Semiotics. Everything is a text

I was not very sure of the actual meaning of semiotics before starting with this lesson, it was definitely eye-openning. We begun the class with concepts like connotation, code, sign, paradigm, myth...without even knowing what a sign really was. The first exercise we did was searching for all the signs that we could find in the classroom. Because of my lack of knowledge I honestly did not find much.

Semiotics can be applied to anything which can be seen as signifying something.That is, to everything which has meaning within a culture. Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we give them meaning. We interpret things as signs by relating them to familiar systems of conventions.

Ferdinand de Saussure. offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of:

• a 'signifier' (signifiant) - the form which the sign takes

• a 'signified' (signifié) - the concept it represents.

The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as 'signification'

Denotation and Connotation

In semiotics, denotation and connotation are terms describing the relationship between the signifier and its signified, and an analytic distinction is made between two types of signifieds: a denotative signified and a connotative signified. Meaning includes both denotation and connotation.

In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide. The term 'connotation' is used to refer to the socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign. These are typically related to the interpreter's class, age, gender, ethnicity and so on.

Let´s see it with the example of a rose: the rose denotes a red sweet-smelling flower; and it can connote love, passion, romance

We can also apply this on Shakira´s video. The denotation here will be a girl who is in a cage. However, if we think about it deeper we see she does not feel free. Therefore, the cage, on a connotation meaning, will be the representation of the repression.