Page 204 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

SEMIOTICS

‘outside’ with the ‘internal’ psychic processes of subjectivity. That is, one’s identity
refers to points of temporary emotional attachment to the subject positions which
discursive practices construct for us.
The cultural repertoire of the self in the Western world assumes that we have a 181
true self that can become known to us and that is expressed through forms of
representation. Here identity exists as an essential, universal and timeless core of the
self that we all possess. However, cultural studies has adopted an anti-essentialist
stance by which self-identity is a culturally contingent production that is specific
to particular times and places. That is, what it means to be a person is social and
cultural ‘all the way down’. While there is no known culture that does not use the
pronoun ‘I’ and which does not therefore have a conception of self and
personhood, the manner in which ‘I’ is used, what it means, does vary from culture
to culture. Some writers argue that the very concept of ‘I’ as a self-aware object is a
modern Western conception that emerged out of science and the ‘Age of Reason’.
Certainly people in other cultures do not always share the individualistic sense of
uniqueness and self-consciousness that is widespread in Western societies. Rather,
identity is inseparable from a network of kinship relations and social obligations.
For Giddens, self-identity is constituted by the ability to build up a consistent
feeling of biographical continuity through identity stories that attempt to answer
the critical questions: ‘What to do? How to act? Who to be?’ Thus individuals
attempt to construct a coherent identity narrative by which the self forms a
trajectory of development from the past to an anticipated future. Here self-identity
is constituted not by the possession of traits but rather as a reflexively understood
biographical project. An identity project builds on what we think we are now in the
light of our past and present circumstances in conjunction with what we think we
would like to be, that is, the trajectory of our hoped-for future.
Links Identification, identity, identity project, narrative, reflexivity, subject position,
subjectivity

Semiotics Semiotics is the study (or ‘science’) of signs and signification that has
developed from the pioneering work of Saussure. Semiotics is commonly
understood to be a form of structuralism because it seeks to explain the generation
of meaning by reference to a system of structured differences in language. That is,
the rules and conventions that organize language (langue) are given priority over the
study of the specific utterances that individuals deploy in everyday life (parole).
Within semiotic theory a signifying system such as a language is understood as an
ordering of signs that constructs meaning from within itself through a series of
conceptual and phonic differences. In language, it is argued, there are only
differences without positive terms. That is, meaning is not generated because an
object or referent has an essential and intrinsic meaning but is produced because
signs are different from one another. The sign ‘good’ signifies the quality good
because it is not bad which is not evil and so forth.
According to Saussure, meaning is produced through the selection and combin-
ation of signs along the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes. The syntagmatic axis is