A stylistic study of the Quranic text

Stylistics is an area of study where the linguist combines with the critic so as to
achieve a better or fuller understanding and appreciation of literature. Stylistics
deepens one’s awareness of the literature. According to Mick Short, stylistics is a
linguistic approach to the study of literary texts. Linguists use the tools of stylistics
to analyze literary texts. In other words, they use linguistic descriptions that
highlight certain features of language, and therefore examine texts thoroughly.

It is an important duty for every man, woman and child to read and understand
the Quran according to his or her own capacity. The Quran contains messages that
are directly stated and accessible to the reader’s thought. Thus a marvelous area like
stylistics can be of great help to the study of Quran. Using stylistics we can achieve a
better more thorough understanding of Quran. A Quranic text full of imagery, figures
of speech, rhetoric, etc, would be a rich, interesting one to apply stylistic tools to.

Accordingly, I will try to tackle this subject in my thesis, God willing. I’ve thought
so much about getting out of the literary frame to include all other types of texts,
especially the Quranic one. I believe that such a study would reveal numerous secret
properties and meanings of the Quranic text. I seek your counsel and I’ll be grateful
if you set a date to meet you and discuss at length this topic.

What is the Challenge of the Qur'an with Respect to

Arabic Prose & Poetry?
M S M Saifullah, cAbd ar-Rahman Robert Squires & Muhammad Ghoniem

The Qur'an in many places challenges the people to produce a surah like it. It appears that the Christian missionaries who
call the challenge irrelevent or an utterly subjective criterion are pretty much unaware of how the Arabic poetry and prose
compares with the Qur'an. This article is devoted to deal with one aspect of the Qur'anic challenge of produce a surah like
it. What is meant by surah like it with respect to the Arabic prose and poetry?

The verses of the Qur'an dealing with the challenge are given below (Hilali and Muhsin Khan's Translation):
Say: "If the mankind and the jinns were together to produce the like of this Qur'an, they could not produce the like thereof,
even if they helped one another." [Qur'an 17:88]

And if you (Arab pagans, Jews, and Christians) are in doubt concerning that which We have sent down (i.e. the Qur'an) to
Our slave (Muhammad Peace be upon him ), then produce a surah (chapter) of the like thereof and call your witnesses
(supporters and helpers) besides Allah, if you are truthful. [Qur'an 2:23]

And this Qur'an is not such as could ever be produced by other than Allah (Lord of the heavens and the earth), but it is a
confirmation of (the revelation) which was before it [i.e. the Taurat (Torah), and the Injeel (Gospel), etc.], and a full
explanation of the Book (i.e. laws and orders, etc, decreed for mankind) - wherein there is no doubt from the the Lord of
the 'Alamin (mankind, jinns,and all that exists).

Or do they say: "He (Muhammad(P)) has forged it?" Say: "Bring then a surah (chapter) like unto it, and call upon
whomsoever you can, besides Allah, if you are truthful!" [Qur'an 10:37-38]

Or they say, "He (Prophet Muhammad(P)) forged it (the Qur'an)." Say: "Bring you then ten forged surah (chapters) like
unto it, and call whomsoever you can, other than Allah (to your help), if you speak the truth!" [Qur'an 11:13]

Or do they say: "He (Muhammad(P)) has forged it (this Qur'an)?" Nay! They believe not! Let them then produce a recital
like unto it (the Qur'an) if they are truthful. [Qur'an 52:33-34]

cAbdur Rahim Green mentions that:

These are the sixteen al-Bihar (literally "The Seas", so called because of the way the poem moves, according to its
rhythmic patterns): at-Tawil, al-Bassit, al-Wafir, al-Kamil, ar-Rajs, al-Khafif, al-Hazaj, al-Muttakarib, al-Munsarih, al-
Muktatab, al-Muktadarak, al-Madid, al-Mujtath, al-Ramel, al-Khabab and as-Saria'. So the challenge is to produce in
Arabic, three lines, that do not fall into one of these sixteen Bihar, that is not rhyming prose, nor like the speech of
soothsayers, and not normal speech, that it should contain at least a comprehensible meaning and rhetoric, i.e. not
gobbledygook. Now I think at least the Christian's "Holy spirit" that makes you talk in tongues, part of your "Tri-Unity" of
God should be able to inspire one of you with that!

To begin with; the Arabic language and Arab speech are divided into two branches. One of them is rhymed poetry. It is a
speech with metre and rhyme, which means every line of it ends upon a definite letter, which is called the 'rhyme'. This
rhymed poetry is again divided into metres or what is called as al-Bihar, literally meaning 'The Seas'. This is so called
because of the way the poetry moves according to the rhythmic patterns. There are sixteen al-Bihar viz; at-Tawil, al-
Bassit, al-Wafir, al-Kamil, ar-Rajs, al-Khafif, al-Hazaj, al-Muttakarib, al-Munsarih, al-Muktatab, al-Muktadarak, al-
Madid, al-Mujtath, al-Ramel, al-Khabab and as-Saria'. Each one rhymes differently. For metres of Arabic poetry please
see please see Lyall's book Translations Of Ancient Arabian Poetry, Chiefly Pre-Islamic.[1] He discusses al-Kamil, al-
Wafir, al-Hajaz, at-Tawil, al-Bassit, al-Khafif and al-Madid briefly.[2]

The other branch of Arabic speech is prose, that is non-metrical speech. The prose may be a rhymed prose. Rhymed
prose consists of cola ending on the same rhyme throughout, or of sentences rhymed in pairs. This is called "rhymed
prose" or sajc. Prose may also be straight prose (mursal). In straight prose, the speech goes on and is not divided in
cola, but is continued straight through without any divisions, either of rhyme or of anything else. Prose is employed in
sermons and prayers and in speeches intended to encourage or frighten the masses.[3] One of the most famous
speeches involving sajc is that of Hajjaj bin Yusuf in his first deputation in Iraq in post-Islamic and Quss bin Sa'idah in pre-
Islamic times.

So, the challenge, as cAbdur Rahim Green mentions, is to produce in Arabic , three lines, that do not fall into one of these
sixteen al-Bihar, that is not rhyming prose, nor like the speech of soothsayers, and not normal speech, that it should
contain at least a comprehensible meaning and rhetoric, i.e. not gobbledygook. Indeed

The Qur'an is not verse, but it is rhythmic. The rhythm of some verses resemble the regularity of sajc, and both are
rhymed, while some verses have a similarity to Rajaz in its vigour and rapidity. But it was recognized by Quraysh
critics to belong to neither one nor the other category.[4]
t is interesting to know that all the pre-Islam and post-Islamic poetry collected by Louis Cheikho falls in the above sixteen
metres or al-Bihar.[5] Indeed the pagans of Mecca repeated accuse Prophet Muhammad(P) for being a forger, a
soothsayer etc. The Arabs who were at the pinnacle of their poetry and prose during the time of revelation of the Qur'an
could not even produce the smallest surah of its like. The Qur'an's form did not fit into any of the above mentioned
categories. It was this that made the Qur'an inimitable, and left the pagan Arabs at a loss as to how they might combat it
as Alqama bin cAbd al-Manaf confirmed when he addressed their leaders, the Quraysh:

Oh Quraish, a new calamity has befallen you. Mohammed was a young man the most liked among you, most truthful in
speech, and most trustworthy, until, when you saw gray hairs on his temple, and he brought you his message, you said
that he was a sorcerer, but he is not, for we seen such people and their spitting and their knots; you said, a diviner, but we
have seen such people and their behavior, and we have heard their rhymes; you said a soothsayer, but he is not a
soothsayer, for we have heard their rhymes; and you said a poet, but he is not a poet, for we have heard all kinds of
poetry; you said he was possessed, but he is not for we have seen the possessed, and he shows no signs of their
gasping and whispering and delirium. Oh men of Quraish, look to your affairs, for by Allah a serious thing has befallen
you.

It is a well known fact that the Qur'an was revealed in seven ahruf (or seven forms) to facilitate greater understanding of it
among the Arabs who had different dialects. This was also to challenge them on their own grounds to produce a surah
like that of the Qur'an. The challenge became more obvious when none of the seven major tribes could imitate it even in
their own dialects as no one could claim that it was difficult to imitate due to it not being in their own dialect.[6]

What Do The Orientalists Say About The Inimitability Of The Qur'an?

E H Palmer, as early as 1880, recognized the unique style of the Qur'an. But he seem to have been wavering between
two thoughts. He writes in the Introduction to his translation of the Qur'an:

That the best of Arab writers has never succeeded in producing anything equal in merit to the Qur'an itself is not
surprising. In the first place, they have agreed before-hand that it is unapproachable, and they have adopted its style as
the perfect standard; any deviation from it therefore must of necessity be a defect. Again, with them this style is not
spontaneous as with Muhammad and his contemporaries, but is as artificial as though Englishmen should still continue to
follow Chaucer as their model, in spite of the changes which their language has undergone. With the Prophet, the style
was natural, and the words were those in every-day ordinary life, while with the later Arabic authors the style is
imitative and the ancient words are introduced as a literary embellishment. The natural consequence is that their
attempts look laboured and unreal by the side of his impromptu and forcible eloquence.[7]

The famous Arabist from University of Oxford, Hamilton Gibb was open upon about the style of the Qur'an. In his words:
...the Meccans still demanded of him a miracle, and with remarkable boldness and self confidence Mohammad
appealed as a supreme confirmation of his mission to the Koran itself. Like all Arabs they were the connoisseurs
of language and rhetoric. Well, then if the Koran were his own composition other men could rival it. Let them
produce ten verses like it. If they could not (and it is obvious that they could not), then let them accept the Koran
as an outstanding evident miracle.[8]

And in some other place, talking about the Prophet(P) and the Qur'an, he states:

Though, to be sure, the question of the literary merit is one not to be judged on a priori grounds but in relation to the
genius of Arabic language; and no man in fifteen hundred years has ever played on that deep-toned instrument
with such power, such boldness, and such range of emotional effect as Mohammad did.[9]

As a literary monument the Koran thus stands by itself, a production unique to the Arabic literature, having
neither forerunners nor successors in its own idiom. Muslims of all ages are united in proclaiming the
inimitability not only of its contents but also of its style..... and in forcing the High Arabic idiom into the
expression of new ranges of thought the Koran develops a bold and strikingly effective rhetorical prose in which
all the resources of syntactical modulation are exploited with great freedom and originality.[10]

On the influence of the Qur'an on Arabic literature Gibb says:

The influence of the Koran on the development of Arabic Literature has been incalculable, and exerted in many directions.
Its ideas, its language, its rhymes pervade all subsequent literary works in greater or lesser measure. Its specific
linguistic features were not emulated, either in the chancery prose of the next century or in the later prose
writings, but it was at least partly due to the flexibility imparted by the Koran to the High Arabic idiom that the
former could be so rapidly developed and adjusted to the new needs of the imperial government and an
expanding society.[11]

As the Qur'an itself says:

And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Sura like thereunto;
and call your witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides Allah, if your (doubts) are true. But if ye cannot- and of a
surety ye cannot- then fear the Fire whose fuel is men and stones,- which is prepared for those who reject Faith.
(Qur'an 2:23-24)

Lastly, the beautiful style of the Qur'an is admired even by the Arab Christians:
The Quran is one of the world's classics which cannot be translated without grave loss. It has a rhythm of peculiar beauty
and a cadence that charms the ear. Many Christian Arabs speak of its style with warm admiration, and most
Arabists acknowledge its excellence. When it is read aloud or recited it has an almost hypnotic effect that makes
the listener indifferent to its sometimes strange syntax and its sometimes, to us, repellent content. It is this
quality it possesses of silencing criticism by the sweet music of its language that has given birth to the dogma of
its inimitability; indeed it may be affirmed that within the literature of the Arabs, wide and fecund as it is both in
poetry and in elevated prose, there is nothing to compare with it.[12]

The above sentences speak of themselves. Summing up: Within the Arabic literature, either poetry or prose, there is
nothing comparable to the Qur'an. Muslims throughout the centuries are united upon the its inimitability.

There is also a talk by Christian missionaries that there are grammatical 'errors' in the Qur'an. In retort, it can be
mentioned that the Arab contemporaries of Muhammad(P) were most erudite and proficient in the idiosyncrasies of Arabic
speech; and hence, if they had found any grammatical 'errors' in the Qur'an, they would have revealed it when
Muhammad(P) challenged them with to do so. Therefore, since they did not take up his challenge on this issue, we can be
rest assured that no such grammatical 'errors' exist in the Qur'an.

Indeed the grammatical errors claimed by Christian missionaries have been already discussed and refuted in a reputed
journal.[13] It turns out that lack of knowledge of intricate constructions in classical Arabic by Christian missionaries gave
rise to so-called grammatical 'errors'.

I'jaz al-Qur'an (Or Inimitability Of The Qur'an) & Its Exposition

I'jaz literally means "the rendering incapable, powerless". It is the concept relating to the miraculous nature of the Qur'an.
What consitutes this miracle is a subject that has engaged Muslims scholars for centuries. By the early part of the third
century AH (ninth century CE), the word i'jaz had come to mean that quality of the Qur'an that rendered people incapable
of imitating the book or any part; in content and form. By the latter part of that century, the word had become the technical
term, and the numerous definitions applied to it after the tenth century have shown little divergence from the key concepts
of the inimitability of the Qur'an and the inability of human beings to match it even challenged (tahiddi).[14]
Thus, the Islamic doctrine of i'jaz al-Qur'an consists in the belief that the Qur'an is a miracle (mu'jizah) bestowed on
Muhammad(P). Both terms, i'jaz and mu'jizah come from the same verbal root. While mu'jizah is the active principle of
a'jaza, i'jaz is its verbal noun.[15]
The early theological discussions on i'jaz introduced the hypothesis of sarfah ("turning away") and argued that the miracle
consisted of God's turning the competent away from taking up the challenge of imitating the Qur'an. The implication of
sarfah is that the Qur'an otherwise could be imitated. However, cAbd al-Jabbar (d. 1025 CE), the Mu'tazilite theologian
rejected sarfah because of its obvious weaknesses.

cAbd al-Jabbar rejects the doctrine of sarfah for two main reasons. Firstly, because it contradicts the verse of the Qur'an
stating that neither jinn nor human can rival the Qur'an, and secondly because it makes a miracle of something other than
the Qur'an, i.e., the sarfah, the prohibition from production, and not the Qur'an itself. In addition to this, according to 'Abd
al-Jabbar, the doctrine of sarfah displays four major weaknesses:

1. It ignores the well-known fact that the Arabs of Muhammad's time had acknowledged the superior
quality of speech of the Qur'an;
2. It is in direct conflict with the meaning of the verses of the Challenge;
3. It implies that the Qur'an is not a miracle; and
4. It asserts that the Arabs were out of their minds (khuruj 'an al-'aql).

