The Semiotic Method

from Signs of Life in the U.S.A.

Edited by Sonia Maasik and Jack Soloman
To interpret and write effectively about the signs of popular culture, you need a method.
Without a methodology for interpreting signs, writing about them could become little more than
producing descriptive reviews or opinion pieces. There is nothing wrong with writing
descriptions and opinions, but one of your tasks in your writing class is to learn how to write
academic essays, that is, analytical essays that are well supported by evidence. The method we
are drawing upon in this booka method that is known as "semiotics"is especially designed
for the analysis of culture. Whether or not you're familiar with this word, you are already
practicing sophisticated semiotic analyses every day of your life. Reading this page is an act of
semiotic decoding (words and even letters are signs that must be interpreted), but so is figuring
out just what your classmate means by wearing a particular shirt or dress. For a semiotician (one
who practices semiotic analysis), a shirt, a haircut, a television image, anything at all, can be
taken as a sign, as a message to be decoded and analyzed to discover its meaning. Every cultural
activity for the semiotician leaves a trace of meaning, a kind of blip on the semiotic Richter scale,
that remains for us to read, just as a geologist "reads" the earth for signs of earthquakes,
volcanoes, and other geological phenomena.
Many who hear the word "semiotics" for the first time assume that it is the name of a
new, and forbidding, subject. But in truth, the study of signs is neither very new nor forbidding. Its
modern form took shape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through the writings
and lectures of two men. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was an American philosopher and
physicist who first coined the word "semiotics," while Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a
Swiss linguist whose lectures became the foundation for what he called "semiology." Without
knowing of each other's work, Peirce and Saussure established the fundamental principles that
modern semioticians or semiologiststhe terms are essentially interchangeablehave developed
into the contemporary study of semiotics.
The application of semiotics to the interpretation of culture was pioneered in the 1950s by
the French semiologist Roland Barthes (1915-1980) in a book entitled Mythologies. The basic
principles of semiotics had already been explored by linguists and anthropologists, but Barthes
took the matter to the heart of his own contemporary France, analyzing the cultural significance of
everything from professional wrestling to striptease, from toys to plastics.
It was Barthes, too, who established the political dimensions of semiotic analysis. In our
society (especially in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal), "politics" has become something of
a dirty word, and to "politicize" something seems somehow to contaminate it. But Barthes's point
and the point of semiotics in generalis that all social behavior is political in the sense that it
reflects some kind of personal or group interest. Such interests are encoded in what are called
"ideologies," which are essentially world views that express-the values and opinions of those who
hold them. Politics, then, is just another name for the clash of ideologies that takes place in any
complex society where the interests of all those who belong to it are constantly in competition
with each other.
But often the ideological interests that guide our social behavior remain concealed behind
images that don't look political at all. Consider, for example, the depiction of the "typical"
American family in the classic TV sitcoms of the fifties and sixties, particularly all those images of
happy, docile housewives. To most contemporary viewers, those images looked "normal" or
natural at the time that they were first broadcastthe way families and women were supposed to

be. The shows didn't seem at all ideological. To the contrary, they seemed a retreat from political
rancor to domestic harmony. But to a feminist semiotician, the old sitcoms were in fact highly
political, because the happy housewives they presented were really images designed to convince
women that their place is in the home, not in the workplace competing with men. Such images or
signifersdid not reflect reality; they reflected, rather, the interests of a patriarchal, male-centered
society. If you think not, then ask yourself why there were shows called Father Knows Best, Bachelor
Father, and My Three Sons, but no My Three Daughters? And why did few of the women in the
shows have jobs or ever seem to leave the house? Of course, there was always / Love Lucy, but
wasn't Lucy the screwball character that her husband Ricky had to rescue from one crisis after
another?
These are the kinds of questions that semiotics invites us to ask. They may be put more
generally. When analyzing any cultural phenomenon, always ask yourself questions like these:
Why does this thing look the way it does?
Why are they saying this?
Why am I doing this?
What are they really saying?
What am I really doing?
In short, take nothing for granted when analyzing any image or activity.
