Free Transcript of Episode 1.4 The Semiosis Box of Tricks
Semiosis 101 Season 1 Video 4 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 17 Aug, 2022, we will explore how the client, the creative and the audience are all crucial to effective semiotic communication.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…
…and here is the video’s transcript.
NOTE: As with any video transcript the tone used is conversational. The following transcript text features ad libs, and therefore should be read in the spirit of any semi-scripted video.
Let us get to the fourth episode on general Peircean semiotic theory for illustrators and designers. Today in around 10-minutes, we will focus on explaining the sign-action of Semiosis using a box metaphor. Peirce created the name Semiosis and defined its meaning as sign-action.
Semiosis is explained by using a box metaphor coined by Roderick Munday. Through this metaphor we will explore how the client, the creative and the audience are all crucial to effective semiotic communication. This new semiotic understanding will help you see your visual communication abilities in a new way.
It will be a theory-packed 10 minutes of Semiosis but in designer-centric terms. So, stay tuned, subscribe, hit that bell button and let us go…
Okay, so in this video we will unpack Semiosis - sign-action - and how sign-action works, just to give an understanding of that, first, before we move on to to anything else.
Okay, so within Daniel Chandler's excellent book Semiotics: The Basics he talks within there about Peircean theory. He uses a metaphor, that I think if I am correctly remembering, one of his students Roderick Munday developed, to explain what Semiosis is, and how Semiosis works. He uses the metaphor of a BOX.
So that is what we will focus in on for the majority of this ten minute talk.
So, here we are we have a BOX… and this is going to be our metaphor for how Peirce's semiotic theory - sign-action - works.
The sign itself represents ‘something’ to us. So, we see the BOX. It represents ‘something’ to us. What it represents to us, by looking at the BOX - the sign - we get to see ‘something’ that we think it means. We interpret the ‘something’ from the semiotic sign’s representation. How we see the BOX - how the BOX is represented to us - we cannot help but put in our mind, ‘something’ that we think that this is representing. Our interpretation of that ‘something’, connects directly to the intended MESSAGE. If it is successful.
So, here we have sign-action working. The sign that we want to communicate - the concept we want to be communicated - represents something to us as the audience. How it is represented… we interpret how it is represented that puts in our mind a picture of what we think this is about… an idea, a concept of what is this is about.
Now, that concept that we interpret from what we see, if effective, if semiotics is being used effectively, and you understand who your audience are, and what they will know, and what they will not know. Then it should connect back to the MESSAGE that we need to communicate.
A triadic three-step approach:
Concept (OBJECT)
Representation (REPRESENTAMEN)
Interpretation (INTERPRETANT)
Concept. Its representation, which is the BOX. This is what we see as the BOX, before we open it. Once we open it, we see inside it, “Ah, that is what I thought it was going to be!” It is not a surprise. We get to see. So it does not really matter how ornate the BOX is in its representation, as long as it communicates what we need it to communicate. That is what happened. So, the concept being the BOX through its representation to its effective interpretation should… lead us back to the concept.
The intended MESSAGE’s concept… the semiotic representation of that… eads us to the audience's interpretation of that… which then… leads us back to the concept - the intended MESSAGE’s concept. The intended MESSAGE’s concept…leads to the semiotic representation… leads us to effectively, (if it was done effectively) the audience's interpretation, which… leads us, hopefully, back to the intended MESSAGE we needed to get across.
In Tony Jappy, Professor Tony Jappy’s, excellent book “Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics” (which was a godsend to me when I was trying to understand this, as part of my PhD). This book here, talks in more accessible terms, about Peirce's Determination Flow. And that is what we are talking about here, this this triadic nature of a Determination Flow from the concept, through how it is represented, to its interpretation, back to the concept.
This interpretation IS important, to get BACK to the concept. Tony Jappy talks about the Determination Flow in more accessible terms than Peirce does. This is my designer-centric simplification of what all that means as sign-action. As Semiosis, as sign-action. The concept to be visually communicated… How the concept is represented… and how the representation is interpreted… which leads us back to the MESSAGE we got … the concept to be visually communicated.
So, this is a cycle that comes from the INTENTION, through the visual communication designer - the graphic designer or illustrator - at stage two, onto the audience of stage three and the audience then, through the effect of visual communication understands what they are looking at… IT means THIS. (* This Means This, That Means That Sean Hall's excellent book.)
So, the sign-action. To summarise it all, the sign-action within Peircean semiotic theory is comprised of this triad (Determination Flow) underpinning it. So, it goes beyond the SIGNIFIER and the SIGNIFIED because it pulls in the important aspect to all of this, which is the audience. That is one of the really key things that is really crucial when it comes to understanding how effective Peircean semiotic theory can be, once understood and applied into your ideation phases, in your illustration, graphic design, whatever you do. This is what encapsulates it.
It is this triad that forms the fundamentals of Semiosis:
the concept
how it's represented
how it's interpreted
and just to put back in, the problematic words from Peirce…
OBJECT
REPRESENTAMEN
INTERPRETANT
So, this shows you the remit behind all of these videos on this channel… all the future videos… that are going to be coming up …is to translate the problematic terminology that Peirce has in his philosophical theory on semiotics, into designer-centric terms that illustrators and graphic designers, and other designers can understand… appreciate… and see the relevance… into their own design process, where THEY come from.
So, it is not about dumbing down semiotic theory. It is about opening it up in its language, into real world contexts, for designers and illustrators.
So, that is our ten minutes of Peircean Semiosis 101 for this week. Thanks to Munday's box metaphor we now have a clearer understanding of how Peirce's sign-action works in practice. Peirce's Semiosis involves three things working together… the intended concept to be communicated, how we shape that concept's visual representation within illustration or graphic design, and how our target audience interprets the concept connotatively from our design visual communications.
By putting Peirce's complex theoretic language into designer-centric terms we see HOW Semiosis forms an underpinning structure to enhance how we can visually communicate with more precision through manipulating the sign-action.
We can move beyond Peirce's obtuse choice of words and move deeper into the benefits of understanding Semiosis for visual communicators. Over the coming weeks in Semiosis 101, we will explore HOW this Pragmatic relationship of a determination flow of three aspects of sign-action will positively impact on illustration and graphic design.
I hope as creatives you agree that Peirce’s semiotic theory of Semiosis offers a lot of rich pickings to enhance OUR visual communication skills? There will be another video next week, so come back again.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…