This doctrine, in fact, implies that they could have produced a rival to the Qur'an, but simply decided against doing so. It
effectively calls into question either their motives or their sanity. Therefore, according to cAbd al-Jabbar the correct
interpretation of sarfah is that the motives to rival the Qur'an disappeared (insarafah) because of the recognition of the
impossibility of doing so.[16]

cAbd al-Jabbar insisted on the unmatchable quality of the Qur'an's extra-ordinary eloquence and unique stylist perfection.
In his work al-Mughni (The Sufficient Book), he argued that eloquence (fasahah) resulted from the excellence of both
meaning and wording, and he explained that there were degrees of excellence depending on the manner in which words
were chosen and arranged in any literary text, the Qur'an being the highest type.[17]
al-Baqillani (d. 1013 CE), in his systematic and comprehensive study entitled I'jaz al-Qur'an upheld the rhetorically
unsurpassable style of the Qur'an, but he did not consider this to be a necessary argument in the favour of the Qur'an's
uniqueness and emphasized instead the content of revelation.
The choice and arrangement of words, referred to as nazm was the focus of discussion by al-Jahiz, al-Sijistani (d. 928
CE), al-Bakhi (d. 933 CE) and Ibn al-Ikhshid (d. 937 CE). al-Rummani and his contemporary al-Khattabi (d. 998 CE)
discussed the psychological effect of nazm of the Qur'an in their al-Nukat fi I'jaz al-Qur'an and Bayan I'jaz al-Qur'an,
respectively.
The author who best elaborated and systematized the theory of nazm in his analysis of the i'jaz is cAbd al-Qahir al-Jurjani
(d. 1078 CE) in his Dala'il al-I'jaz. His material was further organized by Fakhr ad-Din al-Razi (d. 1209) in his Nihayat al-
I'jaz fi Dirayat al-I'jaz and put to practical purposes by al-Zamakhshari (d. 1144 CE) in his exegesis of the Qur'an entitled
al-Kashasaf, rich in rhetorical analysis of the Qur'anic style.[18]
Hardly anything new has been added by later authors

.Is The Bible Inimitable?

Anyone who has read the history of the Bible as a text as well as the constantly changing canon at the whims of the
leaders of the Church and some 300,000+ variant readings in the New Testament itself would suggest that no book in
history enjoyed such as reputation. The process of serious editing through which the Christian Bible went through is
unparalleled in its almost 2000 year history. This would itself make the Bible an inimitable book.

As far as the language of the Bible and its stylistic perfection is concerned, the Bible does not make any such claim.
Therefore, it not does challenge the mankind of produce a few verses or a chapter like it. Further, it is a Christian claim
that the Bible contains scribal and linguistic errors. The language in which the Greek New Testament was written is
demotic Greek which itself has little or no regard for grammatical rules of classical Greek. Comparing the stylistic
perfection of the Qur'an versus stylistic imperfection of the Bible, von Grunebaum states:
In contrast to the stylistic perfection of the Kur'an with the stylistic imperfections of the older Scriptures the
Muslim theologian found himself unknowingly and on purely postulative grounds in agreement with long line of
Christian thinkers whose outlook on the Biblical text is best summed up in Nietzsche's brash dictum that the
Holy Ghost wrote bad Greek.[19]

Futher, he elaborates the position of Western theologians on the canonization process and composition of the Bible:
The knowledge of the Western theologian that the Biblical books were redacted by different writers and that they were, in
many cases, accessible to him only in (inspired) translation facilitated admission of formal imperfections in Scripture and
there with lessened the compulsive insistence on its stylistic authority. Christian teaching, leaving the inspired writer,
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, free in matters of style, has provided no motivation to seek an exact correlation
between the revealed text on the one hand and grammar and rhetoric on the other. It thereby relieved the theologian and
the critic from searching for a harmony between two stylistic worlds, which at best would yield an ahistoric concept of
literary perfection and at worst would prevent anything resembling textual and substantive criticism of Revelation....

In Christianity, besides, the apology for the "low" style of the Bible is merely a part of educational problem - what
to do with secular erudition within Christianity; whereas in Islam, the central position of the Kur'an, as the focal
point and justification of grammatical and literary studies, was theoretically at least, never contested within the
believing community.[20]
That pretty much sums up the Bible, its stylistic perfection (or the lack of it!) and the position of Western theologians.
And Allah knows best!

References
[1] C J Lyall, Translations Of Ancient Arabian Poetry, Chiefly Pre-Islamic, Williams & Norgate Ltd., London, 1930.
[2] Ibid., pp. xlv-lii.
[3] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Franz Rosenthal (Translator), Volume III, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1958, p.
368.
[4] A F L Beeston, T M Johnstone, R B Serjeant and G R Smith (Editors), Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad
Period, 1983, Cambridge University Press, p. 34.
[5] Louis Cheikho, Shucara' 'al-Nasraniyah, 1890-1891, Beirut.
[6] Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, Tafseer Soorah al-Hujuraat, 1988, Tawheed Publications, Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), p. 28.
[7] E H Palmer (Tr.), The Qur'an, 1900, Part I, Oxford at Clarendon Press, p. lv.
[8] H A R Gibb, Islam - A Historical Survey, 1980, Oxford University Press, p. 28.
[9] Ibid., p. 25.
[10] H A R Gibb, Arabic Literature - An Introduction, 1963, Oxford at Clarendon Press, p. 36.
[11] Ibid., p. 37.
[12] Alfred Guillaume, Islam, 1990 (Reprinted), Penguin Books, pp. 73-74.
[13] M A S Abdel Haleem, Grammatical Shift For The Rhetorical Purposes: Iltifat & Related Features In The Qur'an,
Bulletin of School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume LV, Part 3, 1992.
[14] Mircea Eliade (Editor in Chief), The Encyclopedia Of Religion, Volume 7, Macmillam Publishing Company, New York,
p. 87, Under I'jaz by Issa J Boullata.
[15] Yusuf Rahman, The Miraculous Nature Of Muslim Scripture: A Study Of 'Abd al-Jabbar's I'jaz al-Qur'an, Islamic
Studies, Volume 35, Number 4, 1996, p. 409.
[16] Ibid., pp. 415-416.
[17] The Encyclopedia Of Religion, Op.Cit, p. 88.
[18] Ibid.
[19] B Lewis, V L Menage, Ch. Pellat & J Schacht (Editors), Encyclopedia Of Islam (New Edition), 1971, Volume III, E J
Brill (Leiden) & Luzac & Co. (London), p. 1020 (Under I'djaz).
[20] Ibid.

AN INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY QURANIC STYLISTICS

Wednesday April 07th 2010, 4:44 am

Filed under: handbook of action research

BACKGROUND
Although reading is an important step in the study of the literary texts, there is another more
important step – to analyse the literary texts, which is, to struggle to explain how one comes to
understand literary works.

Stylistics is an area of study where the linguist combines with the critic so as to achieve a better
or fuller understanding and appreciation of literature. Stylistics also exploits one’s knowledge of
the variety of linguistic features present in the literature to deepen one’s awareness of the
literature. According to Mick Short, stylistics is a linguistic approach to the study of literary texts
(Short, 1996:334). In other words, stylistics is a tool that analyses literary texts using linguistic
descriptions. In his book, Exploring the Language of Poems,Plays and Prose 1996, Mick Short
suggests the following language features to be examined for a stylistic analysis:

i)  foregrounded features, including figures of speech

ii) whether any patterns of style variation can be discerned

iii) discoursal patterning of various kinds, like turn-taking or patterns of inferencing

iv) patterns of viewpoint manipulation, including speech and thought presentation

v) patterns of lexis (vocabulary)

vi) patterns of grammatical organisation

vii) patterns of textual organisation (how the units of textual organisation, from sentences to
paragraphs and beyond are arranged).

Stylistics, predominantly, has been geared towards literary text description.  It uses linguistic
descriptions to analyse a literary text.  When one reads, one wants to understand and respond to
the literary text through the language of the literary text.  A stylistic analysis helps one to examine
the language of the literary text.  In the academic setting, as linguists work with literary texts by
applying the principles of linguistic theory, more and more about literary language can be learnt.

STYLISTICS AND THE STUDY AND THE TEACHING OF

LITERATURE
Many students enjoy literature.  To make any learning process reach an optimal level, enjoyment
is a must.  Thus, literary texts, if well-selected, can be a potentially useful aid to the language
teacher.

Since stylistics is a linguistic approach to the study of literary texts, it actually combines language
and literature.  If a student is taught literature, literary texts or extracts from them can be used to
break up language classes.  Class discussions can be held to identify difficulties the students
have in general and in reading the literary text.

In the academic setting, a reading class would have several aspects to consider.  The first would
be to select the text, then to develop interesting strategies for the reading process, after which the
teacher has the task of dealing with the difficulties experienced by the students.  As a whole,
these steps are concerned with making a point of using literary texts for a discussion whenever
possible during the reading process.  There is a definite link between stylistics and the reading
process when the language of the literary text is examined in detail.

Reading is an important skill to the study of literature. When the student enters a tertiary
institution, there is an emphasis on learning the four language skills–reading, writing, listening
and speaking–through instruction in language studies and students are encouraged to participate
in activities designed to improve these skills.

Stylistics links language and literature studies.  Literary texts often contain a number of different
varieties of English.  They can be extremely useful in sensitising more advanced learners of
English to linguistic variation.  The study of stylistics would be of particular interest to
undergraduate students interested in stylistic analysis and also be relevant to advanced students
and researchers such as this writer.

Stylistics has its place in the study and the teaching of literature.  This paper also deals with the
stylistics approach to the study of literature and its relevance to the teaching of literature. Mick
Short states “the practice of stylistics comes about at any point of intersection of the language of
a text with the elements which constitute the literalness of the text” (Short, 1988:162).

From a teaching or classroom viewpoint, there is much that can be done.  The teacher can use
the literary text to introduce and form the basis of teaching some structural features of the English
language.  The teacher can teach grammar in action and through a stylistics approach of
analysis, its communicative features can be illustrated.  This can be very beneficial when
teaching both native and non-native learners of English.

Where lexis is concerned, stylistics is a way of exploring the literary meanings from a text. 
Through stylistics and the teaching of literature, the rules of language are exploited.  After
observation, linguistic patterns and changes to those patterns are recognised.

From a linguistic point of view in the classroom, the teacher can introduce through a stylistic
analysis, the appreciation of different levels of language organisation in the literary text. 
Teachers can also point out how words work and the nature of figurative language.

Stylistic interpretation involves a process of making equations or inferences about the linguistic
forms and meanings in a literary context.  Literary texts can also be compared on the basis of
related or contrasting themes.  Features of a text can also be compared through stylistics.

Mick Short states “that a stylistic examination of a text can provide a systematic and principled
basis for grading texts for comparison or for further analysis. These texts can be progressively
introduced to students on the basis of their linguistic accessibility” (Short,1988:172).
Widdowson writes that if stylistics is to make any valuable contribution to criticism, literature must
be studied as a mode of communication, and in such a study, means and ends must be given
equal attention and shown to be independent (Widdowson,1975:235). In teaching literature in the
area of stylistics, the invitation for the recognition of how a text works as a whole is explored and
probed into.

STYLISTICS AND TRANSLATIONS

The use of translated materials can be introduced purposefully and imaginatively, into the
language and literature classroom. In the classroom, using translated materials can help the
teacher achieve optimal results if these materials are applied to relevant and suitable
approaches, activities and exercises.

Our mother tongue shapes our way of thinking and to some extent our use of the other language
(whether second or foreign language). The pronunciation, choice of words, tone, word order, etc.
is influenced by one language on the other. When this influence is understood, the teacher can
correct errors of habit or common errors that usually creeps in unconsciously.

An appropriate material of translation is authentic and wide-ranging in scope. The learner can be
brought in touch with the whole language of the target language to maximise the learner’s power
and range of expressions. This will in turn add to the learner’s vocabulary.

Using translated material can invite speculation and discussion. Because there is rarely a “right
answer”, the atmosphere of the classroom can be more relaxed. The text given by the teacher
can be very short and yet this text can be exploited to serve both reading and discussion to cover
the whole class period.

According to Alan Duff, using translated materials develops three qualities in learners (Duff,
1989:7):

  i)        Flexibility- It trains the learner to search for, explore and choose words.

  ii)        Accuracy- In the search for the most appropriate words, the learner strives with the best
choice of words.

  iii)        Clarity- In his choice for words, the learner tries to convey what is meant.

The teacher can select materials to illustrate particular areas or aspects and structure of the
English language with which the learners have difficulty. Thus, the materials could be used to
cater for the learner’s needs and to cover the required syllabus. The materials could have
illustrations of prepositions, articles, if-clauses, etc. These difficulties could be worked out while
the learners come to see the link between language and usage in the target language through
practice.

Practice in language learning must not mean giving assignments, marking all the errors in red
and returning the marked assignments back to the learners. This way, the teacher will eventually
demotivate the learners. Practice in language learning should mean giving the learners regular
opportunities to compare and discuss their work with others and to respond to suggestions and
tasks with an eagerness to learn and not fear of making flaws.

The teacher must be competent enough in the target language to deal with and handle the
different classroom situations. Simple but interesting tasks can be given to the learners before
actually working on the texts. This is designed to set the students thinking along specific lines and
issues. For example, as a warm-up exercise, after a general reading of the text, the learners
could be asked to suggest suitable titles for the text.

Activities involving the use of translated materials constantly means making choices. The longer
the learner stays neutral or undecided and without making a choice, the harder the learner finds it
to make up his mind. The teacher realizes that the best responses, answers or solutions occur in
the classroom after thinking is done and choices are made. Then, the discussions will function
well in order to give the learners time for deeper and further reflection and a chance to change
their minds to make even better choices.

