Beispiel Godwin's law im unteren Bild.
Peirce's Theory of Signs
The sign
In one of his many definitions of a sign, Peirce writes:
I define a sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant, that the later is thereby mediately determined by the former. (EP2, 478)What we see here is Peirce's basic claim that signs consist of three inter-related parts: a sign, an object, and an interpretant. For the sake of simplicity, we can think of the sign as the signifier, for example, a written word, an utterance, smoke as a sign for fire etc. The object, on the other hand, is best thought of as whatever is signified, for example, the object to which the written or uttered word attaches, or the fire signified by the smoke. The interpretant, the most innovative and distinctive feature of Peirce's account, is best thought of as the understanding that we have of the sign/object relation. The importance of the interpretant for Peirce is that signification is not a simple dyadic relationship between sign and object: a sign signifies only in being interpreted. This makes the interpretant central to the content of the sign, in that, the meaning of a sign is manifest in the interpretation that it generates in sign users. Things are, however, slightly more complex than this and we shall look at these three elements in more detail.
The Object
Just as with the sign, not every characteristic of the object is relevant to signification: only certain features of an object enable a sign to signify it. For Peirce, the relationship between the object of a sign and the sign that represents it is one of determination: the object determines the sign. Peirce's notion of determination is by no means clear and it is open to interpretation, but for our purposes, it is perhaps best understood as the placing of constraints or conditions on successful signification by the object, rather than the object causing or generating the sign. The idea is that the object imposes certain parameters that a sign must fall within if it is to represent that object. However, only certain characteristics of an object are relevant to this process of determination. To see this in terms of an example, consider again the case of the molehill.
The sign is the molehill, and the object of this sign is the mole. The mole determines the sign, in as much as, if the molehill is to succeed as a sign for the mole it must show the physical presence of the mole. If it fails to do this, it fails to be a sign of that object. Other signs for this object, apart from the molehill, might include the presence of mole droppings, or a particular pattern of ground subsidence on my lawns, but all such signs are constrained by the need to show the physical presence of the mole. Clearly, not everything about the mole is relevant to this constraining process: the mole might be a conventional black color or an albino, it might be male or female, it might be young or old. None of these features, however, are essential to the constraints placed upon the sign. Rather, the causal connection between it and the mole is the characteristic that it imposes upon its sign, and it is this connection that the sign must represent if it is to succeed in signifying the mole.
The Interpretant
Although there are many features of the interpretant that bear further comment, here we shall mention just two. First, although we have characterized the interpretant as the understanding we reach of some sign/object relation, it is perhaps more properly thought of as the translation or development of the original sign. The idea is that the interpretant provides a translation of the sign, allowing us a more complex understanding of the sign's object. Indeed, Liszka (1996) and Savan (1988) both emphasize the need to treat interpretants as translations, with Savan even suggesting Peirce should have called it the translatant (Savan 1988, 41). Second, just as with the sign/object relation, Peirce believes the sign/interpretant relation to be one of determination: the sign determines an interpretant. Further, this determination is not determination in any causal sense, rather, the sign determines an interpretant by using certain features of the way the sign signifies its object to generate and shape our understanding. So, the way that smoke generates or determines an interpretant sign of its object, fire, is by focusing our attention upon the physical connection between smoke and fire.
For Peirce, then, any instance of signification contains a sign-vehicle, an object and interpretant. Moreover, the object determines the sign by placing constraints which any sign must meet if it is to signify the object. Consequently, the sign signifies its object only in virtue of some of its features. Additionally, the sign determines an interpretant by focusing our understanding on certain features of the signifying relation between sign and object. This enables us to understand the object of the sign more fully.
Although this is a general picture of Peirce's ideas about sign structure, and certain features are more or less present, or given greater or lesser emphasis at various points in Peirce's development of his theory of signs, this triadic structure and the relation between the elements is present in all of Peirce's accounts. In what follows, we shall see three of Peirce's attempts at giving a full account of signs and signification, the corresponding sign typologies, look at the transitions between these accounts, and examine some of the issues that arise from them.
Sign-Vehicles
Recall that Peirce thought signs signify their objects not through all their features, but in virtue of some particular feature. By 1903, for reasons related to his work on phenomenology, Peirce thought the central features of sign-vehicles could be divided into three broad areas, and consequently, that signs could be classified accordingly. This division depends upon whether sign-vehicles signify in virtue of qualities, existential facts, or conventions and laws. Further, signs with these sign-vehicles are classified as qualisigns, sinsigns, and legisigns respectively.
Examples of signs whose sign-vehicle relies upon a quality are difficult to imagine, but a particularly clear example, used by David Savan, is this:
[…] I use a color chip to identify the color of some paint I want to buy. The color chip is perhaps made of cardboard, rectangular, resting on a wooden table etc., etc. But it is only the color of the chip that is essential to it as a sign of the color of the paint. (Savan 1988, 20)There are many elements to the colored chip as a sign, but it is only its color that matters to its ability to signify. Any sign whose sign-vehicle relies, as with this example, on simple abstracted qualities is called a qualisign.
