Sign -image -myth: The interrelation of sign -systems and the construction of meaning.

摘要

The subject of this study is the analysis of patterns, structures and codes in audio-visual communication. It discusses the relationship of linguistic signs to other aural and visual signs and sign-systems, and isolates, analyzes and defines some of the principles used in sending and in decoding messages from a sender to a receiver. It takes a look at the discourse strategies that the participants of communication have at their disposal to endow messages with a specific meaning, in both content and form.;To isolate these patterns, the semiotic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson were used, along with the definitions of literary texts and the discussions of communication theory by Dietrich Schwanitz. They were then combined with the structuralist and post-structuralist observations of Roland Barthes and Northrop Frye, and the post-structuralist and postmodern discourse of Robert Weimann, Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Zizek, and Fredrick Jameson.;Part I focuses on signs, and we take a look at the cuneiform writing system and the ways in which the written signifiers represent the linguistic signifieds; and the many-to-many relationships that this sign-system involves are discussed.;In Part II the relations of text to image, and the semiotics of images are the primary focus. The phenomenon of visual literariness is discussed along with the principles of picture composition and the encoding of images with visual metaphors and metonymies, a visual leitmotif-technique, and the cross-referencing of one art form in another, as well as the use of film codes.;Part III centers around the structures and forms of myth. Roland Barthes' theory of second order signifiers is discussed in connection with the movie Independence Day. The sign-user dynamics and the self-referentiality of metadrama and its implications are explored with the examples of Jurassic Park and Hamlet. The discussion then concludes with a look at the social usages of sign-systems by the media, and the appropriation and inversion of sign-systems along a presumed fact-fiction continuum from documentary via drama-documentary and mockumentary to fiction film, based on a study by Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight.