Charliepaulcmp's Blog

• The sign (signe) is described as a “double entity”, made up of the signifier, or sound image, (signifiant), and the signified, or concept (signifié).
• Saussure is adamant that language cannot be considered a collection of names for a collection of objects (as where Adam is said to have named the animals). According to Saussure, language is not a nomenclature. Indeed, the basic insight of Saussure’s thought is that denotation, the reference to objects in some universe of discourse, is mediated by system-internal relations of difference.

Photographs are metonymic – Natural isolation of cultural artifacts of representation – poses as universal – common sense

• Althusser – Theory of ideology
• Subject – Subjected to ideology
• Ideological state Apparatuses – Codes and shared understanding

Jacques Lacan - refashioned Freudian psychiatry, and suggested that the unconscious was structured like a language, thereby giving a key role to semiotics and dissolving the usual boundaries between the rational and irrational.

Though without foundation, the view supported many aspects of Postmodernism, and is therefore attractive to those fighting repression in western society.