attempts to apply semiotics modles to rhetorical tropes, ore to use rhetorical tropes as paradigmatic / syntagmatic elements
He - and the critics- use a limited set of tropes to work with, a smart idea to get your bearings and to see how it will work.
Diagram of semiituc substition in rhetorical tropes 125.
Starts with acknowledhgement of tropes in language, then posits the use of tropes in visuals. 125
The literal-figurative distinction and the denotation-connotation distinction. Overall, we might consider if these are very useful in semiotic. We make the distinctions in literature and in everyday commonsense as a way of alerting readers that an alternative code is required. But we'll need to see just how useful the distinctions are in semiotic analysis.
metaphor. "a metaphor involves one signified acting as a signifier referring ti a different signified." 127. What's an 9imaginative leap? 127. more interpretive effor is required - what does that mean? C is blaclboxing here.
visual metaphors work by 'transference' 128 of qualities from one sigfiedtp another. Laksoff and Johnson: metaphoric clusers 129
metonymy. "metonyms are based on various indexical relationships." 130. effect for cause, etc. "the evocation of the whole by a connection." 130. Various types of metonyms. 130
synecdoche. Makes a good case for separating metonymy and synecdoche 132ff. this gets interesing in address film, where the content in the frame is to represent outside the frame. 133. "Any attempt to represent reality can be seem as involving synechdoche, since it can only involve selection". 133. BUT "the part-whole relations of synechdoche reflect that most direct link of all" because "the part represented is connected existentially to what is signified." 133 strikes me as problematic.
irony. to get irony, two codes have to be invoked: one in which the signifier of one sign comes to signify one thing, and another that tells marks the sign's ironic status. 134 Irony involves a sift in mode - from literal/factual to ironic. it.s a marked form foregrounding the signifier. 135. Also seen as a way of narrowcasting 136 -
denotation and connotation. three levels of signification. Literal-figurative distinction operates at level of signifier. This operates as the level of the signified. 140. Ultimately, denotation is the most naturalized connotation. As we learn denotations. we're being positioned ideologically. examples: leader v autocrat. man as including women. sustainability v conservation. look at some denotations, then consider the connotations - perhaps even as they work at the morphemic level: - ability, -ism, -logy, etc.
This is where the orders of signification come into play: 142. "connotation is a sign which derives from the signifier of a donative sign." 142 - which suggests that denotation is a primary meaning - cringe! 143. \
Denotation and connotation come into play in chap 5, in discussing photographs: the denotative level is the visual reproduction, the connotative level is the level of signfication. 165
myth. the third order of signification, after denotative and connotative orders 145. "signs and codes are generated by myths and in turn serve to maintain them" 145. So there seems to be a place from which signs are generated - a mechanism, a source that is, perhaps, more stable than the changing landscape of signs.