Ashesi University
Subject:
Text and Meaning

Lecturer:
Mr. Mark Poynter

Date:
5th October 2009

Assignment:
Assessment Point One

Essay Title: No. 4) Analyze a movie poster from a film directed by Martin Scorsese and then, with reference to the ideas of Pierce and Saussure, apply techniques in Semiotics and Semiology in order to illustrate how the text can be interpreted.

Any and every piece of text in this world has meaning, or a point it is trying to put across. If you look at a portrait, or a page in a book, different aspects of the picture, or the way the words are put together on the page, all have purpose; To convey a certain message. This technique of analyzing different parts of texts, using signs and symbols, is termed “semiotics. [1] In this essay, we shall be using the techniques of semiotics, to interpret a poster of renowned Director, Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster movie, “Shutter Island”.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles S. Pierce, two founding fathers of semiotics; a sign consists of “the signifier” and “the signified”. The signifier of a sign is the form in which the sign takes, and the signified stands for what the sign represents. [2] Let’s take for example, a picture of a young boy crying. In this scenario, the little boys face would be a sign, the act of him crying would be the signifier, and the signified would probably be that the boy is sad because something has gone wrong.
Delving deeper into semiotic analysis, there are two types of relationships signs and signifiers can have with each other; they are syntagmatic or paradigmatic relationships. Signs and signifiers have a syntagmatic relationship when they come together to give meaning. On the other hand, they have paradigmatic relations when they can be compared with other signs or signifiers outside text and still make sense when replaced. [3] Using the previous example,