A Study of Signs in Selected Films in Nigerian Movie industries

The Concept of Semiotics

The term semiotics has been in use since the seventeenth century. Accounts that it was spelled semeiotics, and was first used in English by Henry Stubbes (1670:75) to precisely denote the branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs. Semiotics has its roots in the field of linguistics; it was notwithstanding conceived as a theory that would provide readers with the tools with which to analyse extra-linguistic components of discourses and narratives. It is on this premise that Saussure (1966:16) defines Semiotics as “the theory of signs”. Also, Pierce (1931-58, 2.302) affirms that “we think only in signs.” This is a point of reference to the fact that all human actions are conducted in signs. However, these actions require some level of human interactions in all endeavours to achieve the required result. Communication then, is pertinent to humans since the society thrives on it. Chandler (2013) explicates this in the following phraseology:

We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized. Through the study of semiotics, we become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and disguise our task in ‘reading’ them…. Deconstructing and contesting the realities of signs can reveal whose realities are privileged and whose are suppressed. The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings which we inhabit.

Semiotics, therefore, serves as a concept that permeates and governs all spheres of human existence. Human interactions and experiences with codes and signs are transferred to the narratives of films to create the illusion of reality. In relation to film, Guiraud’s distinct perception of Semiotics as a language whose signifiers can function independently of verbal language seems appropriate. He makes it clear that Semiotics is:
The science which studies sign-systems, languages, codes, sets of signals, etc. According to this definition, language is part of semiology. However, it is generally accepted that language has a privilege and autonomous status, and this allows semiology to be defined as the study of non-linguistic systems (Guiraud 1975:1).

Semiotics also focuses on non-verbal systems of communication. In this regard, semiotics has been used to address some central issues in cinema such as the role and mode of expression, invention, interpretation and the nature of narration, character identification and audiences’ emotional responses. These aspects of the cinema perform an indispensable role in the understanding and assimilation of the medium, which a semiotic examination incorporates. This is the justification for the adoption and treatment of archetypal representations in this study as a set of codes and signs which shape the socio-cultural beliefs that are fundamental to human existence – especially in determining individuals’ perception about life and consequently, the manifestation of this self-ascribed and describing perception. Caroll (1999:3) corroborates this opinion succinctly in the following words:

Concepts organize our practices. The concept of a person, for example, is central to myriad practices, including politics, morality, the law, and…the concept of knowledge is indispensable throughout the widest gamut of human activities. Without such concepts, the activities in question would not exist.

From Caroll’s (1999) and Chandler’s (2013) arguments, it is observed that an understanding of signs and codes will guide individual’s interpretations, depending on the contextual usage and the interpreter’s orientation and reasoning capability.

Therefore, a semiotic analysis of the selected films within the sign-system of the medium and the dictates of the societies within which they are produced facilitates the recognition and interpretation of latent signifying patterns in them. Furthermore, an examination of the myth-archetypal codes in the selected films (in connection with their respective cultures) will help strengthen the body of existing materials in film criticism that will be beneficial to media specialists in and outside Nigeria. It will also be effective in the re-orientation of the Nigerian populace on the role of myth-archetypes in the construction of their society. The significations and interpretations of these myth-archetypal codes can stimulate film scholars and workers alike to engage more in film discourses and film productions that will benefit the nation in some capacities.

Signs

The conception of sign is credited to two leading linguists: Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss Linguist and Charles Sanders Pierce, an American philosopher. While Saussure perceives the study of signs as Semiology, Pierce refers to it as Semiotics. Basically, the two terms are interpreted to mean the same thing and are often employed interchangeably. Signs therefore, in Preucel’s expression, “are such things as ideas, words, images, sounds and objects that are multiply implicated in the communicative process” (2006: 1). This means that signs are the channels through which messages are conveyed, interpretations done and significations arrived at. Cobley (2005: 28) states that Pierce regarded these signs as “‘representamen’” and Chandler (1999: 16) affirms that Saussure conceived that “a sign must have both a signifier and a signified. There cannot be a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified”. A signifier is a mental apprehension of an object and the signified is the concept, idea or meaning evoked from that mental apprehension. The signifier and the signified are in a relationship that produces significations. Signification is “the process of sign formation, the act which binds the signifier and signified, and an act whose product is the sign” (Barthes 1967: 48). Signification therefore, is the (un)conscious understanding of an object and the import given to it.

Chandler’s (2005: 1) description of humans as “Homo significans” (meaning makers) can be considered as true because human beings persistently attempt to unearth hidden meanings, understand and interpret the recognised human communicative signs in different ways. Fiske (1990: 39-41) argues that characteristically, this meaning-making process is done through the creation of signs and sign systems, specifically, in all labour undertakings. Signification is done with regard to humans’ level of intelligence as well as their socio-cultural, economic, educational and political backgrounds, which lead to an understanding of how they comprehend and interpret their world. Significantly, the study of signs addresses itself to signification and communication as the mental apprehension of all human actions.

These signs, however, are unconsciously understood in relation to familiar structural dictates. According to Thwaites and Davis (2002: 9), this knowledge of signs and the “banality of meaning”, take prominence in the study of Semiotics from the linguistics viewpoint. This is evident in Eco’s (1981: 37) brilliant submission that “a theory of communication is dialectically linked to a theory of signification, and a theory of signification should be first of all a theory of signs”. This understanding serves as a progression for the key concepts in this study – film and semiosis.