Take, for instance, the reason you may have joined a health club (or decided not to). Did you
happen to respond to a photo ad that showed you a gorgeous girl or guy (with a nice-looking guy or girl
in the background)? On the surface of the ad, you simply see an image showingor denotinga
patron of the club. You may think: "I want to look like that." But there's probably another dimension
to the ad's appeal. The ad may show you someone with a nice body, but what it is suggestingor
connotingis that this club is a good place to pick up a hot date. That's why there's that other figure in
the background. That's supposed to be you. The one in the foreground is the sort of person you're
being promised you'll find at the club. The ad doesn't say this, of course, but that's what it wants you
to think because that's a more effective way to get you to join. Suggestion, or connotation, is a much
more powerful stimulant than denotation, but it is often deliberately masked in the signifers you are
presented with every day. Semiotics, one might say, reveals the denotative smokescreens around you.
Health club membership drives, you may be thinking, aren't especially political, (though
actually they are when you think of the kinds of bodies that they are telling you are desirable to have),
but the powerful effect of a concealed suggestion is used all the time in actual political campaigns.
The now infamous "Willie Horton" episode during the 1988 presidential campaign provides a classic
instance. What happened was this: Some Republican supporters of George Bush's candidacy ran a
series of TV ads featuring the photographic image of one Willie Horton, a convicted rapist from
Massachusetts who murdered someone while on parole. On the surface, the ads simply showed, or
denoted, this fact. But what they connoted was racial hatred and fear (Willie Horton is black), and they
were very effective in prompting white voters to mistrust Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis
and to vote instead for George Bush.
Signs, in short, often conceal some interest or other, whether political, or commercial, or
whatever. And the proliferation of signs and images in an era of electronic technology has simply made
it all the more important that we learn to decode the interests behind them. Semiotics, accordingly, is
not just about signs and symbols: It is equally about ideology and power. This makes semiotics sound
rather serious, and often the seriousness of a semiotic

analysis is quite real. But reading the text of modern life can also be fun, for it is a text that is at once
popular and accessible, a "book" that is intimately in touch with the pulse of American life. As such, it
is constantly changing. The same sign can change meaning if something else comes along to change
the environment in which it originally appeared. Take the way shoelaces have changed their meaning
in recent years.
A few years ago (fashion systems move quickly), American high school students began
wearing hightop basketball sneakers (preferably Nike or Reebok) with the laces unlaced. At the time,
our students explained why they did this: "Because it's more convenient," they told us, "keeping
them unlaced makes it easier to put them on and take them off." This is a functional answerone that
appears "natural" and therefore politically neutral. But then, if mere function or practicality were
behind it all, why were kids lacing their sneakers the year before and why are they lacing them again
now? Or why weren't they wearing loafers? To answer such questions, we first must look at the
difference between a laced and an unlaced sneaker.
In itself, the difference between lacing and unlacing a sneaker means nothing. But consider it
as part of the teen fashion system of the late 1980s. That is, compare it to the other accessories and
ways of wearing those accessories that were in fashion then among American teens. Consider baseball
caps. If you were to wear one, would you put it on bill forward or bill backward? Or take overalls.
Would you wear them with the straps hanging or buckled? Now, how would you interpret a young
man wearing a baseball cap bill forward, with buckled overalls and laced Keds hightops? How would
he differ from one wearing his cap backward, dangling both straps of his overalls, and wearing
unlaced Nike Air Jordans? The differences are everything here, for in the last few years, an observer of
fashion example number one who knew the code would interpret him as an unfashionable hick, while
example number two would have registered as dressing in the height of teen fashion.
But why was it fashionable to wear one's baseball cap backward, shoelaces untied, and
overall straps unbuckled? To answer these questions, we must take our fashion statement and
associate it with related popular trends from the period, including music, television, and the movies.
In short, we have to look at the whole spectrum of pop culture to see what was going on and whether
any of it relates to our fashion sign.
So, what music was hot when unlaced Nikes came into fashion? Heavy metal? Yes, but metal
fans wore motorcycle boots with chains on themblack leather, stuff like that. Meanwhile, the postpunk scene was getting into Doc Martens. So what else was important at the time? Rap, of course.
