They Are Who We Thought They Were!

This week's assigned reading was very interesting. The most interesting part to me was the author's discussion of semiotics. Semiotics is very interesting to me because it involves the psychological analysis of how the unconscious mind and causes people to react before they think about what they are doing.

Semiotics, is the study of how basic colors and shapes can elicit meaning for viewers. As Ferdinand de Saussure said "Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them:

In his writing on What is Semiotics, in which Danesi first introduces the topic of semiotics he discusses how a color can make you immediately think a certain way. When I first read this, I immediately thought about the famous clip from former Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green following a football game in which apparently his team did not do very well even though the team knew exactly what the other team was going to do. The connection between Green and semantics is the colors mean what we thought they mean!

An example of semiotics would be the color red. When you see the color red on a sign your first inclination is to stop. Why is this? This is because your brain has been programmed to identify the color red on a sign as to mean stop. An example of this is a stop sign, which is red, and a stop light, which uses the color red to indicate to drivers that they should stop their car behind the appropriate line or risk life and limb crossing the street while cars moving perpendicular to you are also proceeding through the intersection. 

However, the location of where you see the color has a major impact on the inference that your mind will make. For example, if you were to see the color red somewhere else, for example at a sporting event.Your mind would more than likely immediately make the distinction that the color represents a team that is participating in said sporting event. If you were to be walking by and see a person on the ground with the color red growing around them, you would immediately jump into action as this person is obviously hurt and their life is endanger as they are bleeding out. If you were to see the color red

Another part of semiotics is symbolism.  A symbol is an object that stands for something else. An example of this would be a cross. A cross can stand for many things, from a gravesite, to a hospital, to a church, to representing an entire world religion. When a person first catches sight of a cross they can have many initial reactions but these initial reactions will be filtered by the location of the symbol so as to bring about the correct meaning of the symbol. For example if you see a cross in a wide open field your initial thoughts are one this is either a symbol for the Christian religion or two that someone is buried her. Your initial reaction to seeing a cross in a field is not to say "Oh... look a hospital" this is because your brain uses the location and placement of symbols in conjunction with the actual symbol to determine the intended meaning of the symbol. However if you were to see a red circle with a cross inside of it, your mind would almost immediately make the distinction of "oh hey look a hospital, not a graveyard."

Wrapping it all up, the study of semiotics is very interesting and intriguing as semiotic study the initial human reaction to an object. This is very important in media and communication as advertisers want their advertisements to be clear and informative to the receivers of the message in order to increase sales and convince people to purchase their products.