Two principal models of signs have been identified by Chandler (2005: 2): those of Saussure and Peirce. This establishes that any enquiry about the nature of signs can be linguistic, philosophical or both. A philosophical inquiry submits that the sign consists of a physical form and an associated mental concept. This concept may in turn be an apprehension of external reality. The sign relates and translates to reality only through the concepts of individuals who perceive it as such.

Christian Metz and the Saussurean Sign

Metz’s contribution to cinema is a reaction to the classical film theories (formalism and realism) while at the same time, serving as the groundwork for the Semiotic approach to cinema. His seminal work, “Le Cinema: Langue ou Langage?” (1964) is a detailed examination of the rationale behind and aptness of, the comparison of Saussure’s linguistic theory and practice of cinema. According to Metz (1974a: 46), “[g]oing from one image to two images, is to go from image to language,” which means that the interpretation of that image and the meaning that will be given to it by an interpreter will transcend that image, which is equivalent to linguistic unit in a verbal language. Metz situates this metaphor between different forms of signifying procedures that are introduced by Saussure. Metz institutes a suture between the structures of traditional grammar to which the cinematographic language should correspond. Since Semiotics is the theory of signs and linguistics is the study of the theory of language as a sign system, then, the Semiotics of the cinema should equally be the study of film as a system of signs because it possesses the characteristics of verbal languages. In Metz’s (1974a: 40, 60) discussions of the relationship between semiotics and linguistics, he affirms that in theory, linguistics is only a branch of semiotics, but in fact that semiotics was created from linguistics and further that semiotics can and must depend heavily on linguistics, but it must not be confused with linguistics. Hewak (1999: 13) clarifies that it is from Saussure that Metz inherited this delicate connection between linguistics and semiotics, which inspires his initial conclusion on his Semiotic theory of the cinema.

Using the principle of structural linguistics, Metz bestowed the virtues of natural language on the cinema. As Guzzetti (1973: 292) contends, Metz’s significance is measured by his seminal work on film and semiotics and in relation to his assumed discourse with Bazin, whose foremost work of film theory, What is Cinema?, is an interrogation of how cinema manipulates reality. After a detailed and convoluted examination of the connection between language and cinema, Metz arrives at the conclusion that the cinema is “un langage sans langue”. This means that the cinema is a language without a language system. The implication of Metz’s supposition, according to Braudy and Cohen (2009: 78), is that

…we will only be interested in certain aspects of film. We will be concerned only with the various ways in which particular films can have meaning and significance for normal spectators. We will be directly concerned with the nature of the film image, the relation between sound and image, and the effect of various kinds of editing. We will not be directly concerned with such things as camera mechanisms, the process of developing and printing films, or the technological structure of the film industry.

Given that Metz argues within the framework of the Saussurean model, his theory is significant, possibly with some degree of difficulty due to the non-verbal nature of the cinema. Thomson-Jones (2008: 63) states that “On Metz’s account, film is not just a language but a language without a system. This condition reflects Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole, or language and language system”, and the distinction between natural language and the filmic language.

Saussure clarifies that the exclusive character of language is not to be found in its historical development or in its various spoken manifestations, but rather in the linguistic structure that exists and which everybody that speaks a language has mastered. Language structure, therefore, exists as a socio-cultural repository of linguistic signs, a “fund accumulated by the members of the community through the practice of speech, a grammatical system existing potentially in every brains” (1986: 13). Saussure’s thought on the language system is upheld by Barthes (1987:14) thus: “A language is therefore, so to speak, language minus speech: it is at the same time a social institution and a system of values.” Thomson-Jones (2008: 63) also elaborates Saussure’s argument as follows:

Saussure was most interested in langue, or the language system, and he might have said that every individual film is the parole of an underlying film langue. But Metz, based on his close study of film, argues that there is no underlying system of which individual films represent particular applications. There is just the film language being created as it is used in every film.

The natural language, by definition, is a semiotic process through which thought may be conveyed, but a language system enables a response to that thought using the degrees and kinds of signs and signifiers produced by the language. Cinema uses not only words, but also other filmic fundamentals; therefore, while the audience can react to a film’s semantic intent, that audience cannot address its concerns regarding the film in the same language the film conveys its signification. For that reason, Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis’s (2005: 38) argument that while the means by which film expresses itself to its audience constitutes a language, it cannot constitute a linguistic system. They affirm Metz’s argument that:

One might call “language,” any unity defined in terms of its MATTER OF EXPRESSION – … cinematic language is the set of messages whose matter of expression consists of FIVE TRACKS or channels: moving photographic image, recoded phonetic sound, recorded noises, recorded musical sound, and writing (credits, intertitles, written materials in the shot). Thus, cinema is a language in the sense that it is a “technico-sensorial unity” graspable in perceptual experience.

Cinema, in its entirety is a language. But it is a language that is not narrowed down to the conservative sense but as a set of trackable messages in a given matter of expression, which functions as an artistic language, signifying practice that is characterised by specific codifications and ordering procedures. This, then, takes the cinema beyond the superficial definition of ordinary language.

The language-film comparison holds for Metz in so far as film fundamentally communicates to its viewers. But communication can only be achieved if the viewer possesses the ability to recognise what an image depicts. In this case, Metz has restricted his theory for use within the narrative feature film because film was originally borne as a technological means and according to Harman (2009: 79), “It was precisely to the extent that the cinema confronted the problems of narration that it came to produce a body of specific signifying procedures”. Consequently, attention should be narrowed to the signifying events that are used in feature length narrative films because they are the first impressions of films.