"Straight outta Compton." And what did rap fans wear at the time? Baseball caps worn bill backward,
unlaced hightops (preferably Nikes and Reeboks), and flapping overalls (or, perhaps, baggy trousers).
Now, who else dressed this way? Who, in fact, started it in the first place?
If you answered "black street gangs and rap stars," you are on to the system through which we
may interpret such things as shoelaces and baseball caps. In semiotic terms, a sign system is a kind of
field of related things, and their meaning comes from how they relate to each other. Unlaced shoelaces
may mean nothing when taken by themselves, for example, but when viewed within the system of teen
fashion in the late eighties, a system that included the growing popularity of the imagery of the urban
street gang, they may mean a lot, projecting an image that anyone who knew the system could quickly
pick up. To those in the know, the system even had a name: hip-hop.
At this point in our analysis, we can ask some simple questions whose answers may be quite
complex. Why, for example, was it so important to wear Nikes or Reeboks? Why did some kids
literally kill for a certain brand of shoe? What images did these brand lines project that Keds

did not? And why, finally, did a fashion sign once associated with street gangs, and thus with a racial
and economic underclass, become such a popular fashion sign among middle- and upper-class kids?
To answer such questions, you must first make a distinction between what a fashion sign
might mean to you personally and what it signifies to society at large. You may have some very
private reasons for dressing as you do, for example, and many of the signs in your life may have
deeply personal meanings (your favorite blue jeans, for instance, may remind you of your first date).
But in a cultural interpretation, you want to focus on the social meaning of thingswhat they mean
to others. To discover the social dimensions of the signs in your life, you will want to explore as much
of the American cultural spectrum as you can. In the case of unlaced sneakers, you may want to look
at what was popular at the time in teen television programming. Do you remember, for example, The
Fresh Prince of Bel Air, a sitcom featuring a kid from Compton (a code word for the black ghetto)
who moves to Bel Air (code for extreme white affluence)? Or perhaps you recall In Living Color, a
teen-audience variety show that featured, among other regulars, Homey the Clown, a white middleclass-bashing street parody of Bozo the Clown (that icon of the lily-white suburban sixties) whose
appeal crossed over (like the Fresh Prince) from Compton to Bel Air? Such popular shows belonged
to the same system of teen fashion that shoes and caps belonged to and can help you to decode what
was going on among America's teens at the time they appeared.
Rather than pursuing this interpretation, we will stop to let you draw your own conclusions.
Try to recall what you yourself thought. Did you reverse your cap because everyone else was doing it,
or because you wanted to identify with your favorite rapper? Did you feel that your way of dressing
conveyed a political message, or were you just being fashionable? If fashion was all there was to it, ask
yourself why the styles of an urban underclass became fashionable to suburban kids?
In practice, the interpretational process we are inviting you to begin may occur in the blink of
an eye, as you quickly size up the meaning of the innumerable signs that present themselves to you in
an average day. Some signs may even look rather "obvious" to you, but that's because you've already
made the interpretation. Ordinarily, however, our interpretations stop at the threshold of the more
probing questionsjust as we have paused hereat the questions that ask not only whether
something is fashionable but what it means that the thing is fashionable in the first place. That's what
cultural semiotics is all about: going beyond what a sign is to explain what it means.
That is also what analytic writing is about: going beyond the surface of a text or issue toward
an interpretation. The skills you already have as an interpreter of the signs around you of images,
objects, and forms of behaviorare the same skills that you develop as a writer of critical essays that
present a point of view and an argument to defend it. There is a difference, that is, between asserting an
opinion and presenting evidence in a carefully constructed argument. All of us can make our opinions
known, but analytic writing requires the marshaling of supportive evidence. A lawyer doesn't simply
assert a client's innocence: Evidence is required. Similarly, when we conducted our analysis of
unlaced Nikes, we brought together supporting evidence from the teen fashion system of the late
1980s to refute the claim that function alone was behind it all. By learning to write semiotic analyses
of our culture, by searching for supporting evidence to underpin your interpretive take on modem life,
then, you are also learning to write critical arguments.
