Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Ingrid Johnston
Department of Secondary Education, The University of Alberta, Canada Jyoti Mangat
Department of Secondary Education, The University of Alberta, Canada Jennifer Tupper
Department of Secondary Education, The University of Alberta, Canada Terry Warburton
Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Key concepts
Matthew Pearson and Terry Warburton
Representation theory and visual sociology are con-cerned with the complex processes through which people produce, circulate and read information about the world. We live in a world where images and graphics are increasingly central to cognitive processes and theories of representation allow researchers to explore how people produce and consume images about themselves and the world they inhabit. It would be incorrect to assume that either representation or visual sociology are concerned with images alone.
Much work in representation theory has been done using film and television, and visual sociology often takes artefacts where text and images are mixed as the object of study. Stuart Hall has argued that represen-tation ‘connects meaning and language with culture’
(Hall, 1997: 15), and in this chapter we will be exploring how these connections are created and most importantly how social scientists can use semiotically based frameworks to examine the com-plex processes of representation which take place in human activity systems.
Representation theory makes the assumption that when people and objects are represented it is
incor-rect to assume that their portrayal is naturalistic and is merely reflecting the reality of the lived world.
Rather than reflecting an unproblematic version of reality, representations are seen as being socially mediated and contingent on a number of complex factors which vary with each instance of the represen-tation. This process is best understood initially through the example of photography. Photography appears to us as a simple capturing of reality – the camera is pointed, a snap is taken and the moment is frozen in time. There appears to be little which can get in the way of the picture and the reality it purports to be representing, the process appears transparent and in little need of extended thought. But further analysis demonstrates that a whole series of decisions were involved in the taking of the photograph which affect the way it will be interpreted. For instance, if the photograph is of human subjects, their express-ions and the way they are posed for the picture will predispose the photograph to being ‘read’ in a certain kind of way. Even an artefact as seemingly straight-forward in its representation as a class photograph of the kind taken by official photographers and sold to parents is created by a complex set of social and cultural processes. The positioning of the teacher in the photograph can tell us a great deal: is she or he
in the centre or at the edge of the group? Is the teacher there at all? What expression does the teacher have on his or her face? These questions may seem trivial, but representation theory aims to unlock the seemingly mundane and provide researchers with ways to dig under surface meanings and get at the complex social and cultural narratives, which underpin how we represent things. This chapter’s Story from the Field, authored by the spatial practices research group at the University of Alberta, outlines the complexities in-herent in the taking of photographs and the use of images to record students’ attitudes to school ‘spaces’.
Representation theory and visual sociology share common roots in semiotics, which can be defined as the theory of signs and signification. Building on this, semiotics also seeks explanations of the ways in which social processes mediate the production and con-sumption of meaning.
Semiotics employs, in the first instance, concepts such as ‘sign’, ‘sign-system’, ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’.
These concepts were first circulated by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in his General Course in Linguistics (Saussure, 1966) originally published in 1916. Saussure argued that a word (either spoken or written) creates meaning in the minds of the readers or listeners because it is a binary structure. Firstly there is the sound of the word or the representation of the word in letters on the page. Linked to this is the mental image which the sound or pattern of letters will create in the reader’s mind. Saussure used the word ‘tree’ to illustrate his point. The word itself is known as the ‘signifier’ and the mental image of a tree is the ‘signified’, both parts of the structure taken together being known as the ‘sign’. Now these insights by themselves are not particularly revolution-ary, but Saussure developed his ideas further by reflecting on how sign systems work.
One key insight of Saussure is the distinction between langue and parole. Langue is the entire system of language we can draw on when making an utterance, namely the words of the language and the rules (grammatical, syntactical, social) which govern its usage. Parole is an instance of speech or writing. So we draw on langue to create utterances which are parole, but as many commentators (including Barthes) have pointed out, langue can only ever be constituted by parole.
Saussure was the first theorist to develop the key idea that signs are arbitrary, that is there is no absolute linkage between a word and the mental image it creates. This means that the word for ‘dog’,
com-posed of the three letters ‘d’, ‘o’ and ‘g’, has no real link with the animal itself. The letters do not look like the word dog, and the sound of the word does not sound like a dog (contrast this with some writing systems where pictorial representation is used). The arbitrary nature of signs is hard to grasp at first because of their conventional nature and the fact that moving seamlessly between signifiers and signifieds is something which we all do when we read or listen to language. Using semiotics effectively as a theoretical framework in research requires us to examine the social conventions which underlie language and begin to unpick the complex processes of social mediation which allow people and communities to communicate with each other.
A key concept in understanding how language works is ‘difference’. Saussure argued that a word like
‘dog’ gets its meaning, not from any inherent proper-ties of the word itself, but because it is different from all other words. So the words ‘log’ and ‘doe’ have completely different meanings which arise simply because one letter of the original word is changed. We can concede that in the case of onomatopoeia (words which sound like their meanings such as whizz and whoosh), the link between signifier and signified is not completely arbitrary, but words of this class are relatively rare and any onomatopoeic effects are secondary to the main business of creating meaning,1 only functioning in the first place when words are spoken in contrast to being written down.
Saussure also argued that signs are arbitrary but it is self-evidently not the case that we can go round calling things whatever we want. This is because the meanings of words are captured in forms of social knowledge and a complex set of shared rules which allow members of a speech community to process language. We all know (if we speak English) what the word ‘dog’ means because the word existed before we were born and we were enculturated into a social system where the meanings of words have been largely fixed and which we learned as children.
Roland Barthes was one of the most influential theorists to take the initial work on semiotics devel-oped by Saussure and to develop and elaborate it.
