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Galaxies of meaning: Semiotics in media theory
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Anna Jaysane-Darr
Published/Copyright:
November 4, 2010
Abstract
The article examines the use of semiotics in media theory, advancing a critique of Saussurian approaches to media and harnessing Peirce's sign theory as a way to analyze media, with reference to the sign “terrorist.” The tiered model of media representation based on Saussure's sign relation is found to under-theorize the materiality of the sign, the indeterminacy of meaning, the significance of the speaking subject, and the ideological and institutional forces that work on the sign. The interpretant in Peirce's model allows an alternate approach to media analysis in which media can be considered a kind of material culture, produced by people in regulated settings and encountered by interpreting minds in various contexts. Metasemiotic frameworks are found to operate on the sign “terrorist,” but the ongoing process of semiosis also allows for the possibility of change.
Published Online: 2010-11-04
Published in Print: 2010-October
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
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Keywords for this article
media;
news;
metasemiotic frameworks;
Charles Sanders Peirce;
terrorism;
United States
Articles in the same Issue
- A comparison of sign and symbol (their contents and boundaries)
- A Peircean inspired typology of print advertising
- Explaining educational experience: On one- and two-handed gestures as semiotic entities and the flexibility of their use
- Temporal phenomenology in Roentgen semiotics
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- Nonverbal indicators of deception: How iconic gestures reveal thoughts that cannot be suppressed
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