Commutation test (semiotics)
Encyclopedia
In semiotics
, the commutation test is used to analyze a signifying system. The test identifies signifiers as well as their signifieds, value
and significance.
The initial assumption is that the communication to be analysed represents both a cognitive use of the sign system and a statement that refers to the values of the addresser. The purpose of the test is therefore to illuminate the addresser's intention in using the code in this particular way. It works through a process of substitution, assessing the extent to which a change in the signifier leads to a change in the signified. The first step, therefore, is to exclude one signifier from the material to be analysed. This is a test of redundancy: to identify what meaning is lost (if any) by omitting that sign. It will be relatively unusual to find that one sign is completely superfluous, but more common to find that the contribution of the one sign to the whole meaning is relatively weak. The weakness or strength of its contribution can be calibrated more exactly by placing alternate (synonymous and antonymous) signs in the context. This will enable the analyst to make a judgement on the distinctiveness of the particular signifier chosen by the author/artist and of its value to the meaning, i.e. as more or less necessary for maintaining the meaning and/or rule structure in different occurrences. By changing the collocation between two of the existing signifiers, and so changing their original relationship, the relative significance of each signifier can be considered. Further, by also placing the original sign into different contexts, it can be seen whether the sign becomes more or less distinctive.
s or backgrounds may change the significance of objects or people in the foreground. Colour selections may affect the perceived attractiveness of the scene or of individuals whose clothing is changed. The presence or absence of branded or generic goods, of stylish or outmoded clothing, etc may help to suggest the contribution of the original signifier.
According to Daniel Chandler, the commutation test may involve any of four basic transformations which, to a greater or lesser extent, involve modification of the syntagm:
Now substitute "boy" with "baby", "girl", "child", "pansy", "thief". Each of these alternatives affects the implication of the phrase. A "man" rather than a father or parent randomly striking a baby or girl might be considered sexist and a crime. If the boy was a thief, this would explain but not excuse the man's behaviour as retaliation or revenge. If the boy is a pansy which has pejorative
connotations of cowardice or homosexuality, the man may be intolerant or overly judgemental but the victim is also presented in a less sympathetic way. The use of child not differentiated by gender is a more common usage in the context of paedophilia. When the signifiers of boy and man are transposed, the relative inequality in strength is also reversed and the interpretation shifts to more playful and less threatening images. Hence, the subjective view may be that the phrase as originally conceived was the most neutral of the possible formulations given the original form.
If we now contextualise the image in a school, seminary, prison, training gym or home environment different sets of meanings emerge depending on the presence or absence of other signifiers demonstrating the relationship between the protagonists, the time the image was created (a Victorian image of corporal punishment in a school would have a different significance from a more recent image of judicial caning in Britain, Canada or Singapore), the nature of the activity (e.g. a boxing training session or a game of tennis in which the blow is struck accidentally, etc), the presence or absence of other people, etc.. The values are therefore added or subtracted according to the presence or absence of other signifiers.
. Later, it was expanded to cover all sign
systems that have an information
al content. As Umberto Eco
says, "A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else." (1976)
Semiotics studies the relationship between the form of the sign (the signifier) and the meaning
expressed (the signified), and thereby attempts to reveal the process of communicating understanding
. In each case, a message is to be sent by an addresser to an addressee. For this to occur, the addresser and addressee must use a common code
, Hence, language evolves dynamically. The community
will identify a lexical
thing that needs to be referred to in their language. By common agreement, a sign (sometimes called a signal) will be selected. Of the many possible shades of meanings that it can be used to convey, one or more will be selected and encoded, i.e. the chosen meaning(s) will be denoted
or associated with the sign within the broader framework of syntactic and semantic systems available within the community. When the audience
is exposed to the sign, the expectation is that they will be able to decode the meaning. As Roman Jakobson
adds, there will also be an emotion
al element or value
which represents the addresser's attitude
towards the thing. This will either become a connotative
meaning attached directly to the sign itself, or it will be communicated by the context in which the sign is used by the addresser.
