.ca was developed in part to provideacademics and politicians with the means to police the symbolic arenasof mass culture and esp. to detect the presence of propaganda.)

With WW2, Lasswell studied the message content of wartimepropaganda and the process as a methodology was critically acclaimedand further developed.

However as early as 1943, Abraham Kaplan suggested broadening thefocus of CA beyond statistical semanticsof political discourse to includequalitative analysis of its semiotics (symbolic meaning).

In the middle of the 20th C objections were raised against it, assuperficial analysis without respecting latent contents and contexts,working with a simplifying and distorting quantification.

A classic study:

Paisley 1967 counted the no. of times Kennedy and Nixon used particularwords in their four television debates during the 1960 elections. This simple

example shows their use of the wordsTREATY ATTACK WARand showed interesting differences

Word Kennedy Nixon

Treaty 14 4

Attack 6 12

War 12 18

The data in this table provides evidence for the conclusion that Nixons

attitude was more bellicose, Kennedys more conciliatory.

Bibliography

Chandler D., 2001, Semiotics The Basics, Routledge, London.

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