Teachers are encouraged to look at the following items when evaluating and analysing a piece of
translated text through stylistics. The uppermost question in this writer’s mind is: If I were a
language teacher with learners whose mother tongue was not English, meaning teaching learners
with English as their second language (ESL) or as their foreign language (EFL), which type of
translated material would I choose? This writer would want to have the following in mind when
making her selection.

   i)        The materials must reliably reflect aspects of the English language (eg.  prepositions,
conjunctions, etc.).

   ii)        The materials which put across the meaning of the original text clearly and if not, that the
teacher would be able to tell where the uncertainty lies and devise tasks and exercises to test
whether the learners can detect it as well.

   iii)        Whether any words used have underlying implications and that they are loaded with
more meaning. These words can appear in the form of figures of speech.

   iv)        Whether the dictionary meaning of a particular word would serve a suitable explanation
as to whether the word is appropriately used.

   v)        Whether the words used sound natural and smooth flowing. One of the most frequent
criticisms of translated material is that it doesn’t sound natural. This is because the translator’s
thoughts and choice of words are too strongly moulded by the original text. This is termed as
source language influence (Duff,1989:11).  A good way of shaking off the source language
influence is to set aside the original text and exploit or work with the translated material on its own
with the learners.

   vi)        Whether in terms of form, the ordering of words and ideas match as closely to the
original text as possible. Here, differences in the language structure often goes through changes
in the form and order of words. When there is doubt in the understanding of the text, words and
phrases should be taken out and looked at closely with an expert to clear the doubts.

    vii)        Whether the context of the text is clearly discernible. What is meant by context is the
what, where and to whom. What one is writing and speaking about, where the situation occurs
and to whom it is addressed.

    viii)        Whether the register is discernible. What is meant by register is how. Whether tones
can be detected or distinguished to be having formal or informal expressions, cold or warm,
personal or impersonal. The intention of the speaker must be clearly understood through the
register in terms of the tone of the speaker. Whether it is the intention of the speaker to persuade
or dissuade, apologise or criticise.
     ix)        The style and clarity of the translated material should not attempt to change the style of
the original text. It must, however, attempt to put across the meaning as clearly as possible with
the choice of words.

      x)        Figures of speech and idiomatic expressions include similes, metaphors, symbols,
proverbs and saying, jargon, slang and colloquialisms. The explanation of these expressions
carries these questions: Is the original word retained in inverted commas? Can the original
expression be explained better by a close equivalent?  Is it clearer to use non-idiomatic language
or plain prose in terms of understanding?

THE USE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS OF THE

MEANING OF THE QURAN
 This writer is convinced that the English language translation of the meaning of the Quran is a
good alternative to be used in the English language and literature classroom.

According to Islam, it is an important duty for every man, woman and child to read and
understand the Quran according to his or her own capacity. Muslims regard the Quran as a living
miracle, an open book challenging all humanity to see and prove for themselves. They see in the
Quran an invitation from God to all human beings to use their intellect to reason out this truth,
having been created and endowed with adequate intellectual faculties to do this.

The Quran contains messages that are directly stated and accessible to the reader’s thought
processes as well as messages which are conveyed by means of images which can appeal to the
readers senses and stimulate his/her imagination of certain sensory experiences. Humanity is
invited to “think” and “experience” as they try to understand the messages in the Quran. Muslim
students, in particular, should be exposed to the study of Quranic concepts as early in their
academic life as possible due to the abundance of concepts presented in the Quran. In this way,
they will have a reasonable framework within which to grasp and understand at the time or at a
later date, the varied concepts in the Quran with ease, which can help to elucidate the messages
in the Quran.

Muslim educationists feel it is reasonable for Muslim students to try to make the Quran as much a
part of their lives as possible. Thus, they would no doubt consider it a great achievement if the
Quran could be fitted to a large extent into any curriculum at Islamic educational institutions in
any medium of study- including the curriculum of English language and Literature classes
especially at Islamic educational institutions.

The basic justifications for using the English language translations of the meaning of the Quran in
English language and Literature classes are the following. Firstly, the English language
translations of the meaning of the Quran can be used most productively when teaching its content
while exploiting its language.

Secondly, the English language translations of the meanings of the Quran can be a source of
encouragement for students especially at Islamic educational institutions because Muslims
students are aware of the sacredness of the Quran. Because of their religious background, the
students are motivated to relate to or imagine what is mentioned in the Quran. As Muslims, it is
indeed beneficial for them to have an opportunity to study Quranic concepts for them to grow and
develop spiritually. Also, Quran-based instruction would be a sure way of inculcating Islamic
moral values in the learners and they can use these values as a yardstick for critiquing other
texts.
The third reason would be that of the possibility of introducing the literary aspects of the Quran to
Muslim as well as non-Muslim students who may be attending Islamic institutions.

A fourth reason would be that this is an effective way of making students more familiar with the
Quran, which will enable them to use Quranic quotations effectively. This ability will be a great
asset for anyone academically to prove and highlight his/her points in other coursework and
socially especially in Islamic gatherings where topics of discussions, which are related to the
Quran, are brought forth. Quranic quotations can make an impressive addition to one’s rhetorical
style.

CONCLUSION
From the discussion in this paper, one can see that literary texts can be exploited in terms of
language and content through stylistics.  Stylistics can provide a way of mediating between two
subjects, English language and Literature. This writer has also introduced the idea of using the
English language translations of the meaning of the Quran as literary texts in the English
language and Literature classroom. Stylistics is a way of analyzing literary texts using literary
descriptions. The writer has indeed paved the way for the sensible possibility of analyzing the
English language translated versions of the Quran using the stylistics approach in the Literature
classroom.

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About Author
Dr Lubna Almenoar

I am, at present, a Lecturer in the English Department at the British University in Egypt — El
Shorouk City, Cairo. I am a U.S. citizen with a PhD in English Literature and Applied Linguistics-
Stylistics, as well as a master’s degree and a postgraduate teaching diploma in Teaching English
as a Second Language. I have taught both in the United States and abroad.
My research is in the field of using English language translations of the Quran as material for the
teaching of English language and literature to non-native English speakers. I have done extensive
work in this area since 1992, and I have accumulated many case studies and classroom
observations. Starting from the experience of substituting sections from the Quran for the
standard classroom text, I have employed various pedagogical approaches to teaching the Quran
as literature — questionnaires, stylistic analysis, comparative studies of different English
language translations, linguistic analysis of verses, and so on. I have also organized a forum on
this topic with experts in the field.
In doing all of this, my intention was not to look at the religious value of the verses, but at the
literary value that is so abundant in both the English language translations and the original. I have
been able to prepare a number of articles based on the data from my classroom experiences. I
would like to share my research-based findings internationally.
 Semiotics for Beginners
Daniel Chandler

Codes

In 1972 NASA sent into deep space an interstellar probe

called Pioneer 10. It bore a golden plaque.

The art historian Ernst Gombrich offers an insightful

commentary on this:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration

has equipped a deep-space probe with a pictorial
message 'on the off-chance that somewhere on the
way it is intercepted by intelligent scientifically
educated beings.' It is unlikely that their effort was
meant to be taken quite seriously, but what if we
try? These beings would first of all have to be
equipped with 'receivers' among their sense organs
that respond to the same band of electromagnetic
waves as our eyes do. Even in that unlikely case
they could not possibly get the message. Reading an
image, like the reception of any other message, is
dependent on prior knowledge of possibilities; we
can only recognize what we know. Even the sight of
the awkward naked figures in the illustration cannot
be separated in our mind from our knowledge. We
know that feet are for standing and eyes are for
looking and we project this knowledge onto these
configurations, which would look 'like nothing on
earth' without this prior information. It is this
information alone that enables us to separate the
code from the message; we see which of the lines
are intended as contours and which are intended as
conventional modelling. Our 'scientifically educated'
fellow creatures in space might be forgiven if they
saw the figures as wire constructs with loose bits
and pieces hovering weightlessly in between. Even if
they deciphered this aspect of the code, what
would they make of the woman's right arm that
tapers off like a flamingo's neck and beak? The
creatures are 'drawn to scale against the outline of
the spacecraft,' but if the recipients are supposed to
understand foreshortening, they might also expect
to see perspective and conceive the craft as being
further back, which would make the scale of the
manikins minute. As for the fact that 'the man has
his right hand raised in greeting' (the female of the
species presumably being less outgoing), not even
an earthly Chinese or Indian would be able to
correctly interpret this gesture from his own
repertory.

The representation of humans is accompanied by a

chart: a pattern of lines beside the figures standing
for the 14 pulsars of the Milky Way, the whole being
designed to locate the sun of our universe. A second
 drawing (how are they to know it is not part of the
same chart?) 'shows the earth and the other planets in
relation to the sun and the path of Pioneer from earth
and swinging past Jupiter.' The trajectory, it will be
noticed, is endowed with a directional arrowhead; it
seems to have escaped the designers that this is a
conventional symbol unknown to a race that never
had the equivalent of bows and arrows. (Gombrich
1974, 255-8; Gombrich 1982, 150-151).

Gombrich's commentary on this attempt at communication

with alien beings highlights the importance of what
semioticians call codes. The concept of the 'code' is
fundamental in semiotics. Whilst Saussure dealt only with
the overall code of language, he did of course stress that
signs are not meaningful in isolation, but only when they
are interpreted in relation to each other. It was another
linguistic structuralist, Roman Jakobson, who emphasized
that the production and interpretation of texts depends upon
the existence of codes or conventions for communication
(Jakobson 1971). Since the meaning of a sign depends on
the code within which it is situated, codes provide a
framework within which signs make sense. Indeed, we
cannot grant something the status of a sign if it does not
function within a code. Furthermore, if the relationship
between a signifier and its signified is relatively arbitrary,
then it is clear that interpreting the conventional meaning of
signs requires familiarity with appropriate sets of
conventions. Reading a text involves relating it to relevant
'codes'. Even an indexical and iconic sign such as a
photograph involves a translation from three dimensions
into two, and anthropologists have often reported the initial
difficulties experienced by people in primal tribes in
making sense of photographs and films (Deregowski 1980),
whilst historians note that even in recent times the first
instant snapshots confounded Western viewers because
they were not accustomed to arrested images of transient
movements and needed to go through a process of cultural
habituation or training (Gombrich 1982, 100, 273). As
Elizabeth Chaplin puts it, 'photography introduced a new
way of seeing which had to be learned before it was
rendered invisible' (Chaplin 1994, 179). What human
beings see does not resemble a sequence of rectangular
frames, and camerawork and editing conventions are not
direct replications of the way in which we see the everyday
world. When we look at things around us in everyday life
we gain a sense of depth from our binocular vision, by
rotating our head or by moving in relation to what we are
looking at. To get a clearer view we can adjust the focus of
our eyes. But for making sense of depth when we look at a
photograph none of this helps. We have to decode the cues.
Semioticians argue that, although exposure over time leads
'visual language' to seem 'natural', we need to learn how to
'read' even visual and audio-visual texts (though see
Messaris 1982 and 1994 for a critique of this stance). Any
Westerners who feel somehow superior to those primal
tribesfolk who experience initial difficulties with
photography and film should consider what sense they
themselves might make of unfamiliar artefacts - such as
Oriental lithographs or algebraic equations. The
conventions of such forms need to be learned before we can
make sense of them.

Some theorists argue that even our perception of the

everyday world around us involves codes. Fredric Jameson
declares that 'all perceptual systems are already languages
in their own right' (Jameson 1972, 152). As Derrida would
put it, perception is always already representation.
'Perception depends on coding the world into iconic signs
that can re-present it within our mind. The force of the
apparent identity is enormous, however. We think that it is
the world itself we see in our "mind's eye", rather than a
coded picture of it' (Nichols 1981, 11-12). According to the
Gestalt psychologists - notably Max Wertheimer (1880-
1943), Wolfgang Kِhler (1887-1967) and Kurt Koffka
(1886-1941) - there are certain universal features in human
visual perception which in semiotic terms can be seen as
constituting a perceptual code. We owe the concept of
'figure' and 'ground' in perception to this group of
psychologists. Confronted by a visual image, we seem to
need to separate a dominant shape (a 'figure' with a definite
contour) from what our current concerns relegate to
'background' (or 'ground'). An illustration of this is the
famous ambiguous figure devised by the Danish
psychologist Edgar Rubin.

Images such as this are ambiguous concerning figure and

ground. Is the figure a white vase (or goblet, or bird-bath)
on a black background or silhouetted profiles on a white
background? Perceptual set operates in such cases and we
tend to favour one interpretation over the other (though
altering the amount of black or white which is visible can
create a bias towards one or the other). When we have
identified a figure, the contours seem to belong to it, and it
appears to be in front of the ground.

In addition to introducing the terms 'figure' and 'ground',

the Gestalt psychologists outlined what seemed to be
several fundamental and universal principles (sometimes
even called 'laws') of perceptual organization. The main
ones are as follows (some of the terms vary a little):
proximity, similarity, good continuation, closure,
smallness, surroundedness, symmetry and pr‫ن‬gnanz.

The principle of proximity can be demonstrated thus:

What you are likely to notice fairly quickly is that this is
not just a square pattern of dots but rather is a series of
columns of dots. The principle of proximity is that features
which are close together are associated. Below is another
example. Here we are likely to group the dots together in
rows.

The principle also applies in the illustration below. We are

more likely to associate the lines which are close together
than those which are further apart. In this example we tend
to see three pairs of lines which are fairly close together
(and a lonely line on the far right) rather than three pairs of
lines which are further apart (and a lonely line on the far
left).

The significance of this principle on its own is likely to

seem unclear initially; it is in their interaction that the
principles become more apparent. So we will turn to a
second major principle of perceptual organization - that of
similarity. Look at the example below.
Here the little circles and squares are evenly spaced both
horizontally and vertically so proximity does not come into
play. However, we do tend to see alternating columns of
circles and squares. This, the Gestalt psychologists would
argue, is because of the principle of similarity - features
which look similar are associated. Without the two
different recurrent features we would see either rows or
columns or both...

A third principle of perceptual organization is that of good

continuity. This principle is that contours based on smooth
continuity are preferred to abrupt changes of direction.
Here, for instance, we are more likely to identify lines a-b
and c-d crossing than to identify a-d and c-b or a-c and d-b
as lines.

Closure is a fourth principle of perceptual organization:

interpretations which produce 'closed' rather than 'open'
figures are favoured.
Here we tend to see three broken rectangles (and a lonely
shape on the far left) rather than three 'girder' profiles (and
a lonely shape on the right). In this case the principle of
closure cuts across the principle of proximity, since if we
remove the bracket shapes, we return to an image used
earlier to illustrate proximity...