In lexicography
, the fact that a neologism is used marks its acceptance into the language. This will not be a difficult process so long as each sign has a limited and immediately useful meaning. The problem arises when several possible meanings or shades of meaning become associated with the sign. This is a shift from denotational to connotational meanings. Rules of interpretation are required to resolve uncertainty. Within the community, such rules are, for the most part, experiential and applied without conscious control. Members of a community
have a shared memory
of language pattern
s and norm
s which, for the most part, are stable over long periods of time. Individual
s are therefore able to build up a cognitive framework which identifies the possible meanings from any grouping of signs and selects one considered the most appropriate from the context. This intuitive
system is continuously tested through the audience's responses. If the responses are satisfying, intuition prevails. If the responses are obviously inappropriate, the audience will consciously review the thought process and decide whether to modify the framework. Semiotics has developed a more precise methodology for this interpretive process, seeking to expose the unstated habitual practices for interpreting signifiers.
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
, the commutation test is used to analyze a signifying system. The test identifies signifiers as well as their signifieds, value
Value (semiotics)
In semiotics, the value of a sign depends on its position and relations in the system of signification and upon the particular codes being used.-Saussure's Value:Value is the sign as it is determined by the other signs in a semiotic system...
and significance.
The commutation test
This test is a metalingual subjective system for analysing textual or other material. It has evolved from a limited method for investigating the structure of individual signs (per Roman Jakobson). Its primary uses are to:- identify distinctive signifiers,
- define their significance, and
- divide material into paradigmatic classes and identify the codes to which the signifiers belong (Roland BarthesRoland BarthesRoland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
).
The initial assumption is that the communication to be analysed represents both a cognitive use of the sign system and a statement that refers to the values of the addresser. The purpose of the test is therefore to illuminate the addresser's intention in using the code in this particular way. It works through a process of substitution, assessing the extent to which a change in the signifier leads to a change in the signified. The first step, therefore, is to exclude one signifier from the material to be analysed. This is a test of redundancy: to identify what meaning is lost (if any) by omitting that sign. It will be relatively unusual to find that one sign is completely superfluous, but more common to find that the contribution of the one sign to the whole meaning is relatively weak. The weakness or strength of its contribution can be calibrated more exactly by placing alternate (synonymous and antonymous) signs in the context. This will enable the analyst to make a judgement on the distinctiveness of the particular signifier chosen by the author/artist and of its value to the meaning, i.e. as more or less necessary for maintaining the meaning and/or rule structure in different occurrences. By changing the collocation between two of the existing signifiers, and so changing their original relationship, the relative significance of each signifier can be considered. Further, by also placing the original sign into different contexts, it can be seen whether the sign becomes more or less distinctive.
The process
The nature of the process will be determined by the form of the media to be analysed. In textual or pictorial media where individuals are the theme of the content, this might involve a substitution of words that are synonymous, or of imagery parallel in classes representing age, gender, ethnicity, religion, ability, etc. to assess the extent to which overall meaning is affected. In visual media generally, substituting different mise en scèneMise en scène
Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...
s or backgrounds may change the significance of objects or people in the foreground. Colour selections may affect the perceived attractiveness of the scene or of individuals whose clothing is changed. The presence or absence of branded or generic goods, of stylish or outmoded clothing, etc may help to suggest the contribution of the original signifier.
According to Daniel Chandler, the commutation test may involve any of four basic transformations which, to a greater or lesser extent, involve modification of the syntagm:
- Paradigmatic transformations
- substitutionSubstitutionSubstitution may refer to:- Sciences :* Substitution , a syntactic transformation on strings of symbols of a formal language* Substitution of variables* Substitution cipher, a method of encryption...
; - transpositionTranspositionTransposition may refer to:Mathematics* Transposition , a permutation which exchanges two elements and keeps all others fixed* Transposition, producing the transpose of a matrix AT, which is computed by swapping columns for rows in the matrix AGames* Transposition , different moves or a different...
- substitution
- Syntagmatic transformations
- additionAdditionAddition is a mathematical operation that represents combining collections of objects together into a larger collection. It is signified by the plus sign . For example, in the picture on the right, there are 3 + 2 apples—meaning three apples and two other apples—which is the same as five apples....
; - deletionDeletionDeletion is the act of deleting or removal by striking out material, such as a word or passage, that has been removed from a body of written or printed matter.Deletion may refer to:*File deletion, a way of removing a file from a computer's file system...
.
- addition
An example
Take the phrase:- the man hit the boy.