One contribution Barthes made was to draw a distinction between denotation and connotation. De-notation is what we take as the literal meaning of a sign. So the words ‘oak tree’ will conjure up a type of tree. Connotation is the whole range of social and cultural meanings which can be attached to a sign. So for ‘oak tree’ we may think of: Englishness, solidity, 1 9 S E M I O T I C A P P R O A C H E S T O I M A G E - B A S E D R E S E A R C H
history (besieged monarchs hiding in oak trees), wisdom (the tree of knowledge), tradition (furniture made of oak) and many other concepts which get smuggled into our consciousness along with the simple sign. From a research point of view, paying close attention to the connotations of signs can give us a tool to explore the multiple meanings which people can attach to words and begin to unpack the secondary meanings which float nebulously around the language we use everyday.
Barthes (1987) argued that in addition to the sign (signifier and signified), which is a first order of signification, there is a second-order of signification where signs themselves are used as signifiers. He called this second order of signification ‘myth’, and developed elaborate analyses of cultural, social and literary artefacts where the ‘myths’ are made explicit and subjected to scrutiny. In Image – Music – Text, originally published in 1977, Barthes extends and refines the original semiotic framework provided by Saussure using it as a tool to theorize our understand-ing of how narrative operates within cultures.
The concepts of difference and the arbitrary nature of signification led to the development of an ap-proach to literary and cultural studies called structural-ism (see also Lee et al., in this volume). Structuralstructural-ism creates an epistemology for the social sciences, one in which meaning is never located absolutely anywhere, but is created out of the complex interplay of differences which are constructed in human meaning systems. It must be noted that the relationship between semiotics and structuralism is complex, and a variety of competing definitions are in circulation.
Structuralism acknowledges explicitly that meaning is generated within systems through the exercise of difference rather than residing in some absolute or essential entity. Structuralism also makes great play of binary oppositions. These are pairs of contrasting concepts such as ‘good and evil’, ‘wild and domesti-cated’, ‘raw and cooked’, and structuralism seeks to lay bare the way that these oppositions structure and control our thinking. Structuralism has been extreme-ly influential in the world of literary studies and is often used as a way of exploring narratives. It can also be used for research in the social sciences where an analysis of binary oppositions operating within sign systems can provide a fruitful line of enquiry and generate new perspectives on seemingly familiar or commonplace social practices.
So far this chapter has dealt with utterances which are verbal in nature, but one of the beauties of using
semiotics to underpin a research methodology is its versatility and durability evidenced in its capacity to work with images, both still and moving. Because semiotics posits an approach to meaning where signs are always representing signifieds and the link be-tween them is social and cognitive in character rather than absolute or theological, adaptation to non-verbal modes of communication is relatively easy. One rapidly expanding methodology for social science research is visual sociology which takes images, illustrations and diagrams as its objects of study, but also investigates how meaning is produced within a broad range of visual formats including the spaces of buildings and landscapes, objects and artefacts, and virtual and cybernetic forms of representation such as video games, mobile phone interfaces and computer screens. Chaplin’s 1994 book is a key work in visual sociology. In it she investigates the work of a group of modern artists (the Systematic Constructive group) and makes sense of their work from beyond the confines of an aesthetically motivated fine-art sensibil-ity, and draws on sociology, anthropology, ethnogra-phy and feminist theory to illuminate these works.
Visual sociology connects the insights gained from a century of theorizing about semiotics with post-industrial cultures which are increasingly driven by images and graphical representations.
Implications for research design
Adopting these frameworks for research means look-ing closely at sign systems, methods and practices of representation and how they are created, constituted, maintained, challenged and disrupted. If you are analysing utterances (in either spoken or written form), the social conventions which underpin their usage and the forms of social mediation which make communication possible could be subjected to scru-tiny. If you are working with visual or moving images, you will use the same essential ‘grammar’ to underpin your analysis and examine the ways in which social practices create meaning and how even the most natural seeming of representations will carry imprints of power. You may also study points of tension or conflict within a sign system, those telling times when various social groups interpret signs in different ways or one group appropriates a chain of signifiers to assert independence and agency or to mount resis-tance against dominant forms of knowledge. For instance, if you collect data on a series of parents evenings, you may realize after close analysis that
parents and teachers are attaching different concepts (signifieds) to words (signifiers), for instance in how they define ‘homework’, and you may want to explore this subtle slippage between what is said and what is understood. Once you understand how semiotics operates, then it can open up fascinating vistas on a whole range of complex issues, and these can have resonances beyond the spoken or written word. For instance you may study school uniform and the resistance which pupils have to wearing the school sanctioned clothing. The pupils may, for instance, tie their neck ties in a provocative way by making the knots very small or very large. From a semiotic point of view, there is nothing inherently rebellious or confrontational about this way of wearing ties, just as there is nothing inherently respectable about an average size knot and length of tie – we are dealing with social conventions here. Because the ties are
‘different’ to the expected and socially sanctioned norm, a meaning of resistance to school authority is created, and an understanding of how sign systems operate could allow you to make a more theoretically informed account of what is happening.
From a theoretical standpoint, you may wish to explore how influential Saussure and other semioticians have been in helping us to understand the socially constructed status of language and mean-ing. Saussure’s insights into the conventional nature of the linguistic sign points us towards the later work of the socio-cultural theorists and those working with ideas of communities of practice, where social medi-ation and the collective cremedi-ation of meaning remain cardinal issues. Using representation theory and visual sociology and drawing on the insights of semiotics can lead to research which is genuinely critical and remains grounded in real-life processes of communi-cation while simultaneously adopting a sophisticated and powerful theoretical stance.