Critical Theory

Week 4: Tools for Reading Culture: Semiotics

Interpretation

• What Is Meaning?
• Classical Theories of Linguistic Meaning
• What Does A Sentence Mean?
• Roman Jacobsen's Theory of Communication
• Interpretive Perspectives

Structuralism

• General Characteristics
• Ferdinand de Saussure and Structuralism
• Levi-Strauss and Structuralism

Semiotics

• Example: Truck ads: 1, 2, 3
• Peirce and Semiotics
• Semiotics: Basic Structure
• Chandler's DIY Semiotics
  • Identifying the Text
  • Purpose in Analyzing the Text?
  • Type-Token Distinction
  • Important Signifiers
  • Modality
  • Paradigmatic Analysis
  • Syntagmatic Structure
  • Rhetorical Tropes
  • Intertextuality
  • Semiotic Codes
  • Social Semiotics
  • Benefits and Limitations of Semiotic Analysis
• Criticisms of Semiotics
  • Deconstruction
    • NY Times Derrida Obituary
  • Baudrillard and Simulacra
  • Hermeneutics
    • Hermeneutics and Social Science
    • An exercise in hermeneutics
    • Dilthey and the "Weltanschauung" (world-view)

Great Resources on Semiotics

• Daniel Chandler, Semiotics for Beginners (source of some of the above)
• Cultural Studies Course - with semiotics