"But how," you may ask, "can I know that a semiotic interpretation is right?" Good question
it is commonly asked. But then, it can be asked of the writer of any interpretive essay.

and the answer in each case is the same. That is, rarely can one absolutely prove the truth of any
argument; what you do is persuade your audience through the use of pertinent evidence. In writing
analyses about popular culture, that evidence comes from your knowledge of the system to which the
object you are interpreting belongs. The more you know about the system, the more convincing your
interpretations will be. And this is true whether you are writing about shoelaces or about more
traditional academic subjects.
There are several essential principles to follow as you attempt to persuade your reader of the
force of your interpretations. The most crucial is that the meaning of a sign is determined by what
that sign may be related to 'within a system. We tested this principle by looking at unlaced sneakers
which, in themselves, may indeed mean nothing at all, or only that someone has forgotten to lace
them upand then by relating them to other signs within a fashion system. Similarly, an
interpretation of the popularity of rap music might proceed by associating rap with the cultural signs
(like teen fashions) that belong to a related system.
But often our interpretations of popular culture involve issues that are larger than the latest
fad. How, for instance, are we to analyze fully the widespread beliefas reflected in the classic
sitcoms mentioned earlierthat it is more natural for women to stay at home and take care of the
kids than it is for men to do so? Why, in other words, is the concept of "housewife" so easy to accept
while the idea of a "househusband" may appear somewhat ridiculous? How, in short, can we
interpret some of our most basic values semiotically? To see how, we need to look at those value
systems that semioticians call "cultural mythologies."
As we have seen, in a semiotic analysis we do not search for the meanings of things in the
things themselves. Rather, we find meaning in the way we can relate things together. We've done this
with shoelaces, but what about with beliefs? This book asks you to explore the implications of social
issues like gender norms and free speech that involve a great many personal beliefs and values that
we do not always recognize as beliefs and values. Rather, we think of them as truths (one might
think, "Of course it's odd for a man to stay home and take care of the house!"). But from a semiotic
perspective, our values too belong to special systems from which they take their meaning.
Semioticians call these systems of belief "cultural mythologies."
A cultural mythology, or "myth" for short, is not some fanciful story from the past; it is a kind
of lens that governs the way we view our world. Think of it this way: Say you were born with rosetinted eyeglasses permanently attached over your eyes, but you didn't know they were there. The
world would look rose-colored to you and you would presume that it was rose-colored. You wouldn't
wonder whether the world might look otherwise through different lenses. But there are other kinds of
eyeglasses in the world with different lenses, and reality does look different to those who wear them.
Those lenses are cultural mythologies, and no culture can claim to have the one set of glasses that
sees things as they really are.
Mythology, like culture, is not static, however, and so the semiotician must always keep his or
her eye on the clock, so to speak. History, time itself, is a constant factor in an ever-changing world.
Consider once again teen fashion. Since we began writing this introduction, a new street fashion has
come to our attention, a kind of hip-hop/grunge fusion in which Seattle meets Compton. Do you
recognize what we mean? Have you worn what we mean? What's it all about? Can you connect it to
anything else in your life or in the life of America?
So it's your turn now. Start asking questions, pushing, probing. That's what critical writing is
all about, but this time you 're part of the question. Arriving at answers, conclusions, is the fun part
here, but answers aren't the basis of analytic thinking: questions are. You always begin with a
question, a query, an hypothesis, something to explore. To help yourself raise provocative questions,
keep in mind the two elemental principles of semiotics that we have explored so far:
1. The meaning of a sign can be found not in itself but in its relationships (both
differences and similarities) with other signs within a system. To interpret an individual sign,
then, you must determine the general system in which it belongs.

2. What we call social "reality" is a human construct, the product of a cultural mythology
that intervenes between our minds and the world we experience. Such cultural myths reflect the
values and ideological interests of their builders, not the laws of nature or logic.
Perhaps our first principle could be more succinctly rephrased, "everything is connected." and our
second simply says, "question authority." Think of them that way if it helps. Or just ask yourself
whenever you are interpreting something, "what's going on here?" In short, question everything. And
one more reminder: Signs are like weather vanes: they point in response to invisible historical winds.
