SEMIOTICS

Ideology is about group interests. And in those group interests, there are signs...
Semiotics studies the signs which work to create society's as well as the individual's ideologies.

The connotation is more important because it is the suggestion of an ad that is the working power...
Connotation is not blatant, a sort of hidden message--yet a more powerful stimulant...
Connotations are usually more important to analyze because they vary from culture to culture, person to person, trend to trend...

...it would be impossible to interpret everyone's personal meaning of everything. Rather, semiotics tries to observe trends in ideologies to develop the social meaning of ao word, object, event....
Socially, semiotics can reach to everyone in some aspect. On a personal level, someone's deep personal meanings may mean absolutely nothing to someone else.

Since 'intentionality' cannot be proved, it is not considered in semiotics. Intentionality may not even be conscious, but a subconscious act....
If a sign is there, semiotics wants to study it, not question whether it was intentional or not

The unlaced sneakers meant much more within the system. The students were imitating rappers....
The previous and following years the functionalist claim ceased to be of importance, nor did it progress to wearing loafers or sandals--which would be even more functional....

A diachronic analysis is an analysis of changes through time, (i.e., how has car ownership changed over the history of automobiles). A synchronic analysis is of something at the same time period, (i.e., car ownership of a car that can be purchased in 1996).

Because human beings operate in systems of culture not individual signs. The individual signs are a part of a great social meaning, a system...
Because signs in their 'natural intrinsic' meaning say absolutely nothing about pop culture or our society, yet when looked at within a system, a whole new door is opened....
Everything must be taken in: society, current mentalities, fads, current events, etc....All these things determine the true semiotic meaning of an individual sign...

...that the American Indian was not vanishing naturally.....
...that the similar beliefs of society allowed for the vanishing to occur. What is to be 'natural' in the 19th century novels is socially decided....
A softening blind to the horror of a disappearing race. This construction is the result of a cultural mythology that goes between the world we experience and the way things are accepted by the mind...

A sign is determined by what that sign may be related to in a system. A semiotic 'difference' within a system means a difference in the signs corresponding to a certain sysem. The difference may be subtle....
A difference is a comparison between signs, and a system is the case or set of signs you are looking at....

[Many appropriate examples were given--much like our presentations in class of pop culture artifacts.]