A fifth principle of perceptual organization is that of

smallness. Smaller areas tend to be seen as figures against
a larger background. In the figure below we are more
likely to see a black cross rather than a white cross within
the circle because of this principle.

As an illustration of this Gestalt principle, it has been

argued that it is easier to see Rubin's vase when the area it
occupies is smaller (Coren et al. 1994, 377). The lower
portion of the illustration below offers negative image
versions in case this may play a part. To avoid implicating
the surroundedness principle I have removed the
conventional broad borders from the four versions. The
Gestalt principle of smallness would suggest that it should
be easier to see the vase rather than the faces in the two
versions on the left below.
The principle of symmetry is that symmetrical areas tend to
be seen as figures against asymmetrical backgrounds.

Then there is the principle of surroundedness, according to

which areas which can be seen as surrounded by others
tend to be perceived as figures.

Now we're in this frame of mind, interpreting the image

shown above should not be too difficult. What tends to
confuse observers initially is that they assume that the
white area is the ground rather than the figure. If you
couldn't before, you should now be able to discern the word
'TIE'.
All of these principles of perceptual organization serve the
overarching principle of pragn ‫ن‬nz, which is that the
simplest and most stable interpretations are favoured.

What the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization

suggest is that we may be predisposed towards interpreting
ambiguous images in one way rather than another by
universal principles. We may accept such a proposition at
the same time as accepting that such predispositions may
also be generated by other factors. Similarly, we may
accept the Gestalt principles whilst at the same time
regarding other aspects of perception as being learned and
culturally variable rather than innate. The Gestalt principles
can be seen as reinforcing the notion that the world is not
simply and objectively 'out there' but is constructed in the
process of perception. As Bill Nichols comments, 'a useful
habit formed by our brains must not be mistaken for an
essential attribute of reality. Just as we must learn to read
an image, we must learn to read the physical world. Once
we have developed this skill (which we do very early in
life), it is very easy to mistake it for an automatic or
unlearned process, just as we may mistake our particular
way of reading, or seeing, for a natural, ahistorical and
noncultural given' (Nichols 1981, 12).

We are rarely aware of our own habitual ways of seeing the

world. It takes deliberate effort to become more aware of
everyday visual perception as a code. Its habitual
application obscures the traces of its intervention.
However, a simple experiment allows us to 'bracket' visual
perception at least briefly. For this to be possible, you need
to sit facing the same direction without moving your body
for a few minutes:

Gaze blankly at the space in front of you. Avoid

'fixing' the space into objects and spaces between
objects; instead, try to see it as a continuum of
impressions. If the necessary degree of
purposelessness is achieved, the space will lose its
familiar properties. Instead of receding in depth, it
 will seem to float dimensionless from the bottom to
the top of the field of vision. A rectangular book,
instead of lying flat on a table, will be a trapezoidal
patch of a certain colour and texture rising vertically
in this flattened field. (Nichols 1981, 12).

This process of
bracketing perception
will be more familiar to
those who draw or paint
who are used to
converting three
dimensions into two.
For those who do not,
this little experiment
may be quite surprising.
We are routinely
anaesthetized to a psychological mechanism called
'perceptual constancy' which stabilizes the relative shifts in
the apparent shapes and sizes of people and objects in the
world around us as we change our visual viewpoints in
relation to them. Without mechanisms such as
categorization and perceptual constancy the world would
be no more than what William James called a 'great
blooming and buzzing confusion' (James 1890, 488).
Perceptual constancy ensures that 'the variability of the
everyday world becomes translated by reference to less
variable codes. The environment becomes a text to be read
like any other text' (Nichols 1981, 26):

Key differences between 'bracketed' perception and

everyday perception may be summarized as follows
(Nichols 1981, 13, 20):

Bracketed Perception Normal Perception

A bounded visual space, oval,

approximately 180° laterally, 150° Unbounded visual space
vertically
Clarity of focus at only one point
with a gradient of increasing
vagueness toward the margin Clarity of focus
(clarity of focus corresponds to the throughout
space whose light falls upon the
fovea)

Parallel lines extend

Parallel lines appear to converge: without converging: the
the lateral sides of a rectangular sides of a rectangular
surface extending away from the surface extending away
viewer appear to converge from the viewer remain
parallel

If the head is moved, the shapes If the head is moved,

of objects appear to be deformed shapes remain constant

The visual space appears to lack Visual space is never

depth wholly depthless

A world of patterns and sensation, A world of familiar objects

of surfaces, edges and gradients and meaning

The conventions of codes represent a social dimension in

semiotics: a code is a set of practices familiar to users of
the medium operating within a broad cultural framework.
Indeed, as Stuart Hall puts it, 'there is no intelligible
discourse without the operation of a code' (Hall 1980, 131).
Society itself depends on the existence of such signifying
systems.

Codes are not simply 'conventions' of communication but

rather procedural systems of related conventions which
operate in certain domains. Codes organize signs into
meaningful systems which correlate signifiers and
signifieds. Codes transcend single texts, linking them
together in an interpretative framework. Stephen Heath
notes that 'while every code is a system, not every system is
a code' (Heath 1981, 130). He adds that 'a code is
distinguished by its coherence, its homogeneity, its
systematicity, in the face of the heterogeneity of the
message, articulated across several codes' (ibid., p.129).

Codes are interpretive frameworks which are used by both

producers and interpreters of texts. In creating texts we
select and combine signs in relation to the codes with
which we are familiar 'in order to limit... the range of
possible meanings they are likely to generate when read by
others' (Turner 1992, 17). Codes help to simplify
phenomena in order to make it easier to communicate
experiences (Gombrich 1982, 35). In reading texts, we
interpret signs with reference to what seem to be
appropriate codes. Usually the appropriate codes are
obvious, 'overdetermined' by all sorts of contextual cues.
Signs within texts can be seen as embodying cues to the
codes which are appropriate for interpreting them. The
medium employed clearly influences the choice of codes.
Pierre Guiraud notes that 'the frame of a painting or the
cover of a book highlights the nature of the code; the title
of a work of art refers to the code adopted much more often
than to the content of the message' (Guiraud 1975, 9). In
this sense we routinely 'judge a book by its cover'. We can
typically identify a text as a poem simply by the way in
which it is set out on the page. The use of what is
sometimes called 'scholarly apparatus' (such as
introductions, acknowledgements, section headings, tables,
diagrams, notes, references, bibliographies, appendices and
indexes) - is what makes academic texts immediately
identifiable as such to readers. Such cueing is part of the
metalingual function of signs. With familiar codes we are
rarely conscious of our acts of interpretation, but
occasionally a text requires us to work a little harder - for
instance, by pinning down the most appropriate signified
for a key signifier (as in jokes based on word play) - before
we can identify the relevant codes for making sense of the
text as a whole.
Even with adequate English vocabulary and grammar, think
what sense an inter-planetary visitor to Earth might make
of a notice such as 'Dogs must be carried on the escalator'.
Does it mean that you must carry a dog if you go on the
escalator? Is it forbidden to use it without one? Terry
Eagleton comments:

To understand this notice I need to do a great deal

more than simply read its words one after the
other. I need to know, for example, that these
words belong to what might be called a 'code of
reference' - that the sign is not just a decorative
piece of language there to entertain travellers, but
is to be taken as referring to the behaviour of actual
dogs and passengers on actual escalators. I must
mobilize my general social knowledge to recognize
that the sign has been placed there by the
authorities, that these authorities have the power
to penalize offenders, that I as a member of the
public am being implicitly addressed, none of which
is evident in the words themselves. I have to rely, in
other words, upon certain social codes and contexts
to understand the notice properly. But I also need
to bring these into interaction with certain codes or
conventions of reading - conventions which tell me
that by 'the escalator' is meant this escalator and
not one in Paraguay, that 'must be carried' means
'must be carried now', and so on. I must recognize
that the 'genre' of the sign is such as to make it
highly improbable that... [certain ambiguities are]
actually intended [such as that you must carry a dog
on the escalator]... I understand the notice, then, by
interpreting it in terms of certain codes which seem
appropriate (Eagleton 1983, 78).
Without realizing it, in understanding even the simplest
texts we draw on a repertoire of textual and social codes.
Literary texts tend to make greater demands. Eagleton
argues that:

In applying a code to the text, we may find that it

undergoes revision and transformation in the
reading process; continuing to read with this same
code, we discover that it now produces a 'different'
text, which in turn modifies the code by which we
are reading it, and so on. This dialectical process is
in principle infinite; and if this is so then it
undermines any assumption that once we have
identified the proper codes for the text our task is
finished. Literary texts are 'code-productive' and
'code-transgressive' as well as 'code-confirming'.
(Eagleton 1983, 125)

Semioticians seek to identify codes and the tacit rules and

constraints which underlie the production and interpretation
of meaning within each code. They have found it
convenient to divide codes into groups. Different theorists
favour different taxonomies, and whilst structuralists often
follow the 'principle of parsimony' - seeking to find the
smallest number of groups deemed necessary - 'necessity' is
defined by purposes. No taxonomy is innocently 'neutral'
and devoid of ideological assumptions. One might start
from a fundamental divide between analogue and digital
codes, from a division according to sensory channels, from
a distinction between 'verbal' and 'non-verbal', and so on.
Many semioticians take human language as their starting
point. The primary and most pervasive code in any society
is its dominant 'natural' language, within which (as with
other codes) there are many 'sub-codes'. A fundamental
sub-division of language into spoken and written forms - at
least insofar as it relates to whether the text is detached
from its maker at the point of reception - is often regarded
as representing a broad division into different codes rather
than merely sub-codes. One theorist's code is another's sub-
code and the value of the distinction needs to be
demonstrated. Referring to the codes of film-making,
Stephen Heath argues that 'codes are not in competition
with one another...; there is no choice between, say,
lighting and montage. Choice is given between the various
sub-codes of a code, they being in a relation of mutual
exclusion' (Heath 1981, 127). Stylistic and personal codes
(or idiolects) are often described as sub-codes (e.g. Eco
1976, 263, 272). The various kinds of codes overlap, and
the semiotic analysis of any text or practice involves
considering several codes and the relationships between
them. A range of typologies of codes can be found in the
literature of semiotics. I refer here only to those which are
most widely mentioned in the context of media,
communication and cultural studies (this particular
tripartite framework is my own).

 Social codes
[In a broader sense all semiotic codes are 'social
codes']
 verbal language (phonological, syntactical,
lexical, prosodic and paralinguistic subcodes);
 bodily codes (bodily contact, proximity,
physical orientation, appearance, facial
expression, gaze, head nods, gestures and
posture);
 commodity codes (fashions, clothing, cars);
 behavioural codes (protocols, rituals, role-
playing, games).
 Textual codes
[Representational codes]
 scientific codes, including mathematics;
 aesthetic codes within the various expressive
arts (poetry, drama, painting, sculpture,
music, etc.) - including classicism,
romanticism, realism;
 genre, rhetorical and stylistic codes: narrative
(plot, character, action, dialogue, setting,
etc.), exposition, argument and so on;
  mass media codes including photographic,
televisual, filmic, radio, newspaper and
magazine codes, both technical and
conventional (including format).
 Interpretative codes
[There is less agreement about these as semiotic
codes]
 perceptual codes: e.g. of visual perception
(Hall 1980, 132; Nichols 1981, 11ff; Eco 1982)
(note that this code does not assume
intentional communication);
 ideological codes: More broadly, these
include codes for 'encoding' and 'decoding'
texts - dominant (or 'hegemonic'), negotiated
or oppositional (Hall 1980; Morley 1980).
More specifically, we may list the 'isms', such
as individualism, liberalism, feminism, racism,
materialism, capitalism, progressivism,
conservatism, socialism, objectivism,
consumerism and populism; (note, however,
that all codes can be seen as ideological).

These three types of codes correspond broadly to three key

kinds of knowledge required by interpreters of a text,
namely knowledge of:

 the world (social knowledge);

 the medium and the genre (textual knowledge);
 the relationship between (1) and (2) (modality
judgements).

The 'tightness' of semiotic codes themselves varies from the

rule-bound closure of logical codes (such as computer
codes) to the interpretative looseness of poetic codes. Pierre
Guiraud notes that 'signification is more or less codified',
and that some systems are so 'open' that they 'scarcely merit
the designation "code" but are merely systems of
"hermeneutic" interpretation' (Guiraud 1975, 24). Guiraud
makes the distinction that a code is 'a system of explicit
social conventions' whilst 'a hermeneutics' is 'a system of
implicit, latent and purely contingent signs', adding that 'it
is not that the latter are neither conventional nor social, but
they are so in a looser, more obscure and often unconscious
way' (ibid., 41). His claim that (formal) codes are 'explicit'
seems untenable since few codes would be likely to be
widely regarded as wholly explicit. He refers to two 'levels
of signification', but it may be more productive to refer to a
descriptive spectrum based on relative explicitness, with
technical codes veering towards one pole and interpretative
practices veering towards the other. At one end of the
spectrum are what Guiraud refers to as 'explicit, socialized
codes in which the meaning is a datum of the message as a
result of a formal convention between participants' (ibid.,
43-4). In such cases, he argues, 'the code of a message is
explicitly given by the sender' (ibid., 65). At the other end
of the spectrum are 'the individual and more or less implicit
hermeneutics in which meaning is the result of an
interpretation on the part of the receiver' (ibid., 43-4).
Guiraud refers to interpretative practices as more 'poetic',
being 'engendered by the receiver using a system or
systems of implicit interpretation which, by virtue of usage,
are more or less socialized and conventionalized' (ibid.,
41). Later he adds that 'a hermeneutics is a grid supplied by
the receiver; a philosophical, aesthetic, or cultural grid
which he applies to the text' (ibid., 65). Whilst Guiraud's
distinctions may be regarded as rather too clearcut, as 'ideal
types' they may nevertheless be analytical useful.

When studying cultural practices, semioticians treat as

signs any objects or actions which have meaning to
members of the cultural group, seeking to identify the rules
or conventions of the codes which underlie the production
of meanings within that culture. Understanding such codes,
their relationships and the contexts in which they are
appropriate is part of what it means to be a member of a
particular culture. Marcel Danesi has suggested that 'a
culture can be defined as a kind of "macro-code",
consisting of the numerous codes which a group of
individuals habitually use to interpret reality' (Danesi
1994a, 18; see also Danesi 1999, 29, Nichols 1981, 30-1
and Sturrock 1986, 87). For the interested reader, texts on
intercultural communication are a useful guide to cultural
codes (e.g. Samovar & Porter 1988; Gudykunst & Kim
1992; Scollon & Scollon 1995).