We invite you now to start looking at the weather.
Cell Phones
To give you an idea of how to go about analyzing consumer objects and behavior, let's look at
a product that on the surface seems completely functionala tool, not a sign. Let's look at cell
phones.
As you learned in the introduction to this book, the semiotic interpretation of a cultural sign
can usefully begin with a historical survey of the object you are interpreting. Such a survey can reveal
how the meaning of an object can change depending on the circumstance in which it is found. This is
strikingly true in the case of cell phones, which, while practically ubiquitous today, were once rare and
expensive. They first appeared for public use in 1982 and were originally hard-wired into automobiles
(often limousines), which is why many people who remember that time still call them "car phones."
In such a context, cell phones were potent status symbols, sending an image of unusual wealth and
prestige, the exclusive equipment of VIPS.
Something of this meaning lingers when we think of cell phones and their users, but just
barely. Because in an era when cell phones can be acquired for free (provided that the consumer also
sign up for an activation contract, of course), and when even the latest digitized models cost only a
fraction of what the original models cost, the cell phone is so common that it can't send a status
message anymore. Everyone seems to have one. But that doesn't mean that cell phones no longer have
a semiotic significance or that no image is associated with them. It simply means that the significance
of the cell phone has changed as its history has changed.
To interpret the current significance of the cell phone, we need to situate it in its immediate
system of related signs and products. One product that is extremely similar to the cell phone, and which
thus belongs to the same system, is the pager. The history of the pager is quite similar to that of the cell
phone. Once pagers were carried almost exclusively by high-status professionals who needed to be in
constant contact with their places of business.
This was particularly true for physicians, who commonly carried pagers when they were "on
call" (this was before the advent of even the earliest cell phones), and so pagers acquired something
of the status of their professional users. The image sent by pagers changed radically, however, when
they came to be the standard equipment of drug dealers, who would use them to set up clandestine
drug deals. The former status image declined as a new one emerged: To carry a pager was to send an
image of gangster toughness and, for many American teens, gangster coolness. Once a signifier of
professional prestige and responsibility, the pager shifted systems and became part of the code of a
bad-assed youth culture. But now pagers are carried by little children whose parents haven't gotten
them cell phones yet, and so they too have changed significance, hi fact, as cell phones become more
and more common, pagers themselves seem to be dwindling in significance. Not too long ago, pagers
were hot stuff. Now, everyone is talking about cell phones.
Of course, one of the reasons cell phones are such a lively conversation topic is purely
functional: They are dangerous to use while driving a car and so are coming to be banned in a
number of localities. But even here a social semiotic is at work. It isn't likely that cell phones would
attract so much controversy if they didn't also send a rather negative image. With almost everyone
owning one, it might seem strange to say that cell phones today have a somewhat negative image,

but they doa point that is demonstrated every time someone apologizes for owning one. Have you
ever heard someone say, or have said yourself, that "I own a cell phone, but I only use it for
emergencies"? Or have you ever seen the bumper sticker that reads, "Hang up and start driving"? We
wouldn't make such apologies or post such messages on our cars if we didn't feet that, somehow,
there was something wrong with cell phones. And what is wrong lies in their cultural significance,
not in the objects themselves.
To see what this significance is, let's look further into the system in which cell phones
appear. What often comes to mind when we think of cell phones today is their association with a
certain kind of consumer, especially people driving sports utility vehicles (SUVS) and luxury sedans
like the Lexus. There is a functional reason for this: Cell phones have become necessary equipment
for the sorts of businesspeople, such as real estate professionals, who must spend a great deal of
time in their cars and whose business activities make it important (as well as pleasurable) to drive
status automobiles. At the same time, many middle-class parents find that cell phones are very good
ways of keeping track of their children and SUVs have become the automotive choice of the middleand upper-middle-class American mom these days. Indeed, all you need to do is utter the phrase
soccer mom, and immediately an image of a woman driving a Ford Excursion while chatting on a
cell phone may come to mind.
