The Semiotics of Image, Meaning and Perception

The three primary constituents of this research subject developed from a simple question.

“What do people think of when they think of the Zapatistas?”

In order to answer that question, others needed to be asked first. What constitutes the message to the public, how is it presented, and how is in disseminated? How is it received by the public? And this brought up another question. Does the meaning that is intended to be conveyed by the Zapatista organisation correspond with the perception of those receiving the message? That’s really how the idea started.

I have mentioned semiotics in relation to this research before but usually in the context of other people’s ideas. The emphasis on image, meaning and perception has not come from a semiotic model, though the similarities to elements of a Piercean model in particular do definitely exist. It seems useful to consider a semiotic triangle in analyzing the three constituents of this research, and to a degree it also seems inevitable. That said I expect it will inform the research rather than performing some structuralist model to be adhered to.

Below I have provided a simple diagram that shows how image, meaning and perception could fit into a semiotic triangle. The numbered texts (1) represent Pierce’s terminology and “signifier” and “signified” represent Saussure’s.

But as I said, I expect semiotics to inform not form the research and so I should point out another model (there could be many) for looking at this. If you click on perception (in the above diagram) you can see an example of how one might look at the problem from another angle, from the perspective of perception. In this case you’ll note that the the distance apprehending of the image is much shorter than comprehending the meaning. But another model could show a more linear approach where you first have to apprehend the image and then you can comprehend the meaning. That is probably more accurate.