University of the Philippines Cebu
Question
Asked 7th Apr, 2015
Is it possible to deploy a semiotic analysis to classify and get themes out of a visual text (films)?
I want to use semiotic theory as a theoretical framework for my research, whose purpose is to classify as well as account for the representations of the working-class people in Moroccan cinema.
Your reactions are very much appreciated.
Most recent answer
You might want to take a look on studies involving kineikonic mode
All Answers (14)
Universidad Iberoamericana León
Check out the work of KRESS, Günter y LEEUWEN, Theo van, (1997) The multimodal text, London.
Also look for this book:
2 Recommendations
Utrecht University
Although in my view the 'traditional' film-semiotic appraoches can help you a lot there is also the very interesting social semiotic appraoch developed for moving images analysis by people form the Singapore multimodality lab, including working software to do parts of the analysis. Lot of publications mentioned on http://multimodal-analysis-lab.org/lab-publications/
1 Recommendation
University of Brasília
I believe so. Philippe Dubois - DUBOIS, Philippe El photographic act:.. De la representación a la recepción Barcelona: Paidós, 1986. (Paidós Comunicación, 20) - performed excellent work of Peirce's semiotics application to photography.
Maybe doing this with the movie may is possible.
1 Recommendation
University of Groningen
Besides the "traditional" film-semiotic theories Paul mentioned (among many, the famous Metzian account of film language), there is also a lot going on from newer perspectives on semiotics, such as multimodality or multimodal discourse analysis (as mentioned indirectly by Ignacio and starting with Kress/van Leeuwen). These approaches start with questioning the notion of sign and instead asking for semiotic resources and their meaning potential interpreted in a specific context.
Developments in this area for film then focus on the interplay of the various semiotic resources, their cross-modal, intersemiotic meaning construction. This includes, for example, the work by Bateman/Schmidt (Multimodal Film Analysis, 2012) or Tseng (Tracking Film Elements, 2013) and many others (including me). They are no longer saying that film is a language (as Metz and others do), but that is has textual and discursive features which also help you to analyse themes and representations.
1 Recommendation
Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa
I read the answers above and I would like to suggest either Deleuze (Cinema- temps, Cinema-Movement) either Roland Barthes. Considering Culture Studies, Walter Benjamim could be very helpful in the field.
1 Recommendation
University of Haifa
See, for example:Representations of Law and the Nonfiction Novel: Capote’s In Cold Blood Revisited,Shulamit Almog,International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique
September 2012, Volume 25, Issue 3, pp 355-368
Faculdade Cásper Líbero
I suggest you the work of Charles Sanders Peirce. You can also consult the website of IASV - international association of visual semiotics.
2 Recommendations
Macquarie University
According to Michel Chion's theory of Added Value, you can't understand the meaning of the visual in film without taking into account the influence of sound because sound always changes visuals in some way and vice versa.
2 Recommendations
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP)
In the area of social semiotics and multimodality, Andrew Burn has also written about analysing film and what he called the kineinokic (moving image) mode:
It seems to me that your research presupposes visual semiotics, but is more a research on social semiotics that takes samples from a visual domain. If you want a general background for that kind of approach, I'd say Yuri Lotman's semiosphere approach might do. However, it's so general that it won't give you a framework specific to visual texts.
1 Recommendation
Northeastern University
I guess it depends on the granularity of your analysis. Besides everything that has been already listed, I would recommend to explore visual rhetoric analysis. I would take a look at the early work of Gui Bonsiepe and Groupe µ for context, to begin with.
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