Now, part of the negativity in this image also has something to do with the history of the cell
phone, particularly that intermediate era when cell phones were no longer the prerogative of the
extremely powerful and wealthy but were still expensive enough to be out of ordinary consumers'
reach. At this time, roughly the late 1980s, cell phones were the common possession of the notorious
yuppies (an image reinforced by a 1980s song called "Car Phone," a parody of the 1970s hit
"Convoy"), and were widely despised accordingly. Ironically, even when millions of non-yuppies
and anti-yuppies carry cell phones, the old taint lingers.
But only lingers. For, with the cell phone being such a common possession, its significance
is now less a matter of who owns one as how it is used. Here we can look at the behavioral
component of the system to which the cell phone belongs. And what we find are not only people who
drive dangerously while gabbing on their phones but also compulsive users who chat away in
restaurants (causing some eateries to ban cell phone use) and theaters. What all three behaviors share
is the way that they reflect a certain privatization of public space, the way, that is, that cell phone
users perform in public what was once a highly private act: talking on the phone. Once telephone
conversations were conducted in the privacy of one's home or officeor, if in public, with the door to
the phone booth shut. Now such conversations, whether for business or for pleasure, take place on the
road, in the restaurant or theater, in shops, on the sidewalk, indeed just about everywhere. And here
lies a good part of the current negative image of the cell phone, though most people are probably not
conscious of it.
For to treat publicly shared space as if it were one's private preserve, annoying or
endangering others for one's personal pleasure, is, in essence, antisocial behavior. No one minds when
people use their own private space privately, but when public space is treated as if it were private,
something is taken away. The sense of a shared, common environment with its own set of rules to
govern the social interactions that take place there is lost. And while we may not always be explicitly
aware of it, this is one of the reasons we resent cell phone users, even when we use cell phones
ourselves.
At this point, as is often the case with a semiotic analysis, we can broaden the scope of our
investigation to see what other current cultural phenomena can be associated with the cell phone's
privatization of public space. We've already considered one such phenomenonthe SUV. For SUVs
are not simply a mode of transportation, or even just status vehicles. Many who purchase them say that
they would have preferred another car but feel safer in an SUV. Whether they put it explicitly or not,
what they mean is that if they get into an accident, they want to be in the car that "wins." This may
seem like perfectly rational behavior, and according to a highly individualistic (perhaps selfish would
be the better word) code of conduct, it is. But looked at from a more communitarian perspective, the

desire to prevail in a car accident, the unconscious decision to kill rather than be killed, is less than
social behavior.
Similarly, the increasing number of Americans who withdraw behind the literal gates and
figurative moats of gated communities also can be seen to represent a mode of antisocial behavior (it's
no accident that they often drive SUVs). In a dangerous world, this behavior too is perfectly rational,
but what it signifies is a society that is becoming so mistrustful that it is becoming atomized into
suspicious individuals whose homes and cars are becoming fortresses against everyone else. The cell
phone fits neatly into this system insofar as many of its users own them for safety purposes, whether it
be to keep in touch with children who no longer seem safe in the public realm or with family
members. Many women carry them because the streets aren't such a safe place for women anymore.
The September 11th attacks augmented this significance in an especially grim way. Stories of
final conversations from passengers and crew on doomed airlines and employees in the World Trade
Center lent a new dimension to the image of the cell phone as a safety device. In this sense, it became
a signifier within an American system threatened by terrorism, a shift in meaning that undermined, at
least for a while, the negative image of the cell phone as the frivolous instrument of inconsiderate
people. Once again, we can see from this semiotic adjustment how ordinary objects can be signifiers
of changing historical conditions.
The cell phone is such a rich source of semiotic significance that its analysis could go on
considerably further, investigating, for instance, the way that it can be seen to reflect a workaholic
world in which people feel the need to conduct their business anywhere and anytime, or the way that it
has contributed to a new consciousness that demands constant communication (in both cases, the rise
of e-mail is a part of the cultural system behind the meaning of the sign). But we'll stop here and leave
those analyses to you. The point is that when you interpret a cultural sign, the actual object is not
what is meaningful in a semiotic analysis. What matters is the overall cultural system, the social
context, in which that object appears. A highly portable, wireless communication box is not a sign in
itself: it becomes a sign only when seen in relation to other objects and other signs.