Food is a fundamental example of the cultural variability of

codes, as is highlighted in The Raw and the Cooked by the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-Strauss 1970).
Food is a clear manifestation of the interaction of nature
and culture. It is 'natural' for all animals (including humans)
to consume food, but the modes of consumption employed
by human beings are a distinctive part of human culture. As
Edmund Leach puts it, 'cooking is... universally a means by
which Nature is transformed into Culture' (Leach 1970,
34). He adds that 'men do not have to cook their food, they
do so for symbolic reasons to show that they are men and
not beasts. So fire and cooking are basic symbols by which
Culture is distinguished from Nature' (ibid., 92). Unlike
other animals, human beings in different cultures follow
social conventions which dictate what is edible or inedible,
how food should be prepared and when certain foods may
be eaten. In various cultures, the eating of certain foods is
prohibited either for men, women or children. Thus food
categories become mapped onto categories of social
differentiation. Lévi-Strauss regards such mapping between
categories as of primary importance.

Referring initially to 'totemism', Lévi-Strauss notes that the

classification systems of a culture constitute a code which
serves to signify social differences. He argues that such
systems are like interpretative 'grids' and suggests that they
are built upon 'differentiating features' which are detachable
from a specific content. This makes them suitable as
'codes... for conveying messages which can be transposed
into other codes, and for expressing messages received by
means of different codes in terms of their own system'.
Such codes, he argued, constitute 'a method for assimilating
any kind of content' which 'guarantee the convertibility of
ideas between different levels of social reality' (Lévi-
Strauss 1974, 75-6; see also 96-7). Such codes are involved
in 'mediation between nature and culture' (ibid., 90-91).
They are a way of encoding differences within society by
analogy with perceived differences in the natural world
(somewhat as in Aesop's Fables). They transform what are
perceived as natural categories into cultural categories and
serve to naturalize cultural practices. 'The mythical system
and the modes of representation it employs serve to
establish homologies between natural and social conditions
or, more accurately, it makes it possible to equate
significant contrasts found in different planes: the
geographical, meteorological, zoological, botanical,
technical, economic, social, ritual, religious and
philosophical' (ibid., 93). In the case of the Murngin of
Arnhem Land in northern Australia, the mythical system
enabled equivalences to be made as in the following table:

Pure, sacred male superior fertilizing (rains) bad season

Impure, profane female inferior fertilized (land) good season

As can be seen, such systems are not without

contradictions, and Lévi-Strauss argued that the
contradictions within such systems generate explanatory
myths - such codes must 'make sense' (Lévi-Strauss 1974,
228). Whilst 'classificatory systems belong to the levels of
language' (ibid.), a framework such as this 'is something
more than a mere language. It does not just set up rules of
compatibility and incompatibility between signs. It is the
basis of an ethic which prescribes or prohibits modes of
behaviour. Or at least this consequence seems to follow
from the very common association of totemic modes of
representation with eating prohibitions on the one hand and
rules of exogamy on the other' (ibid., 97). Although Lévi-
Strauss's analytical approach remains formally synchronic,
involving no study of the historical dimension, he does
incorporate the possibility of change: oppositions are not
fixed and structures are transformable. He notes that we
need not regard such frameworks from a purely synchronic
perspective. 'Starting from a binary opposition, which
affords the simplest possible example of a system, this
construction proceeds by the aggregation, at each of the
two poles, of new terms, chosen because they stand in
relations of opposition, correlation, or analogy to it'. In this
way structures may undergo transformation (ibid., 161).

Lee Thayer argues that 'what we learn is not the world, but
particular codes into which it has been structured so that we
may "share" our experiences of it' (Thayer 1982, 30; cf. Lee
1960). Constructivist theorists argue that linguistic codes
play a key role in the construction and maintenance of
social realities. The Whorfian hypothesis or Sapir-Whorf
theory is named after the American linguists Edward Sapir
and Benjamin Lee Whorf. In its most extreme version the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be described as relating two
associated principles: linguistic determinism and linguistic
relativism. Applying these two principles, the Whorfian
thesis is that people who speak languages with very
different phonological, grammatical and semantic
distinctions perceive and think about the world quite
differently, their worldviews being shaped or determined
by their language. Writing in 1929, Sapir argued in a
classic passage that:

Human beings do not live in the objective world

alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as
ordinarily understood, but are very much at the
mercy of the particular language which has become
the medium of expression for their society. It is
quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to
reality essentially without the use of language and
that language is merely an incidental means of
solving specific problems of communication or
reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real
world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon
the language habits of the group. No two languages
are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as
representing the same social reality. The worlds in
which different societies live are distinct worlds, not
merely the same world with different labels
attached... We see and hear and otherwise
 experience very largely as we do because the
language habits of our community predispose
certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir 1958, 69).

This position was extended by his student Whorf, who,

writing in 1940 in another widely cited passage, declared
that:

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our

native languages. The categories and types that we
isolate from the world of phenomena we do not
find there because they stare every observer in the
face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a
kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be
organized by our minds - and this means largely by
the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature
up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe
significances as we do, largely because we are
parties to an agreement to organize it in this way -
an agreement that holds throughout our speech
community and is codified in the patterns of our
language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit
and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely
obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by
subscribing to the organization and classification of
data which the agreement decrees (Whorf 1956,
213-4; his emphasis).

The extreme determinist form of the Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis is rejected by most contemporary linguists.
Critics note that we cannot make inferences about
differences in worldview solely on the basis of differences
in linguistic structure. Whilst few linguists would accept
the Whorfian hypothesis in its 'strong', extreme or
deterministic form, many now accept a 'weak', more
moderate, or limited Whorfianism, namely that the ways in
which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of
language we use.

Probably the most well-known example of the cultural

diversity of verbal and conceptual categories is that
Eskimos have dozens of words for 'snow' - an assertion
which is frequently attributed to Benjamin Lee Whorf.
Actually, Whorf seems never to have claimed that Eskimos
had more than five words for snow (Whorf 1956, 216).
However, a more recent study - not of the Inuit but of the
Koyukon Indians of the subarctic forest - does list 16 terms
for snow, representing these distinctions:

 snow;
 deep snow;
 falling snow;
 blowing snow;
 snow on the ground;
 granular snow beneath the surface;
 hard drifted snow;
 snow thawed previously and then frozen;
 earliest crusted snow in spring;
 thinly crusted snow;
 snow drifted over a steep bank, making it steeper;
 snow cornice on a mountain;
 heavy drifting snow;
 slushy snow on the ground;
 snow caught on tree branches;
 fluffy or powder snow (Nelson 1983, 262-263).

This is not the place to explore the controversial issue of

the extent to which the way we perceive the world may be
influenced by the categories which are embedded in the
language available to us. Suffice it to say that words can be
found in English (as in the admittedly wordy translations
above) to refer to distinctions which we may not habitually
make. Not surprisingly, cultural groups tend to have lots of
words (and phrases) for differences that are physically or
culturally important to them - English-speaking skiers also
have many words for snow. Urban myths woven around the
theme of 'Eskimos' having many words for snow may
reflect a desire to romanticize 'exotic' cultures. This does
not, however, rule out the possibility that the categories
which we employ may not only reflect our view of the
world but may also sometimes exercise subtle influences
upon it.

Within a culture, social differentiation is 'over-determined'

by a multitude of social codes. We communicate our social
identities through the work we do, the way we talk, the
clothes we wear, our hairstyles, our eating habits, our
domestic environments and possessions, our use of leisure
time, our modes of travelling and so on (Fussell 1984).
Language use acts as one marker of social identity. In 1954,
A S C Ross introduced a distinction between so-called 'U
and Non-U' uses of the English language. He observed that
members of the British upper class ('U') could be
distinguished from other social classes ('Non-U') by their
use of words such as those in the following table (Crystal
1987, 39). It is interesting to note that several of these refer
to food and eating. Whilst times have changed, similar
distinctions still exist in British society.

U Non-U

luncheon dinner

table-napkin serviette

vegetables greens

jam preserve

pudding sweet

sick ill

lavatory-paper toilet-paper

looking-glass mirror
 writing-paper note-paper

wireless radio

A controversial distinction regarding British linguistic

usage was introduced in the 1960s by the sociologist Basil
Bernstein between so-called 'restricted code' and
'elaborated code' (Bernstein 1971). Restricted code was
used in informal situations and was characterized by a
reliance on situational context, a lack of stylistic variety, an
emphasis on the speaker's membership of the group, simple
syntax and the frequent use of gestures and tag questions
(such as 'Isn't it?'). Elaborated code was used in formal
situations and was characterized by less dependence on
context, wide stylistic range (including the passive voice),
more adjectives, relatively complex syntax and the use of
the pronoun 'I'. Bernstein's argument was that middle-class
children had access to both of these codes whilst working-
class children had access only to restricted codes. Such
clear-cut distinctions and correlations with social class are
now widely challenged by linguists (Crystal 1987, 40).
However, we still routinely use such linguistic cues as a
basis for making inferences about people's social
backgrounds.

Linguistic codes serve as indicators not only of social class

but even of sexual orientation, as in the case of 'Polari', a
set of 'camp' terms and expressions which used to be
employed by gay men in British theatrical circles. Polari
was made better known in the late 1960s by the characters
'Julian and Sandy' in the BBC radio programme, Around
the Horne.

Polari Standard English Polari Standard English

bijou small nanti no, nothing, not

bold outrageous, flamboyant omi man

bona good omi- gay man

 palone

butch masculine palone girl, young woman

speak, chat, speech,

drag clothes, to dress polari
language

eek face riah hair

fantabulosa excellent trade casual sex

lally leg troll go, walk, wander

house, home,
latty varda see, look, a look
accommodation

Social differentiation is observable not only from linguistic

codes, but from a host of non-verbal codes. A survey of
non-verbal codes is not manageable here, and the interested
reader should consult some of the classic texts and
specialist guides to the literature (e.g. Hall 1959; Hall 1966;
Argyle 1969; Birdwhistell 1971; Argyle 1983; Argyle
1988). In the context of the present text a few examples
must suffice to illustrate the importance of non-verbal
codes.

Social conventions for 'appropriate' dress are explictly

referred to as 'dress codes'. In some institutions, such as in
many business organizations and schools, a formal dress
code is made explicit as a set of rules (a practice which
sometimes leads to subversive challenges). Particular
formal occasions - such as weddings, funerals, banquets
and so on - involve strong expectations concerning
'appropriate' dress. In other contexts, the wearer has greater
choice of what to wear, and their clothes seem to 'say more
about them' than about an occasion at which they are
present or the institution for which they work. The way that
we dress can serve as a marker of social background and
subcultural allegiances. This is particularly apparent in
youth subcultures. For instance, in Britain in the 1950s
'Teddy boys' or 'Teds' wore drape jackets with moleskin or
satin collars, drainpipe trousers, crêpe-soled suede shoes
and bootlace ties; the hairstyle was a greased 'D-A', often
with sideburns and a quiff. Subsequent British youth
subcultures such as mods and rockers, skinheads and
hippies, punks and goths have also had distinctive clothes,
hairstyles and musical tastes. Two classic studies of
postwar British youth subcultures are Stuart Hall and Tony
Jefferson's Resistance through Rituals and Dick Hebdige's
Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Hall & Jefferson 1976;
Hebdige 1979). Marcel Danesi has offered a more recent
semiotic account of the social codes of youth subcultures in
Canada (Danesi 1994b).

Non-verbal codes which regulate a 'sensory regime' are of

particular interest. Within particular cultural contexts there
are, for instance, largely inexplicit 'codes of looking' which
regulate how people may look at other people (including
taboos on certain kinds of looking). Such codes tend to
retreat to transparency when the cultural context is one's
own. 'Children are instructed to "look at me", not to stare at
strangers, and not to look at certain parts of the body...
People have to look in order to be polite, but not to look at
the wrong people or in the wrong place, e.g. at deformed
people' (Argyle 1988, 158). In Luo in Kenya one should
not look at one's mother-in-law; in Nigeria one should not
look at a high-status person; amongst some South
American Indians during conversation one should not look
at the other person; in Japan one should look at the neck,
not the face; and so on (Argyle 1983, 95).

The duration of the gaze is also culturally variable: in

'contact cultures' such as those of the Arabs, Latin
Americans and southern Europeans, people look more than
the British or white Americans, while black Americans
look less (ibid., 158). In contact cultures too little gaze is
seen as insincere, dishonest or impolite whilst in non-
contact cultures too much gaze ('staring') is seen as
threatening, disrespectful and insulting (Argyle 1988, 165;
Argyle 1983, 95). Within the bounds of the cultural
conventions, people who avoid one's gaze may be seen as
nervous, tense, evasive and lacking in confidence whilst
people who look a lot may tend to be seen as friendly and
self-confident (Argyle 1983, 93). Such codes may
sometimes be deliberately violated. In the USA in the
1960s, bigoted white Americans employed a sustained 'hate
stare' directed against blacks which was designed to
depersonalize the victims (Goffman 1969).

Codes of looking are particularly important in relation to

gender differentiation. One woman reported to a male
friend: ‘One of the things I really envy about men is the
right to look’. She pointed out that in public places, ‘men
could look freely at women, but women could only glance
back surreptitiously’ (Dyer 1992, 103). Brian Pranger
(1990) reports on his investigation of 'the gay gaze':

Gay men are able to subtly communicate their

shared worldview by a special gaze that seems to be
unique to them... Most gay men develop a canny
ability to instantly discern from the returned look of
another man whether or not he is gay. The gay gaze
is not only lingering, but also a visual probing...
Almost everyone I interviewed said that they could
tell who was gay by the presence or absence of this
look. (in Higgins 1993, 235-6)

Just as with
codes of
looking, there
are 'codes of
touching' which
vary from
culture to
culture. A study
by Barnlund in
1975 depicted
the various parts
of the body
which
informants in
the USA and
Japan reported had been touched by opposite-sex friends,
same-sex friends, their mother and their father (Barnlund
1975, cited in Argyle 1988, 217-18). The resulting body-
maps show major differences in cultural norms in this
regard, with body areas available for touch being far more
restricted in Japan than in the United States. An earlier
study of American students showed differences in the
patterns for males and females in the amount of touching of
different areas of the body by the various others (Jourard
1966, cited in Argyle 1983, 37). The students reported that
they had been touched most by their mothers and by friends
of the opposite sex; their fathers seldom touched more than
their hands. Social codes also govern the frequency of
physical contact. Jourard also reported the following
contacts per hour in different cities: San Juan (Puerto Rico)
180; Paris 110; Gainesville (Florida) 2; London 0 (cited in
Argyle 1969, 93). We will allude to the related work of
Edward T Hall on the topic of proximity when we discuss
'modes of address'.

