Methods
The commutation test can be used to identify which signifiers are significant. The test depends on substitution: a particular signifier is chosen, then the effect of substituting alternatives is considered to determine the extent to which the value of the sign is changed. This both illuminates the meaning of the original choice and identifies the paradigms and code to which the signifiers used belong.
Paradigmatic analysis compiles a list of the signifiers present in the text. This set comprises the paradigm. The analyst then compares and contrasts the set with absent signifiers, i.e. with other signifiers that might have been chosen. This reveals the significance of the choices made which might have been required because of technical production constraints or the limitations of the individual’s own technique, or because of the tropes, generic conventions, style and rhetorical purpose of the work. The analysis of paradigmatic relations helps to define the ‘value’ of specific items in a system.
Read more about this topic: Value (semiotics)
Famous quotes containing the word methods:
“How can you tell if you discipline effectively? Ask yourself if your disciplinary methods generally produce lasting results in a manner you find acceptable. Whether your philosophy is democratic or autocratic, whatever techniques you use—reasoning, a “star” chart, time-outs, or spanking—if it doesn’t work, it’s not effective.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—”Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.””
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds... Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that “usually rather.” Safe generalizations are quite boring.”
—Joseph Epstein (b. 1937)