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Caged in Our Own Signs: A Book About Semiotics is a primer of semiotics, intended for general readers as well as communication majors. The first five chapters introduce the basic constructs, models, assumptions, frameworks for semiotic thinking, and other elements that underpin contemporary semiotics. This volume also provides the reader with semiotic methodology to analyze issues of postmodernism, of text semiotics, and of mass cultural semiotics. This book is written in such a way that the reader may easily apply the semiotic knowledge to the everyday conversation and discourse.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
WHAT IS SEMIOTICS?
THE STRUCTURE OF SIGNS. Sign = Signifier + Signified
Signification
A Dialectic Synthesis
The Sign, The Lie, The Truth
SIGNS AND MEANINGS
Icon, Index, Symbol
Monosemy-Polysemy. Denotation: Connotation
Scheme: Usage. Similarities: Differences
Categories of Signs
REALITY CONSTRUCTION
Categories
Metaphors
Metonymies
Images
CODES AND CODIFICATION
Arbitrariness and Convention
Convention and Motivation
Codification and De-codification
Paradigm and Syntagm
Definition of Codes
Three Types of Codes
Restructuring Codes
Codes for Prescribed Society
SEMIOSIS
Human Semiosis
Tripartite Models of Semiosis
Two Branches of Semiosis
Characterisitic of Nesting
Semiotization
Crisis in Representation
Centrality of Text
SEMIOLOGICAL SPACE
Human = Semiological Space
Language: Psychological Space
The Semiotic Self. Heaven: The Dialectic Space
Internal Image
External Image
TEXT SEMIOTICS
Barthes' Model
The Sand Myth
Defining the Text
The Structure of the Text
Binary Oppositions
Synchronicity, Dichronicity, Panchronicity
Paradigm and Synchronicity
Syntagm and Diachronicity
Metalanguage
MYTHOLOGY
Myth as Form
Myth as Discourse
Diachronic Text Analysis
The Characteristics of Myth
IDEOLOGY
From Mythology to Ideology
Myth and Hegemony
Definitive Meanings
Counter-Myth
MASS CULTURAL SEMIOTICS
Television
Film
Photography
Cartoons
Conclusion: Two Realities
MYTH- MAKING
The Womb of Stories
The Semiotic Square
A Three-Layer Structure
A Story of Man
Four Types of Labor
The Loci of a Serial Death
Calling for Narratives of Life
References
Glossary
Index
About the author
Kyong Liong Kim