Codes are variable not only between different cultures and

social groups but also historically. It would be interesting to
know, for instance, whether the frequency of touching in
various cities around the world which was reported by
Jourard in the 1960s is noticeably different now. Saussure,
of course, focused on sychronic analysis and saw the
development of a language as a series of synchronic states.
Similarly, Roman Jakobson and his colleague Yuri
Tynyanov saw the history of literature as a hierarchical
system in which at any point certain forms and genres were
dominant and others were subordinate. When dominant
forms became stale, sub-genres took over their functions.
Historical change was a matter of shifting relations within
the system (Eagleton 1983, 111). Unlike Saussure, the
French historian of ideas Michel Foucault focused not on
the 'language system' as a homogeneous whole but on
specific 'discourses' and 'discursive practices'. Each
historical period has its own épistème - a set of relations
uniting the various discursive practices which shape its
epistemologies. For Foucault, specific discourses such as
those of science, law, government and medicine are
systems of representational codes for constructing and
maintaining particular forms of reality within the
ontological domain (or topic) defined as relevant to their
concerns. A particular 'discursive formation' is dominant in
specific historical and socio-cultural contexts and maintains
its own 'regime of truth'. A range of discursive positions is
available at any given time, reflecting many determinants
(economic, political, sexual etc.). Foucault focused on
power relations, noting that within such contexts, the
discourses and signifiers of some interpretative
communities are privileged and dominant whilst others are
marginalized. The non-employment of dominant codes is a
mark of those who are 'outsiders' - a category which
includes both foreigners from other cultures and those who
are marginalized within a culture. On the other hand people
who feel marginalized are often very well-attuned to
analogue nuances within dominant social codes - if you
want to codify stereotypical straight male behaviour try
asking a gay man to describe it.

We learn to read the world in terms of the codes and

conventions which are dominant within the specific socio-
cultural contexts and roles within which we are socialized.
In the process of adopting a 'way of seeing' (to use John
Berger's phrase), we also adopt an 'identity'. The most
important constancy in our understanding of reality is our
sense of who we are as an individual. Our sense of self as a
constancy is a social construction which is 'over-
determined' by a host of interacting codes within our
culture (Berger & Luckmann 1967; Burr 1995). 'Roles,
conventions, attitudes, language - to varying degrees these
are internalized in order to be repeated, and through the
constancies of repetition a consistent locus gradually
emerges: the self. Although never fully determined by these
internalizations, the self would be entirely undetermined
without them' (Nichols 1981, 30). When we first encounter
the notion that the self is a social construction we are likely
to find it counter-intuitive. We usually take for granted our
status as autonomous individuals with unique
'personalities'. We will return later to the notion of our
'positioning' as 'subjects'. For the moment, we will note
simply that 'society depends upon the fact that its members
grant its founding fictions, myths or codes a taken-for-
granted status' (Nichols 1981, 30). Culturally-variable
perceptual codes are typically inexplicit, and we are not
normally conscious of the roles which they play. To users
of the dominant, most widespread codes, meanings
generated within such codes tend to appear 'obvious' and
'natural'. Stuart Hall comments:

Certain codes may... be so widely distributed in a

specific language community or culture, and be
learned at so early an age, that they appear not to
be constructed - the effect of an articulation
between sign and referent - but to be 'naturally'
given. Simple visual signs appear to have achieved a
'near-universality' in this sense: though evidence
remains that even apparently 'natural' visual codes
are culture-specific. However, this does not mean
that no codes have intervened; rather, that the
codes have been profoundly naturalised. (Hall 1980,
132)

Learning these codes involves adopting the values,

assumptions and 'world-views' which are built into them
without normally being aware of their intervention in the
construction of reality. The existence of such codes in
relation to the interpretation of texts is more obvious when
we examine texts which have been produced within and for
a different culture, such as advertisements produced
indigenously in a different country from our own for the
domestic market in that country. Interpreting such texts in
the manner intended may require 'cultural competency'
relevant to the specific cultural context of that text's
production, even where the text is largely visual (Scott
1994a; Scott 1994b; McQuarrie & Mick, 1999).

John Sturrock argues that:

 The fact that a sign must be conventional in order to
qualify as a sign does not mean that everyone we
use signs to has to be party to the convention in
question. Just as we may use the signs of our native
language to other natives who do not know these
particular signs and so do not understand them, so
we may elaborate conventions which hold between
ourselves and only one other person or even with
ourselves alone. 'Secret' languages are no different
from language in general; they merely function as
what are sometimes called 'restricted codes'... Only
those already acquainted with the code can receive
messages in it successfully. (Sturrock 1986, 81, 87)

Understanding a sign involves applying the rules of an

appropriate code which is familiar to the interpreter. This is
a process which Peirce referred to as abduction (a form of
inference along with deduction and induction) (see Mick
1986, 199 and Hervey 1982, 19-20). On encountering a
signifier we may hypothesise that it is an instance of a
familiar rule, and then infer what it signifies from applying
that rule (Eco 1976, 131). David Mick offers a useful
example. Someone who is confronted by an advertisement
showing a woman serving her family three nutritionally
balanced meals per day can infer that this woman is a good
mother by instantiating the culturally acquired rule that all
women who do this are good mothers (Mick 1986, 199). As
Mick notes, abduction is particularly powerful if the
inference is made about someone or something about
whom or which little more is known (such as a new
neighbour or a fictional character in an advertisement).

The synchronic perspective of structuralist semioticians

tends to give the impression that codes are static. But codes
have origins and they do evolve, and studying their
evolution is a legitimate semiotic endeavour. Guiraud
argues that there is a gradual process of 'codification'
whereby systems of implicit interpretation acquire the
status of codes (ibid., 41). Codes are dynamic systems
which change over time, and are thus historically as well as
socio-culturally situated. Codification is a process whereby
conventions are established. For instance, Metz shows how
in Hollywood cinema the white hat became codified as the
signifier of a 'good' cowboy; eventually this convention
became over-used and was abandoned (Metz 1974). For
useful surveys of changing conventions in cinema see
Carey 1974, Carey 1982 and Salt 1983. William Leiss and
his colleagues offer an excellent history of the codes of
magazine advertising (Leiss et al. 1990, Chapter 9).

In historical perspective, many of the codes of a new

medium evolve from those of related existing media (for
instance, many televisual techniques owe their origins to
their use in film and photography). New conventions also
develop to match the technical potential of the medium and
the uses to which it is put. Some codes are unique to (or at
least characteristic of) a specific medium or to closely-
related media (e.g. 'fade to black' in film and television);
others are shared by (or similar in) several media (e.g.
scene breaks); and some are drawn from cultural practices
which are not tied to a medium (e.g. body language)
(Monaco 1981, 146ff). Some are more specific to particular
genres within a medium. Some are more broadly linked
either to the domain of science ('logical codes', suppressing
connotation and diversity of interpretation) or to that of the
arts ('aesthetic codes', celebrating connotation and diversity
of interpretation), though such differences are differences
of degree rather than of kind.

Every text is a system of signs

organized according to codes and
subcodes which reflect certain
values, attitudes, beliefs,
assumptions and practices. Textual
codes do not determine the
meanings of texts but dominant
codes do tend to constrain them.
Social conventions ensure that
signs cannot mean whatever an
individual wants them to mean.
The use of codes helps to guide us towards what Stuart Hall
calls 'a preferred reading' and away from what Umberto
Eco calls 'aberrant decoding', though media texts do vary in
the extent to which they are open to interpretation (Hall
1980, 134).

One of the most fundamental kinds of textual code relates

to genre. Traditional definitions of genres tend to be based
on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of
content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including
structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are
regarded as belonging to them. This mode of defining a
genre is deeply problematic. For instance, genres overlap
and texts often exhibit the conventions of more than one
genre. It is seldom hard to find texts which are exceptions
to any given definition of a particular genre. Furthermore,
the structuralist concern with synchronic analysis ignores
the way in which genres are involved in a constant process
of change.

An overview of genre taxonomies in various media is

beyond the scope of the current text, but it is appropriate
here to allude to a few key cross-media genre distinctions.
The organization of public libraries suggests that one of the
most fundamental contemporary genre distinctions is
between fiction and non-fiction - a categorization which
highlights the importance of modality judgements. Even
such an apparently basic distinction is revealed to be far
from straightforward as soon as one tries to apply it to the
books on one's own shelves or to an evening's television
viewing. Another binary distinction is based on the kinds of
language used: poetry and prose - the 'norm' being the
latter, as Molière's Monsieur Jourdain famously discovered:
'Good Heavens! For more than forty years I have been
speaking prose without knowing it!'. Even here there are
grey areas, with literary prose often being regarded as
'poetic'. This is related to the issue of how librarians, critics
and academics decide what is 'literature' as opposed to mere
'fiction'. As with the typology of codes in general, no genre
taxonomy can be ideologically neutral. Traditional rhetoric
distinguishes between four kinds of discourse: exposition,
argument, description and narration (Brooks & Warren
1972, 44). These four forms, which relate to primary
purposes, are often referred to as different genres (e.g.
Fairclough 1995, 88). However, texts frequently involve
any combination of these forms and they are perhaps best
thought of as 'modes'. More widely described as genres are
the four 'modes of emplotment' which Hayden White
adopted from Northrop Frye in his study of historiography:
romance, tragedy, comedy and satire (White 1973). Useful
as such interpretative frameworks can be, however, no
taxonomy of textual genres adequately represents the
diversity of texts.

Despite
such
theoretical
problems,
various

interpretative communities (at particular periods in time) do

operate on the basis of a negotiated (if somewhat loose and
fluid) consensus concerning what they regard as the
primary genres relevant to their purposes. Television
listings magazines, for instance, invariably allocate genre
labels to the films which they broadcast. The
accompanying illustration shows the labels used by one
such British magazine (What's On TV) over several months
in 1993, together with the links with each other which are
implied by the nomenclature. A more basic variation on the
same theme is found in the labelled sections of video rental
shops. Readers may care to check the genre classifications
used for films in their own localities.

Whilst there is far more to a genre code than that which

may seem to relate to specifically textual features it can still
be useful to consider the distinctive properties attributed to
a genre by its users. For instance, if we take the case of
film, the textual features typically listed by theorists
include:

 narrative - similar (sometimes formulaic) plots and

structures, predictable situations, sequences,
episodes, obstacles, conflicts and resolutions;
 characterization - similar types of characters
(sometimes stereotypes), roles, personal qualities,
motivations, goals, behaviour;
 basic themes, topics, subject matter (social, cultural,
psychological, professional, political, sexual, moral)
and values;
 setting - geographical and historical;
 iconography (echoing the narrative,
characterization, themes and setting) - a familiar
stock of images or motifs, the connotations of which
have become fixed; primarily but not necessarily
visual, including décor, costume and objects, certain
'typecast' performers (some of whom may have
become 'icons'), familiar patterns of dialogue,
characteristic music and sounds, and appropriate
physical topography; and
 filmic techniques - stylistic or formal conventions of
camerawork, lighting, sound-recording, use of
colour, editing etc. (viewers are often less conscious
of such conventions than of those relating to
content).
Some film genres tend to defined primarily by their subject
matter (e.g. detective films), some by their setting (e.g. the
Western) and others by their narrative form (e.g. the
musical). Less easy to place in one of the traditional
categories are mood and tone (which are key features of the
film noir). In addition to textual features, different genres
(in any medium) also involve different purposes, pleasures,
audiences, modes of involvement, styles of interpretation
and text-reader relationships. A particularly important
feature which tends not to figure in traditional accounts and
which is often assigned to text-reader relationships rather
than to textual features in contemporary accounts is mode
of address, which involves inbuilt assumptions about the
audience, such as that the 'ideal' viewer is male (the usual
categories here are class, age, gender and ethnicity). We
will return to this important issue shortly.

In Writing Degree Zero, Roland Barthes sought to

demonstrate that the classical textual codes of French
writing (from the mid-seventeenth century until the mid-
nineteenth century) had been used to suggest that such
codes were natural, neutral and transparent conduits for an
innocent and objective reflection of reality (i.e. the
operation of the codes was masked). Barthes argues that
whilst generating the illusion of a 'zero-degree' of style,
these codes served the purpose of fabricating reality in
accord with the bourgeois view of the world and covertly
propagating bourgeois values as self-evident (Barthes 1953;
Hawkes 1977, 107-108). In his essay 'Rhetoric of the
Image' (1964), Barthes developed this line of argument in
relation to the medium of photography arguing that because
it appears to record rather than to transform or signify, it
serves an ideological function. Photography 'seems to
found in nature the signs of culture... masking the
constructed meaning under the appearance of the given
meaning' (Barthes 1977, 45-6). Many theorists extend this
notion to film and television. For instance, Gerard LeBlanc
comments:

The true interest of the bourgeoisie is that the

cinema should make up for what people do not
 have in life. The pseudo-satisfaction they find there
may be sexual, political, emotional or metaphysical,
there is something for all the different kinds of
alienation engendered by capitalism. The audience
tacitly delegate their power to change the world to
the characters on the screen. The famous 'window'
that the bourgeois cinema is supposed to open on
the world is never anything other than a method of
permitting the audience to live an imaginary life
within a non-existent reality. (cited in Rodowick
1994, 86)

