Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1982

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Darrel W. Holt

Committee Members

Herbert H. Howard, Barbara A. Moore

Abstract

Semiotics is a relatively recent method of analyzing plastic-arts media like film. It studies signs and their relationships which generate meaning. Semiotics is a viable method of studying the aesthetics of television, provided a theoretical basis for such study can be developed.

This study focuses mainly on developing a theoretical groundwork for semiotics of television. If TV programs are studied by clarifying the similarities in themes and imagery, they can be analyzed as genres. Each genre like situation comedy, domestic comedy, western or soap opera evokes a cultural myth, wherein the overall context is more important than the details of each program.

Semiotic concepts of iconic, symbolic and indexical signs are used since they help us understand the aesthetic aspects of communication. Also, semiological and structural definitions of paradigms and syntagms are defined and explained as part of semiotics of television.

This study proposes that space and time, two variables of plastic arts, can be studied as semiotic systems. The idea of diegesis explains the variations of space and time on television, which are different from the space and time in which the viewer is actually located. The diegetic time is experienced as the narrative time, i.e., the time used to construct a plastic art narrative. This includes the actual manipulations of time in which images are presented on the screen. The second subset of diegetic time is semiotic time. This term indicates the significance of the variations in the time constructed in the narrative.

The diegetic space is also divided into the two subsets, narrative space and semiotic space. Narrative space indicates the space within the camera-frame and also the space outside the frame, the latter being suggested through editing between shots. The semiotic space is the total significance of spatial representations in a narrative. Spatial form is experienced in simultaneity whereas temporal form is suggested by succession or chronological progression of the narrative.

A brief discussion of how semiotic terms can be applied to TV genres like situation comedy, domestic comedy and soap opera is provided.

Future studies should involve actual analysis of TV programs by applying semiotic terms.

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