INTRO:

  • Image = “imitari”
  • Semiology = study of signs/symbols.
  • “Can the ‘copy’ produce true systems of signs and not clumps of symbols?’
  • Phonemes = the way words sound?
  • Image felt weak in being able to communicate? By linguists especially.
  • There are some who think the image is an extremely fundamental system in comparison with language.
  • “Now even — and above all if — the image is in a certain manner the limit of meaning, it permits the consideration of a veritable ontology of the process of signification.”
  • “If meaning gets into an image, what is there beyond”??? What is this insinuating?
  • Only focuses on the advertising image because in advertising, the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional.
  • Advertising imagery is frank. Clear-cut.

THE THREE MESSAGES:

  • “En abyme” = “placed into an abyss.” In Western art history, “mise en abyme” is a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself, in a sequence appearing to recur infinitely.
  • Assonance = in poetry, the repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in non rhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible.
  • The name Panzani not only shows assonance, but also its Italian-based branding. Barthes calls it “Italianicity.”
  • The image of the Panzani products give multiple messages without the need for words; it’s freshness from looking at the packaging, and also the “essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined.”
  • Items spilled out of the bag signify freshness? No preservatives?
  • Talks about the more obvious symbolizing of “Italianicity”: tomato, pepper, the color scheme.
  • 1. Linguistic message. 2. Iconic message. 3. “A message without a code.” 
  • More of a matter of anthropological knowledge.
  • Literal image is the designated symbol, the symbolic image is implied? (Denoted and connoted)

THE LINGUISTIC MESSAGE:

  • “What are the functions of the linguistic message with regard to the (twofold) iconic message? There appear to be two: anchorage and relay.”
  • Text helps to identify the scene a bit more blatantly.
  • Caption helps choose the level of perception. It helps the viewer hone in immediately on what should be honed in on.
  • “The text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image… It remote-controls him towards a meaning chosen in advance.”
  • Anchorage is the most frequent function of the linguistic message and is commonly found in press photographs and advertisements. The function of relay is less common, it can be seen particularly in cartoons and comic strips.

THE DENOTED IMAGE:

  • The distinction between the literal message and the symbolic message is operational.
  • Only the photograph is able to transmit the (literal) information without forming it by means of discontinuous signs and rules of transformation.
  • To reproduce an object or a scene in a drawing requires a set of rule-governed transpositions.
  • The drawing does not reproduce everything, while remaining to be a strong message.
  • The denotation of the drawing is less pure than that of the photograph, for there is no drawing without style.
  • The drawing demands an apprenticeship.
  • When using a photograph, a scene is captured mechanically, not physically. Along with the person behind the camera manually influencing the distance, lighting, framing… “The myth of photographic ‘naturalness’.”
  • “This kind of temporal equilibrium (having-been-there) probably diminishes the projective power of the image.”
  • What does “The ‘this was so’ easily defeats the ‘it’s me’.” mean?

RHETORIC OF THE IMAGE:

  • Lexical unit: a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language’s lexicon.
  • “What gives this system its originality is that the number of readings of the same lexical unit or lexia (of the same image) varies according to individuals.”
  • Do not “inventorize” the connotators, but try to understand that in the total image they “constitute discontinuous or better still scattered traits.”
  • “The connotators do not fill the whole of the lexia, reading them does not exhaust it.”: A balance? You can’t have one without the other?