Textual codes which are 'realistic' are nonetheless

conventional. All representations are systems of signs: they
signify rather than 'represent', and they do so with primary
reference to codes rather than to 'reality'. From the
Renaissance until the nineteenth century Western art was
dominated by a mimetic or representational purpose which
still prevails in popular culture. Such art denies its status as
a signifying system, seeking to represent a world which is
assumed to exist before, and independently of, the act of
representation. Realism involves an instrumental view of
the medium as a neutral means of representing reality. The
signified is foregrounded at the expense of the signifier.
Realist representational practices tend to mask the
processes involved in producing texts, as if they were slices
of life 'untouched by human hand'. As Catherine Belsey
notes, 'realism is plausible not because it reflects the world,
but because it is constructed out of what is (discursively)
familiar' (Belsey 1980, 47). Ironically, the 'naturalness' of
realist texts comes not from their 'reflection of reality' but
from their uses of codes which are derived from other texts.
The familiarity of particular semiotic practices renders their
mediation invisible. Our recognition of the familiar in
realist texts repeatedly confirms the 'objectivity' of our
habitual ways of seeing.
 However, the codes of the various
realisms are not always initially
familiar. In the context of painting,
the art historian Ernst Gombrich
has illustrated (for instance, in
relation to John Constable) how
aesthetic codes which now seem
'almost photographic' to many
viewers were regarded at the time
of their emergence as strange and
radical (Gombrich 1977). Eco adds
that early viewers of Impressionist
art could not recognize the subjects
represented and declared that real
life was not like this (Eco 1976,
254; Gombrich 1982, 279). Most people had not previously
noticed coloured shadows in nature (Gombrich 1982, 27,
30, 34). In the cinema, 'the gestural codes and the bodily
and facial expressions of actors in silent films belonged to
conventions which connoted realism when they were made
and watched' (Bignell 1997, 193), whereas now such codes
stand out as 'unrealistic'. When the pioneering American
film-maker D W Griffith initially proposed the use of
close-ups, his producers warned him that the audience
would be disconcerted since the rest of the actor was
missing (Rosenblum & Karen 1979, 37-8). What count as
'realistic' modes of representation are both culturally and
historically variable. To most contemporary western
audiences the conventions of American cinema seem more
'realistic' than the conventions of modern Indian cinema,
for instance, because the latter are so much less familiar.
Even within a culture, over historical time particular codes
become increasingly less familiar, and as we look back at
texts produced centuries ago we are struck by the
strangeness of their codes - their maintenance systems
having long since been superseded. As Nelson Goodman
put it: 'Realism is relative, determined by the system of
representation standard for a given culture or person at a
given time' (Goodman 1968, 37).
As noted earlier, Peirce referred to signs in (unedited)
photographic media as being primarily indexical (rather
than iconic) - meaning that the signifiers did not simply
'resemble' their signifieds but were mechanical recordings
and reproductions of them (within the limitations of the
medium). John Berger also argued in 1968 that
photographs are 'automatic' 'records of things seen' and that
'photography has no language of its own' (cited in Tagg
1988, 187). In 'The Photographic Message' (1961), Roland
Barthes famously declared that 'the photographic image... is
a message without a code' (Barthes 1977, 17). Since this
phrase is frequently misunderstood, it may be worth
clarifying its context with reference to this essay together
with an essay published three years later - 'The Rhetoric of
the Image' (ibid., 32-51). Barthes was referring to the
'absolutely analogical, which is to say, continuous'
character of the medium (ibid., 20). 'Is it possible', he asks,
'to conceive of an analogical code (as opposed to a digital
one)?' (ibid., 32). The relation between the signifier and the
thing signified is not arbitrary as in language (ibid., 35). He
grants that photography involves both mechanical
reduction (flattening, perspective, proportion and colour)
and human intervention (choice of subject, framing,
composition, optical point-of-view, distance, angle,
lighting, focus, speed, exposure, printing and 'trick effects').
However, photography does not involve rule-governed
transformation as codes can (ibid., 17, 20-25, 36, 43, 44).
'In the photograph - at least at the level of the literal
message - the relationship of signifieds to signifiers is not
one of "transformation" but of "recording"'. Alluding to the
indexical nature of the medium, he notes that the image is
'captured mechanically' and that this reinforces the myth of
its 'objectivity' (ibid., 44). Unlike a drawing or a painting, a
photograph reproduces 'everything': it 'cannot intervene
within the object (except by trick effects)' (ibid., 43). 'In
order to move from the reality to the photograph it is in no
way necessary to divide up this reality into units and to
constitute these units as signs, substantially different from
the object they communicate; there is no necessity to set
up... a code, between the object and its image' (ibid., 17). In
consequence, he noted, photographs cannot be reduced to
words.

However, 'every sign supposes a code' and at a level higher

than the 'literal' level of denotation, a connotative code can
be identified. He noted that at the 'level of production', 'the
press photograph is an object that has been worked on,
chosen, composed, constructed, treated according to
professional or ideological norms' and at the 'level of
reception', the photograph 'is not not only perceived,
received, it is read, connected by the public that consumes
it to a traditional stock of signs' (ibid., 19). Reading a
photograph involved relating it to a 'rhetoric' (ibid., 18, 19).
In addition to the photographic techniques already noted,
he refers for instance to the signifying functions of:
postures, expressions and gestures; the associations evoked
by depicted objects and settings; sequences of photographs,
e.g. in magazines (which he refers to as 'syntax'); and
relationships with accompanying text (ibid., 21-5). He
added that 'thanks to the code of connotation the reading of
the photograph is... always historical; it depends on the
reader's "knowledge" just as though it were a matter of a
real language, intelligible only if one has learned the signs'
(ibid., 28).

Clearly, therefore, it would be a misinterpretation of

Barthes' declaration that 'the photographic image... is a
message without a code' to suggest that he meant that no
codes are involved in producing or 'reading' photographs.
His main point was that it did not (at least yet) seem
possible to reduce the photographic image itself to
elementary 'signifying units'. Far from suggesting that
photographs are purely denotative, he declared that the
'purely "denotative" status of the photograph... has every
chance of being mythical (these are the characteristics that
common sense attributes to the photograph'. At the level of
the analogue image itself, whilst the connotative code was
implicit and could only be inferred, he was convinced that
it was nonetheless 'active' (ibid., 19). Citing Bruner and
Piaget, he notes the possibility that 'there is no perception
without immediate categorization' (ibid., 28). Reading a
photograph also depends closely on the reader's culture,
knowledge of the world, and ethical and ideological stances
(ibid., 29). Barthes adds that 'the viewer receives at one
and the same time the perceptual message and the cultural
message' (ibid., 36).

Barthes did not outline the institutional codes involved in

photojournalism. Sympathetically pursuing Barthes'
insights, the British sociologist Stuart Hall emphasizes the
ideological character of news photographs:

News photos operate under a hidden sign marked

'this really happened, see for yourself'. Of course,
the choice of this moment of an event as against
that, of this person rather than that, of this angle
rather than any other, indeed, the selection of this
photographed incident to represent a whole
complex chain of events and meanings is a highly
ideological procedure. But by appearing literally to
reproduce the event as it really happened news
photos supress their
selective/interpretive/ideological function. They
seek a warrant in that ever pre-given, neutral
structure, which is beyond question, beyond
interpretation: the 'real world'. At this level, news
photos not only support the credibility of the
newspaper as an accurate medium. They also
guarantee and underwrite its objectivity (that is,
they neutralize its ideological function) (Hall 1981,
241-2).

Most semioticians emphasize that photography involves

visual codes, and that film and television involve both
visual and aural codes. John Tagg argues that 'the camera is
never neutral. The representations it produces are highly
coded' (Tagg 1988, 63-4; cf. 187). Cinematic and televisual
codes include: genre; camerawork (shot size, focus, lens
movement, camera movement, angle, lens choice,
composition); editing (cuts and fades, cutting rate and
rhythm); manipulation of time (compression, flashbacks,
flashforwards, slow motion); lighting; colour; sound
(soundtrack, music); graphics; and narrative style. Christian
Metz added authorial style, and distinguished codes from
sub-codes, where a sub-code was a particular choice from
within a code (e.g. western within genre, or naturalistic or
expressionist lighting subcodes within the lighting code).
The syntagmatic dimension was a relation of combination
between different codes and sub-codes; the paradigmatic
dimension was that of the film-maker's choice of particular
sub-codes within a code. Since, as Metz noted, 'a film is not
"cinema" from one end to another' (cited in Nِth 1990, 468),
film and television involve many codes which are not
specific to these media.

Whilst some photographic and filmic codes are relatively

arbitrary, many of the codes employed in 'realistic'
photographic images or films 'reproduce many of the
perceptual cues used in encountering the physical world, or
correlates of them' (Nichols 1981, 35; see also Messaris
1982 and 1994). This is a key reason for their perceived
'realism'. The depiction of 'reality' even in iconic signs
involves variable codes which have to be learned, yet
which, with experience, come to be taken-for-granted as
transparent and obvious. Eco argues that it is misleading to
regard such signs as less 'conventional' than other kinds of
signs (Eco 1976, 190ff): even photography and film
involve conventional codes. Paul Messaris, however,
stresses that the formal conventions of representational
visual codes (including paintings and drawings) are not
'arbitrary' (Messaris 1994), and Ernst Gombrich offers a
critique of what he sees as the 'extreme conventionalism' of
Nelson Goodman's stance (Gombrich 1982, 278-297),
stressing that 'the so-called conventions of the visual image
[vary] according to the relative ease or difficulty with
which they can be learned' (Gombrich 1982, 283) - a notion
familiar from the Peircean ranking of signifier-signified
relationships in terms of relative conventionality.
 Semioticians often refer to
'reading' film or television - a
notion which may seem
strange since the meaning of
filmic images appears not to
need decoding at all. When we
encounter a shot in which
someone is looking offscreen
we usually interpret the next shot as what they are looking
at. Consider the following example offered by Ralph
Rosenblum, a major professional film editor. In an initial
shot, 'a man awakens suddenly in the middle of the night,
bolts up in bed, stares ahead intensely, and twitches his
nose'. If we then cut to 'a room where two people are
desperately fighting a billowing blaze, the viewers realize
that through clairvoyance, a warning dream, or the smell of
smoke, the man in bed has become aware of danger'.
Alternatively, if we cut from the first shot to 'a distraught
wife defending her decision to commit her husband to a
mental institution, they will understand that the man in bed
is her husband and that the dramatic tension will surround
the couple'. If it's a Hitchcock movie 'the juxtaposition of
the man and the wife will immediately raise questions in
the viewers' minds about foul play on the part of the
woman'. This form of editing may alert us not only to a link
between the two consecutive shots but in some cases to a
genre. If we cut to an image of clouds drifting before the
full moon, we know that we can expect a 'wolf-man'
adventure (Rosenblum & Karen 1979, 2).

Such interpretations are not 'self-evident': they are a feature

of a filmic editing code. Having internalized such codes at
a very young age we then cease to be conscious of their
existence. Once we know the code, decoding it is almost
automatic and the code retreats to invisibility. This
particular convention is known as an eyeline match and it is
part of the dominant editing code in film and television
narrative which is referred to as 'the continuity system' or
as 'invisible editing' (Reisz & Millar 1972; Bordwell et al.
1988, Chapter 16; Bordwell & Thompson 1993, 261ff).
Whilst minor elements within the code have been modified
over time, most of the main elements are still much the
same now as when they were developed many decades ago.
This code was originally developed in Hollywood feature
films but most narrative films and television dramas now
routinely employ it. Editing supports rather than dominates
the narrative: the story and the behaviour of its characters
are the centre of attention. Whilst nowadays there may be
cuts every few seconds, these are intended to be
unobtrusive. The technique gives the impression that the
edits are always required and are motivated by the events in
the 'reality' that the camera is recording rather than the
result of a desire to tell a story in a particular way. The
'seamlessness' convinces us of its 'realism', but the code
consists of an integrated system of technical conventions.
These conventions serve to assist viewers in transforming
the two-dimensional screen into a plausible three-
dimensional world in which they can become absorbed.

A major cinematic convention

is the use of the establishing
shot: soon after a cut to a new
scene we are given a long shot
of it, allowing us to survey the
overall space - followed by
closer 'cut-in' shots focusing
on details of the scene. Re-
establishing shots are used when needed, as in the case of
the entry of a new character.

Another key convention

involved in helping the viewer
to make sense of the spatial
organization of a scene is the
so-called 180° rule.
Successive shots are not
shown from both sides of the
'axis of action' since this
would produce apparent changes of direction on screen. For
instance, a character moving right to left across the screen
in one shot is not shown moving left to right in the next
shot. This helps to establish where the viewer is in relation
to the action. In separate shots of speakers in a dialogue,
one speaker always looks left whilst the other looks right.
Note that even in telephone conversations the characters are
oriented as if facing each other.

In point-of-view (POV) shots,

the camera is placed (usually
briefly) in the spatial position
of a character to provide a
subjective point-of-view. This
is often in the form of
alternating shots between two
characters - a technique known
as shot/reverse shot. Once the 'axis of action' has been
established, the alternation of shots with reverse-shots
allows the viewer to glance back and forth at the
participants in a dialogue (matched shots are used in which
the shot-size and framing of the subject is similar). In such
sequences, some of these shots are reaction shots. All of
the techniques described so far reflect the goal of ensuring
that the same characters are always in the same parts of the
screen.

Because this code foregrounds

the narrative, it employs what
are called motivated cuts:
changes of view or scene
occur only when the action
requires it and the viewer
expects it. When cuts from one
distance and/or angle to
another are made, they are normally matches on action:
cuts are usually made when the subject is moving, so that
viewers are sufficiently distracted by the action to be
unaware of the cut. There is a studious avoidance of jump
cuts: the so-called 30° rule is that a shot of the same subject
as the previous shot must differ in camera angle by at least
30° (otherwise it will feel to the viewer like an apparently
pointless shift in position).
This cinematic editing code has become so familiar to us
that we no longer consciously notice its conventions until
they are broken. Indeed, it seems so 'natural' that some will
feel that it closely reflects phenomenal reality and thus find
it hard to accept it as a code at all. Do we not mentally 'cut'
from one image to another all of the time in everyday
visual perception? This case seems strongest when all that
is involved is a shift corresponding to a turn of our head or
a refocusing of our eyes (Reisz & Millar 1972, 213-16).
But of course many cuts would require us to change our
viewing position. A common response to this - at least if
we limit ourselves to moderate changes of angle or distance
and ignore changes of scene - is to say that the editing
technique represents a reasonable analogy to the normal
mental processes involved in everyday perception. A cut to
close-up can thus be seen to reflect as well as direct a
purposive shift in attention. Of course, when the shot shifts
so radically that it would be a physical impossibility to
imitate this in everyday life, then the argument by
perceptual analogy breaks down. And cuts reflect such
shifts more often than not; only fleetingly does film editing
closely reflect the perceptual experience of 'being there' in
person. But of course a gripping narrative will already have
led to our 'suspension of disbelief'. We thus routinely and
unconsciously grant the film-maker the same 'dramatic
licence' with which we are familiar not only from the
majority of films which we watch but also from analogous
codes employed in other media - such as theatre, the novel
or the comic-strip. For an argument questioning the
interpretative importance of a cinematic editing code and
emphasizing real-life analogies, see the lively and
interesting book by Paul Messaris on Visual Literacy
(Messaris 1994, 71ff). However, his main focus of attack is
on the stance that the cinematic editing code is totally
arbitrary - a position which few would defend. Clearly
these techniques were designed where possible to be
analogous to familiar codes so that they would quickly
become invisible to viewers once they were habituated to
them. Messaris argues that context is more important than
code; it likely that where the viewer is in doubt about the
meaning of a specific cut, interpretation may be aided by
applying knowledge either from other textual codes (such
as the logic of the narrative) or from relevant social codes
(such as behavioural expectations in analogous situations in
everyday life). The interpretation of film draws on
knowledge of multiple codes. Adopting a semiotic
approach to cinematic editing is not simply to acknowledge
the importance of conventions and conventionality but to
highlight the process of naturalization involved in the
'editing out' of what 'goes without saying'.

