Chapter 3: Semiotic Approaches to Material Culture

Chapter 3: Semiotic Approaches to Material Culture

1. 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

2. Language

   • System of signs that express ideas

3. Semiology

   • Shows what constitutes a sign

4. Signify

   • Objects carry not only information, also constitute structured systems of signs

5. Object

   • somethings used for something, function as the vehicle of meaning

6. Umberto Eco

   • Theory of the lie
     • Signs can be used to mislead others, must always approach objects with a note of caution

7. Denotation

   • When dealing with artifacts, involves detailed descriptions and measurements

8. Conotation

   • Involves the cultural meanings and myths connected to them

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