Connotation

An image of the deceased French philosopher Jacques Derrida. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In semiology connotation is the idea that a linguistic or vocal sign contains more than mere descriptive value (called the denotative value). This idea isn’t only known to semiologists. Poets and fiction writers have known about the importance of connotation for centuries. And in the social sciences, the French historian Fernand Braudel wrote in 1963:

[The definition of] most expressions, far from being fixed for ever, vary from one author to another, and continually evolve before our eyes.¹

What many semiologists do stress, however, is the importance not only of the writer but also the reader in the creation of multiple meanings.

Along these lines, Jacques Derrida believes that signs contain an infinite number of possible connotations. So communication is a potentially endless chain of connotative signification, with connotations playing off one another in a discontinuous matrix of linguistically constructed meaning. One of Derrida’s interesting claims here is that denotation plays next to no role in the process. In other words, everything is connotation.

The discussion about the absolute essence of a thing vs. its communal meaning(s) is many layered and goes back at least to the Scholastics of the Middle Ages. And as far back as Aristotle, the distinction between literal and figurative meaning has been discussed. More recent trends are summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotation_%28semiotics%29

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¹ Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Mayne, Penguin, 1993 [1963], p. 3.

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Jacques Derrida

Elisabeth Roudinesco – Jacques Derrida (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was an influential French philosopher of language born in Algeria who taught at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Derrida and his followers suggest that the semiotic sense of denotation is, for the most part, chimerical and that everything is connotation.

Related Posts » Connotation, Denotation, Marx (Karl)

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Semiology (or Semiotics)

discriminación by Dimitri dF

Semiology (or Semiotics)

The study of signs. The term was coined by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), and semiology was originally taken to be a science.

But more recent theorists in several disciplines have questioned the entire notion of the ‘scientific enterprise,’ which some regard as just another sign.

Indeed, semiology includes or, one could say, branches off into postmodern deconstruction, an approach which questions the distinction between denotation and connotation, along with many other culturally implied truth claims, normative structures and practices.

Some argue that pioneering semiologists like Roland Barthes contained the seeds of what would become known as a postmodern approach.

» Baudrillard (Jean), Foucault (Michel), Sigified, Signifier, Structuralism, Wittgenstein (Ludwig Josef Johann)

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