Week 4

Question 1

What is semiotics?

Answer 1

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and the processes through which they communicate meaning

Question 2

What is a sign?

Answer 2

A sign is anything that communicates meaning

Question 3

What is Sassure’s dyadic model of the sign?

Answer 3

His model of the sign described all signs as consisting of 2 parts: the signifier and the signified

Question 4

What is the signified?

Answer 4

The signified refers to the concept or idea that the sign denotes or represents the “plane of content”

Question 5

What is the signifier?

Answer 5

The signifier refers to the perceptible properties of the sign itself, or the “plane of expression”

Question 6

Why is Sassure’s dyadic model of the sign useful specifically for the human language?

Answer 6

Because there is a sound image (a word that is pronounced in a certain way), which is associated with a concept

Question 7

As concepts are held constant among languages what is it that we have to remember?

Answer 7

That the idea of concepts themselves are language dependent, they are not universal

Question 8

What does the “arbitrary nature of the sign” refer to?

Answer 8

It refers to Saussure’s idea that the relationship between the signifier and signified is an arbitrary product of history and social convention

Question 9

What are some examples of non-linguistic social sign systems?

Answer 9

The style of clothing one wears saying something about the person wearing them, the kind of drink you order, etc.

Question 10

What are natural signs?

Answer 10

They are symbols that are found in nature (black clouds, wilted plants, etc. are assigned meanings by the given culture therefore becoming natural signs)

Question 11

How does a sign stand in for another thing?

Answer 11

It stands in for another thing by way of using semiotic grounds which refers to how sign is a vehicle that relates to its object

Question 12

What is an icon?

Answer 12

An icon is a sign that has a relationship of resemblance

Question 13

What is an index?

Answer 13

It is a sign that has a relationship of concurrence of causality

Question 14

What is a symbol?

Answer 14

It is a sign that has a relationship of convention

Question 15

What is semiosis?

Answer 15

It is the socio-semiotic processes in which signs appear, are used, and interpreted

Question 16

What is Peirce’s triadic model of the sign?

Answer 16

It is a model that consists of three things: the representamen (the sign itself), the interpretant (the meaning created by the sign) and the object (what the sign refers to)

Question 17

Why is semiosis multimodal/multisensory?

Answer 17

Because signs always have a multiplicity of potential meanings

Question 18

What is an indexical icon?

Answer 18

It is a sign that is primarily iconic (it resembles an object) but also has an indexical component (a direct connection to the object)

Question 19

What is an iconic index?

Answer 19

It is a sign that is primarily indexical (it has a direct connection to its object) but also has an iconic component (some resemblance to the object)

Question 20

What is an iconic or indexical symbol?

Answer 20

It is a sign that resembles its referent to some degree (i.e. has an iconic relationship to its object) or points to or is directly connected to its referent (i.e. has an indexical relationship to its object) but is still ultimately a product of social convention

Question 21

What are the levels of expression value in Victoria Welby’s significs and triadic model of the sign?

Answer 21

Sense: signification, sensal/instinctive
Meaning: intention, volitional
Significance: ideal value, moral

Question 22

What is iconization?

Answer 22

It is when an indexical relation (based on a relationship of concurrence or causality) is recast as iconic relation (based on a relation of resemblance)

Question 23

What is fractal recursion?

Answer 23

It is when contrast or comparison made at one scale of social life is remade at another

Question 24

What is erasure?

Answer 24

It is when something is deemphasized or minimized in order to emphasize something else

Question 25

What is a sign token?

Answer 25

It refers to an actual, real-life instantiation of a sign

Question 26

What is semiotic ideology?

Answer 26

It refers to people’s underlying assumptions about what signs are, what functions signs do or do not serve, and what consequences they might or might not produce

Question 27

What is place-making?

Answer 27

It is a form of retrospective world building [involving] multiple acts of remembering and imagining which inform each other in complex ways...[and that] consist[s] in an adventitious fleshing out of historical material that culminates in a posited state of affairs, a particular universe of objects and events-in short, a place-world -wherein portions of the past are brought into being

Question 28

What is the linguistic landscape?

Answer 28

This refers to the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region

Question 29

What is the most basic informational function of the linguistic landscape?

Answer 29

It is that it serves as a distinctive marker of the geographical territory inhabited by a given language community (Bourhis, 1992). The linguistic landscape also serves to delineate the territorial limits of the language group it harbors relative to other linguistic communities inhabiting adjoining territories. Consistent use of a single language within the linguistic landscape of a territory can contribute to clear-cut language boundaries between adjoining language groups in a given geographical region. Well-established language boundaries can stabilize relations between rival language groups by clearly delineating the administrative territories where members of the language group can expect to use and receive government and private sector services in their own language. Thus the linguistic landscape serves to inform in-group and out-group members of the linguistic characteristics, territorial limits, and language boundaries of the region they have entered

Question 30

Give a brief summary of Keith Basso's "Wisdom Sits in Places"

Answer 30

Basso discusses how places are as much a part of us as we are a part of them, as they do not just mean the where but also the cultures, languages, and meanings created in these spaces. This is because it is very common for people to form attachments to places/create associations with them, the displacement of peoples leading to the loss of place/loss of attachment to a place as a consequence. Basso also discusses place-making, saying that it does not require special sensibilities or cultivated skills. That is because imagining what could have occurred in a place, who was involved, etc., is a common human response to our curiosity. Therefore, it becomes a universal tool of the historical imagination that provides a means of revisiting former times through revision. Even in societies that lack the services of revisionary historians, historical understandings are altered and recast. For example, the stories that Basso uses to describe how place-making takes place through the names that the Apache created to name the places they have on their maps explains how these places received their names. Usually they come with stories, retellings of how their ancestors came to the land and decided to call it what it is. Whether it be in relation to the kind of environment it is, the animals that were there, the plants, etc. it seems to be a common theme in Apache culture to name something after what one sees rather than after the people who found it like in the West