The emphasis given to visual codes by most theorists is

perhaps partly due to their use of printed media for their
commentaries - media which are inherently biased towards
the visual, and may also derive from a Western tendency to
privilege the visual over other channels. We need to remind
ourselves that it is not only the visual image which is
mediated, constructed and codified in the various media - in
film, television and radio, this also applies to sound. Film
and television are not simply visual media but audio-visual
media. Even where the mediated character of the visual is
acknowledged, there is a tendency for sound to be regarded
as largely unmediated. But codes are involved in the choice
and positioning of microphones, the use of particular
equipment for recording, editing and reproduction, the use
of diegetic sound (ostensibly emanating from the action in
the story) versus non-diegetic sound, direct versus post-
synchronous (dubbed) recording, simulated sounds (such as
the highly conventionalized signifier for a punch) and so on
(Stam 2000, 212-223; Altman 1992). In the dominant
Hollywood tradition, conventional sound codes included
features such as:

 diegesis: sounds should be relevant to the story;

 hierarchy: dialogue should override background
sound;
 seamlessness: no gaps or abrupt changes in sound;
 integration: no sounds without images or vice versa;
 readability: all sounds should be identifiable;
 motivation: unusual sounds should be what
characters are supposed to be hearing.
(Stam 2000, 216-217).
Any text uses not one code, but many. Theorists vary in
their classification of such codes. In his book S/Z, Roland
Barthes itemised five codes employed in literary texts:
hermeneutic (narrative turning-points); proairetic (basic
narrative actions); cultural (prior social knowledge); semic
(medium-related codes) and symbolic (themes) (Barthes
1974). Yuri Lotman argued that a poem is a 'system of
systems' - lexical, syntactical, metrical, morphological,
phonological and so on - and that the relations between
such systems generated powerful literary effects. Each code
sets up expectations which other codes violate (Lotman
1976). The same signifier may play its part in several
different codes. The meaning of literary texts may thus be
'overdetermined' by several codes. Just as signs need to be
analysed in their relation to other signs, so codes need to be
analysed in relation to other codes. Becoming aware of the
interplay of such codes requires a potentially recursive
process of re-reading. Nor can such readings be confined to
the internal structure of a text, since the codes utilized
within it extend beyond any specific text - an issue of
'intertextuality' to which we will return.

One simple typology of codes was offered at the start of

this section. The typologies of several key theorists are
often cited and it may be useful to alert the reader briefly to
them here. Pierre Guiraud (1975) proposed three basic
kinds of codes: logical, aesthetic and social. Umberto Eco
offered ten fundamental codes as instrumental in shaping
images: codes of perception, codes of transmission, codes
of recognition, tonal codes, iconic codes, iconographic
codes, codes of taste and sensibility, rhetorical codes,
stylistic codes and codes of the unconscious (Eco 1982, 35-
8). The value of any such typologies must clearly be
assessed in terms of the interpretive light which they shed
on the phenomena which they are used to explore.

Whatever the nature of any embedded ideology, it has been

claimed that as a consequence of their internalization of the
codes of the medium, 'those born in the age of radio
perceive the world differently from those born into the age
of television' (Gumpert & Cathcart 1985). Critics have
objected to the degree of technological determinism which
is sometimes involved in such stances, but this is not to
suggest that our use of such tools and techniques is without
influence on our habits of mind. If this is so, the subtle
phenomenology of new media is worthy of closer attention
than is typically accorded to it. Whatever the medium,
learning to notice the operation of codes when
representations and meanings seem natural, obvious and
transparent is clearly not an easy task. Understanding what
semioticians have observed about the operation of codes
can help us to denaturalize such codes by making their
implicit conventions explicit and amenable to analysis.
Semiotics offers us some conceptual crowbars with which
to deconstruct the codes at work in particular texts and
practices, providing that we can find some gaps or fissures
which offer us the chance to exert some leverage.

Contents

 Contents Page
 Preface
 Introduction
 Signs
 Modality and representation
 Paradigms and syntagms
 Syntagmatic analysis
 Paradigmatic analysis
 Denotation, connotation and myth
 Rhetorical tropes
 Codes
 Modes of address
 Encoding/Decoding
 Articulation
 Intertextuality
 Criticisms of semiotic analysis
 Strengths of semiotic analysis
 D.I.Y. semiotic analysis
  Glossary of key terms
 Suggested reading
 References
 Index
 Semiotics links
 S4B Message Board
 S4B Chatroom

Last modified: 02/19/2001 07:10:39

Discourse Analysis of Media

Dec 3, 2000 - © Prof. Hemant Joshi

It is becoming more and more difficult to analyse discourses in modern times, as the
contradictions and the complexities have grown many folds. The complexity of discourse is to be
understood in terms of the complexities of the societies, their cultures and their polity. The
discourses of Mass media are even more difficult to analyse. The Mass media came into being as
the fourth estate of the modern democratic state i.e. to support the new order against the old
feudal hegemony. Today, we are living with the contradictions of the time where it largely
continues to support the status quo, though it is forced to support the crusaders against the
same status quo in the name of Democracy.

The ideologies in the media discourse have many perspectives. The first of them is the
paradigm of Left, Right and Center. The other is that of status quo and anti status quo,
male chauvinistic and feminist. India has one more that of Savarna and Dalit.
Interestingly, these paradigms are also not that straight as they appear. There will be
numerous discourses within each of these categories.

American scholars have talked about Right, Left and Center paradigm to explain the
generation of media discourse, which is claimed to be objective and neutral. Jeff Cohen
in his paper Propaganda from the Middle of the Road: The Centrist Ideology of the News
Media says:

There is a notion -- widely believed in the mainstream media -- that while there is
propaganda of the left and propaganda of the right, there is no such thing as propaganda
of the center. In this view, the center doesn't produce propaganda, it produces straight
news. Mainstream journalists typically explain: "We don't tilt left, we don't tilt right.
We're straight down the middle of the road. We're dead center." When mainstream
journalists tell me during debates that "our news doesn't reflect bias of the left or the
right," I ask them if they therefore admit to reflecting bias of the center. Journalists react
as if I've uttered an absurdity: "Bias of the center! What's that?" It is a strange concept to
many in the media. They can accept that conservatism or rightism is an ideology that
carries with it certain values and opinions, beliefs about the past, goals for the future.
They can accept that leftism carries with it values, opinions, beliefs. But being in the
center -- being a centrist -- is somehow not having an ideology at all. Somehow, centrism
is not an "ism" carrying with it values, opinions and beliefs

Cohen further talks about the role of ideology in relation to journalists in America and
their portrayal of terrorist. He writes:

Good Guys Caught Between Left and Right Besides consistently promoting peace and
democracy overseas, according to centrist propaganda, the U.S. also consistently supports
the good guys abroad. Not surprisingly, the good guys are always "centrists" on the
political spectrum. At least that's what the media make them out to be. And there's
another media cliche one hears about our good guys, the centrists: They are perpetually
hemmed in by the bad guys of left and right.

Media discourses have created a kind of cynicism in our society. Even the intellectuals
are also not able to keep guard against such tendencies where they are ready to crucify
any kind of political debate by declaring that politics is a game of scoundrels. Many
Indian intellectuals also talk of the abundance of political discourse in media and
specially the dangers of it due to the emergence of television. I can only speak in
vyanjana and could ask why the media across world is interested in spreading the
message of mysticism and people’s incapability to shape their destiny. While watching
Indian and world television, one could find a number of such occasions. The news of
Ganesha drinking milk would be flashed or a film about the murdered wife of a man
would help her husband and take the revenge or vice versa would be shown. Sometimes
back, the news of a statue of virgin Mary weeping the tears of blood in Italy was
prominently covered.

The problems of media discourses are to be tackled not with cynicism, but with a cap of
critical discourse analysis. The convergence of views of left or radical right, in India,
about the process of globalisation is to be studied carefully to find the differences of
meaning. The discourse is to be understood in relation to the epistemological frame work
i.e. the waltensung and can never be understood in terms of the lexical or syntactical
entries alone.

A few days back on March 10, there was a picture of the rally of women in many
newspapers. The women in the picture were carrying a placard that said:

Nabalig larakiyon ke sath balatkar karana ghor aparadh hai.

It’s heinous crime to rape (non adult) girls.

Now, if we try to analyse the gramaticality of this discourse we would not reach the
meaning. At a higher semantic level,

level, we could ask do we mean that "one could rape the adult girls" or "raping an adult is
a lesser crime". There can be many interpretations of this message but the discourse if
understood in its “global dimension” would only have one meaning i.e. rape is heinous
and should not take place. However, it is also a fact that the women discourse itself is not
all that homogenous. . The Centrist discourse of media is to be critically analysed to find
out the ideologies they propagate in the garb of non-partisanship. This leads us to discuss
the general principles of news selection. The criteria for selection signal a construction of
reality on an ideological basis. Hall et al. (1978) point out that the content of the news
constructs 'social maps' which assume that society is fragmented into definite areas (such
as politics, economy and sport) and concerned with individuals who have control of their
destiny. The broadcaster's social map also assumes that society is hierarchical, with some
events more 'newsworthy' than others are, and 'that this hierarchy is centralised both
socially and regionally' (Hartley 1982: p82). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the
maps assume that society is consensual, with all in agreement that the current society is
the best possible.

In recent years, there has been a spate of researches and thinking on analysis of Media
discourse, semiotics of Advertising, radio and television and even of Internet. The
structural linguistics, which began studying grammar of narrativity, provided deep
insights for those interested in discourse analysis. The development in this area could be
traced back to Vladimir Propp (1928) to Etienne Souriau, Rolland Barthes and Tzvetan
Todorov. A.J.Greimas finally gave the grammar of narrativity a definite shape. Recently,
T. V. Dijk has made significant contribution in this field but also in the area of media
discourse.

Mass media, democracy and mass culture are so closely interrelated that no one can
theorize about discourse in mass media without talking about the role of ideologies in
encoding and decoding of media messages. The grammaticality does have a role to play
in analysing the discourse, but it has been widely accepted that the analysis of discourse
has to do with the socio-cultural context and this situational context is what generates the
ideology. Ideologies as were understood in the classical period of Marxist Theories have
lost their relevance and the postmodern theorist are concerned with the subaltern
ideologies, they

they are talking about the gender and marginal existences. In the area of theories of Mass
Communication, John Fiske, John Hartley and others have made a significant
contribution. John Fiske has based his work on the language, linguistics and semiotics
and similarly John Hartley has made a critical study of Television in his book Reading
television. From such kind of efforts, we have come to a new approach, which is named
as the Critical Discourse Analysis. Ruth Wodak, writing in Language, Power and
Ideology, defines her field as "critical linguistics". It is "an interdisciplinary approach to
language study with a critical point of view" for studying "language behavior in natural
speech situations of social relevance."
Brett Dellinger (1995) says that

“Emphasis on both the structure and the social context of media texts can provide a
solution which enables the media critic to "denaturalize," or expose the "taken-for-
grantedness" of ideological messages as they appear in isolated speech and, when
combined with newer ethnographic studies and newer methods of discourse analysis,
create a broader common ground between structuralists and those who see the media as
manipulators.”

He further asserts that the critical use of discourse analysis (CDA) in applied linguistics is
leading to the development of a different approach to understanding media messages.

Many scholars have studied television and they have again talked of the individual’s
ideology that becomes the context of the text under study. Mark Peace, in his paper In
what ways is watching TV an active process of interpretation rather than a passive
process of 'assimilating information'?, writes:

Sitting down in front of the television at the end of a hard day, it is easy to assume the
attitude that the we are simply sponging up the information emanating from the television
set without analysis or any other complex conceptual process – 'couch-potato syndrome',
as it were. The problem with this essentially 'bottom-up' viewpoint is that is disregards
the complex and significant, though sometimes subtle, processes which are generally
accepted to occur within perceptual tasks. Television as a form of media, and as such a
transmitter of information (both visual and aural), must be considered within this
perceptual framework and viewed from a 'top-down', constructivist stance.

He further says:

"Behind everything we do throughout our lives, we have a hidden agenda made up of

objectives, super objectives and goals. These will, inevitably alter how we understand
what we are watching. Similarly, we have different moods and emotions,

emotions, and this will effect our interpretation of what we are seeing". (Mark Peace,
1995)

A number of modern day thinkers have been focusing their attention to the problem of
Mass Media and ‘Mass Culture’. Adorno, for example, suggests that the term ‘Mass
culture’ should give way to ‘Culture Industry’. Scholars are again talking in terms of
“Knowledge societies’ (as if till such time the societies were living in utter darkness). It
would be worth concentrating on these two terms alone as they could bring forth the
complexities of the Modern day media discourse. He who advocates the term Mass
culture would also be advocating the term Knowledge society. On the contrary, no one
who goes along with Adorno may draw the same meaning by the term Knowledge
society.
To conclude, I would like to say that the Mass Media discourse above all is to be
understood in terms of its capability of exercising power and the political power i.e. the
ideology is the highest form of such power. When studying this contextuality of
Discourse, one would have to borrow heavily from the insights of thinkers like Marcuse,
Chomsky, Faucault and even Toffler. I wish to mention at this point about a student of
3rd year of Communication theory in Institute of Communication Studies, University of
Leads, Steven Green who has written an excellent paper on Foucault’s theory of Power
and Mass Media. Steven Green writes, "Foucault's central thesis that power is
everywhere expressed in a multitude of individual discourses offers freedom from the
inevitability of determinate power and allows us to see the mass media as a site of power
and resistance where the outcome (while prejudiced by a coalescence of power) might
well allow resistance as a necessary condition of the exercise of power."