An example of a sign whose sign-vehicle uses existential facts is smoke as a sign for fire; the causal relation between the fire and smoke allows the smoke to act as a signifier. Other cases are the molehill example used earlier, and temperature as a sign for a fever. Any sign whose signvehicle relies upon existential connections with its object is named, by Peirce, a sinsign.
And finally, the third kind of sign is one whose crucial signifying element is primarily due to convention, habit or law. Typical examples would be traffic lights as sign of priority, and the signifying capability of words; these sign-vehicles signify in virtue of the conventions surrounding their use. Peirce calls signs whose sign-vehicles function in this way legisigns.
Interpretants
As with the sign-vehicle and the object, Peirce thought we could classify signs in terms of their relation with their interpretant. Again, he identifies three categories according to which feature of the relationship with its object a sign uses in generating an interpretant. Further, as with the classification of the sign in terms of the sign-vehicle and the object, Peirce identifies qualities, existential facts, or conventional features as the basis for classifying the sign in terms of its interpretant. ...
 |
| Godwin's law |
Richterin Basslers interessiert verquere Auslassung "es ist bei dem Bild auch nicht erkennbar, dass sich der Angeklagte eindeutig gegen den Nationalsozialismus ausspricht" wäre auch bei diesem Beispiel wie beim Marissa Mayer Meme ein typischer ignoratio elenchi. Simpler und überzeugender kann man es auch beeindruckende und hintertriebene Idiotie nennen.
Memes as Visual Rhetoric
The visual rhetoric approach combines elements of the semiotic and discursive approaches to analyze the persuasive elements of visual texts. Visual rhetoric understands visual texts as created to construct meaning (Foss, 2004, p. 304). Rhetoric is also considered to be persuasive. Blair (2004) notes that visual arguments have a unique ability to draw viewers into the argument’s construction via the viewer’s cognitive role in completing “visual enthymemes” to fill in the unstated premise (p. 59). Rhetoric relies heavily on stylistic devices—such as metaphor—for persuasive purposes (Kenney, 2002, p. 57). Edwards (2004) examines the manner in which iconic images become a type of metaphor for national sentiment; these images can be recontextualized for “symbolic association ... by metaphor or allegory” (p. 189). By considering memes as discourse and analyzing the semiotic elements in memes, researchers can examine how memes operate as rhetoric. A comparison of the semiotic, discursive and rhetorical approaches can be seen in Table 1.
Memes are more than internet humor; research shows them to function by appropriation and resistance to dominant media messages. By examining how memes can operate in subversive and representational ways, this paper offers scholars a framework for the study of memes as symbolic, persuasive texts. Just as the application of visual rhetoric expands general rhetorical theory by acknowledging “the role of the visual in our world” (Foss, 2004, p. 310), examining memes as a form of rhetoric can expand understanding of the way memes function in a participatory media culture.
Subversive Memes: Internet Memes as a Form of Visual Rhetoric
Heidi E. Huntington - Colorado State University
Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker
Limor Shifman
Department of Communication and Journalism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel
I suggest looking at Internet memes not as single ideas or formulas that propagated well, but as groups of content items that were created with awareness of each other and share common characteristics. Going back to Dawkins’ original idea—that memes are units of imitation—I find it useful to isolate three dimensions of cultural items that people can potentially imitate: content, form, and stance.
The first dimension relates mainly to the content of a specific text, referencing to both the ideas and the ideologies conveyed by it. The second dimension relates to form: This is the physical incarnation of the message, perceived through our senses. It includes both visual/audible dimensions specific to certain texts, as well as more complex genre-related patterns organizing them (such as lip-synch or animation). While ideas and their expression have been widely discussed in relation to the meme concept, the third—communication-related dimension—is presented here for the first time. This dimension—which relates to the information memes convey about their own communication—is labeled here as stance. Expanding Englebertson’s (2007) definitions, I use ‘‘stance’’ to depict the ways in which addressers position themselves in relation to the text, its linguistic codes, the addressees, and other potential speakers. Like form and content, stance is potentially memetic; when re-creating a text, users can decide to imitate a certain position that they find appealing or use an utterly different discursive orientation.
Since I use stance in this context as a very broad category, I wish to clarify it by breaking it into three subdimensions, drawing on concepts from discourse and media studies: (1) participation structures -who is entitled to participate and how, as conceptualized by Phillips (1972), (2) keying -- the tone and style of communication, as defined by Goffman (1974) and further developed by Blum-Kulka et al. (2004), and (3) communicative functions, as conceptualized by Roman Jakobson (1960). Jakobson identified six fundamental functions of human communication, concisely presented as follows: (a) Referential communication, which is oriented toward the context, or the ‘‘outside world’’; (b) emotive, oriented toward the addresser and his/her emotions; (c) conative, oriented toward the addressee and available paths of actions (e.g. imperatives); (d) phatic, which serves to establish, prolong, or discontinue communication; (e) metalingual, which is used to establish mutual agreement on the code (for example, a definition); and (f) poetic, focusing on the aesthetic or artistic beauty of the construction of the message itself.
This analytic framework, consistent with the three memetic dimensions (content, form, and stance),
as well as the three subdimensions of the latter dimension (participation structures, keying, and communicative functions) will be developed and applied in the following section to the analysis of a successful YouTube meme, featuring one somewhat upset fan. ...
Explanation in Table 1 page 369.
