Week 1 - Semiotics

Readings 

Johnathan Bignall: Media Semiotics pp 5 - 17
Roland Barthes: The World of Wrestling from Mythologies pp 15 - 25

Lecture notes 

In this lecture I learnt that semiotics is the study of signs and signs systems. These signs refer to  things convey meaning such as words, images, clothes, gestures, symbols, and the work done by illustrators. Understanding semiotics allows illustrators to understand how their work can have meaning and how they choose to produce their work can add extra layers of meaning if they take semiotics into account. 
The study of signs can be traced back to Ferdinand Saussure (1857-1913) and Charles pierce (1839-1914), both linguistic academics. Saussure was a structuralist who proposed that perception of reality is constructed by words and other signs. For example cultures and societies give a different meaning to the word 'child' depending on how their perception of what a child is and when someone transitions into adulthood. This means one persons reality will differ from another depending on what their definition for a child is. Previously, once an infant became a child and could work along side their parents, they were basically considered a smaller adult, however as society industrialised, laws protected children from the work place and instead were expected to go to school. The meaning of the word 'child' changed as now children were seen as a separate group from adults that needed protecting and educating, before being old enough to join the work force.

Thematic coherence - Subject fields/ground rules/theoretical 
Structuralism - Human culture is shaped by the environment
Semiotics - study of signs and sign systems within society  
Signifier - physical representation 
Signified - mental concept 
Langue - whole language system 
Sign - single word 
Parole - example of speech or writing 
Syntagm - complete, ordered sequence of signs 
Paradigm - point of substitution in a sentence, allowing an exchange of a similar sign