Page 65 - Studio International - July August 1975

interesting is to court very great omit it entirely. In rendering the American Spanish with 21 distinctive
difficulties. The extent of what a truly roundness of the head he may resort to a units to about 100,000 significant units —
tenacious application of the linguistic set of conventions in which this is it is also the root of the autonomy of
model would entail is to be found in achieved through a variation in the language. Phonemes in isolation from
Barthes' own Systéme de la Mode. thickness of the outline, or to a system of one another do not signify. They have no
Barthes here takes as his object- parallel strokes which stand for shadow, a meaning in themselves nor are they
language those descriptions of garments combination of the two, or some other affected by the meanings of the words in
which constitute the vêtement écrit. convention. The camera, on the other which they participate. They thus
Systeme de la Mode is widely accepted as hand, will mechanically reproduce every guarantee the arbitrariness of the sign.
the very model of methodological rigour detail of what is actually present in the The classification of linguistic units
in structuralist analysis. However, in the scene during the moment of exposure of is achieved through the commutation
foreword to this work Barthes states that: the film. Surely no code here test. In varying the pronunciation of a
.. by the time the author had intervenes between the object and its word there comes a point at which
undertaken [the work] and conceived representation on paper. Surely, . . . it a significantly different unit of the
its form, linguistics was no longer the is no longer necessary to operate the language is recognized. When, for
model it had been in the eyes of certain relay of a third term under the heading examble, bet is distorted into bit the fact
researchers', with the result that when of a psychic image of the object; . . . the that a new phoneme has been isolated
the book was published it was, relationship of the signified with the is signalled by a change in the meaning
already dated . . . already a part of signifier is quasi-tautological; . . . a of the utterance. The fact that bitter and
the history of semiology'. 3 ' quasi identity is posed . . . and we are rabbit are unit morphemes of the
Largely because of the pioneering work dealing with the paradox . . . of a message English language, whereas abbrit is not, is
of Roland Barthes, the term `semiology' without a code'." similarly established by reference to
is today understood as referring to that sense. The commutation test', Barthes
part of semiotics which adheres writes, 'allows us in principle to spot,
exclusively to linguistics. Umberto Eco Certainly the difference between by degrees, the significant units which
has written : language and iconic imagery is most together weave the syntagm, thus
. we could speak of semiology . . but marked in the case of the photograph. preparing the classification of those
Barthes has reversed the Saussurian The linguistic sign bears an units into paradigms."'
definition and has seen in semiology a arbitrary" relationship to its referent; The apparent absence of a level of
translinguistics which examines every the photographic image, it may be held, secondary articulation in the photograph
system of signs in relation to the laws of does not. There is no law in nature which led Metz in his earlier work to speak of a
language. If, on the contrary, we want to dictates that the linguistic sign 'tree' `quasi fusion' of sign and referent which
be allowed to study sign systems (or l'arbre or Baum) should be precludes the possibility of an iconic
according to a method which does not associated with the thing with which it is langue. Following Barthes, Metz
necessarily depend on linguistics . . . we in fact associated : this is a matter of maintained that each image, of which
should speak of semiotics'. He observes cultural convention. In the case of the there are an infinite number, is
that, in any case, we may adopt the term photograph, on the other hand, the irreducibly unique. There can be no
`semiotic' without involving ourselves in image is in a sense caused by its referent. commutation of the image and thus no
discussions upon the philosophical or A photo-sensitive emulsion necessarily paradigmatic systems of the image.
methodological implications of the two registers the distribution of light to Consequently Metz's cinema
terms as : 'we are conforming, quite which it is exposed. The chiaroscuro of semiotics developed primarily as a
simply, to the decision made in the photographic image replicates that semiotics of the syntagm, and has
January 1969 in Paris by an present to the exposed film. 'In every underlined the main items of realist
international committee, which gave photograph', says Barthes, 'there is the aesthetics (certainly, since Bazin, the
birth to the "International Association stupefying evidence of this-is-what- dominant cine-ideology), illusion and
for Semiotic Studies" and accepted happened and how'." linear narrative.
(without excluding use of the term In an ingenuous assumption the Eco, in an essay of 1967,12 argued,
"semiology") the term "semiotics" as photograph is held to reproduce its against Metz, that articulations 'below'
being that which will from now on cover object. However, the relationship the level of the image may be posited.
all possible senses of the two terms between a photographic image and its Eco's methodology is formed by
under discussion'." referent is one of reproduction only to reference to information theory and to the
the extent that Christopher Wren's psychology of perception. For example,
death-mask reproduces Christopher much has been made of the 'digital',
Eco's own work provides many Wren. The photograph abstracts from, discontinuous character of language as
examples of departures from strict and mediates, the actual. For example, a opposed to the 'analogical', continuous
linguistic lines. The one I shall describe photograph of three people grouped nature of the image. Eco refers here to
here concerns the photographic image together may, in reality, have the systems for storing, transmitting and
and 'double-articulation'. comprised a live model, a two-dimensional displaying pictures with the aid of
When Elements of Semiology first `cut-out' figure, and a wax dummy. computers, in which the apparently
appeared, in the journal Communications In the actual presence of such an analogical has been interpreted in digital
(1964), it was accompanied by Barthes' assembly I would quickly know them for terms. He also points out that modern
analysis of an advertisement, Rhetoric what they were. No such certainty reproductive processes, from half-tone
of the Image. In the course of this article accompanies my cognition of the blocks to TV images, present us with
Barthes compares photography with photographic group. It is precisely the discontinuous systems. But more
drawing: . . of all images', he says, difference between our comprehension of importantly Eco reminds us that there
`it is only the photograph which an object and our comprehension of its can be no uncoded visual message as the
possesses the ability to transmit [literal] image, that Eco takes as the starting act of perception itself is a decoding
information without forming it by means point of the observations which led him operation.
of discontinuous signs and rules of to reject both Barthes' notion of the
transformation. It is therefore necessary `uncoded' message and also the 'dogma
to oppose the photograph, a message of double articulation'.40 Saussure was not referring simply to
without a code, to the drawing, which, Double articulation is a defining brute sensation when he said that the
even when denoted, is a coded message'.36 attribute of natural language. It is that linguistic signifier is a sound-image.
Clearly, the artist is involved in an act feature by which the very great number `When we hear people speaking a
of selection, both in what he presents of words of a language are formed by language that we do not know', he
of the object before him and in how he means of different combinations of only remarked 'we perceive the sounds but
presents it. If he is drawing a portrait a small number of sounds. The remain outside the social fact because
and dislikes the shape of his sitter's principle of double-articulation accounts we do not understand them.'"
nose then he is at liberty to change its not only for the great economy of Saussure's signifier is not a physical
appearance in the drawing or even to language — Barthes cites the example of phenomenon but . . the psychological
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