Now substitute "boy" with "baby", "girl", "child", "pansy", "thief". Each of these alternatives affects the implication of the phrase. A "man" rather than a father or parent randomly striking a baby or girl might be considered sexist and a crime. If the boy was a thief, this would explain but not excuse the man's behaviour as retaliation or revenge. If the boy is a pansy which has pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
connotations of cowardice or homosexuality, the man may be intolerant or overly judgemental but the victim is also presented in a less sympathetic way. The use of child not differentiated by gender is a more common usage in the context of paedophilia. When the signifiers of boy and man are transposed, the relative inequality in strength is also reversed and the interpretation shifts to more playful and less threatening images. Hence, the subjective view may be that the phrase as originally conceived was the most neutral of the possible formulations given the original form.
If we now contextualise the image in a school, seminary, prison, training gym or home environment different sets of meanings emerge depending on the presence or absence of other signifiers demonstrating the relationship between the protagonists, the time the image was created (a Victorian image of corporal punishment in a school would have a different significance from a more recent image of judicial caning in Britain, Canada or Singapore), the nature of the activity (e.g. a boxing training session or a game of tennis in which the blow is struck accidentally, etc), the presence or absence of other people, etc.. The values are therefore added or subtracted according to the presence or absence of other signifiers.
Discussion
The first stage of development in semiotics related to the spoken and/or written form of languageLanguage
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
. Later, it was expanded to cover all sign
Sign (semiotics)
A sign is understood as a discrete unit of meaning in semiotics. It is defined as "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity" It includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be...
systems that have an information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
al content. As Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
says, "A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else." (1976)
Semiotics studies the relationship between the form of the sign (the signifier) and the meaning
Meaning (semiotics)
In semiotics, the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that it occupies within a given sign relation. This statement holds whether sign is taken to mean a sign type or a sign token...
expressed (the signified), and thereby attempts to reveal the process of communicating understanding
Understanding
Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object....
. In each case, a message is to be sent by an addresser to an addressee. For this to occur, the addresser and addressee must use a common code
Code (semiotics)
In semiotics, a code is a set of conventions or sub-codes currently in use to communicate meaning. The most common is one's spoken language, but the term can also be used to refer to any narrative form: consider the color scheme of an image , or the rules of a board game In semiotics, a code is a...
, Hence, language evolves dynamically. The community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
will identify a lexical
Lexical (semiotics)
In the lexicon of a language, lexical words or nouns refer to things. These words fall into three main classes:*proper nouns refer exclusively to the place, object or person named, i.e...
thing that needs to be referred to in their language. By common agreement, a sign (sometimes called a signal) will be selected. Of the many possible shades of meanings that it can be used to convey, one or more will be selected and encoded, i.e. the chosen meaning(s) will be denoted
Denotation (semiotics)
In semiotics, denotation is the surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier, and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary.-Discussion :Drawing from the original word or definition proposed by Saussure , a sign has two parts:...
or associated with the sign within the broader framework of syntactic and semantic systems available within the community. When the audience
Audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...
is exposed to the sign, the expectation is that they will be able to decode the meaning. As Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
adds, there will also be an emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
al element or value
Value (semiotics)
In semiotics, the value of a sign depends on its position and relations in the system of signification and upon the particular codes being used.-Saussure's Value:Value is the sign as it is determined by the other signs in a semiotic system...
which represents the addresser's attitude
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...
towards the thing. This will either become a connotative
Connotation (semiotics)
In semiotics, connotation arises when the denotative relationship between a signifier and its signified is inadequate to serve the needs of the community. A second level of meanings is termed connotative...
meaning attached directly to the sign itself, or it will be communicated by the context in which the sign is used by the addresser.
In lexicography
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
, the fact that a neologism is used marks its acceptance into the language. This will not be a difficult process so long as each sign has a limited and immediately useful meaning. The problem arises when several possible meanings or shades of meaning become associated with the sign. This is a shift from denotational to connotational meanings. Rules of interpretation are required to resolve uncertainty. Within the community, such rules are, for the most part, experiential and applied without conscious control. Members of a community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
have a shared memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
of language pattern
Pattern
A pattern, from the French patron, is a type of theme of recurring events or objects, sometimes referred to as elements of a set of objects.These elements repeat in a predictable manner...
s and norm
Norm (philosophy)
Norms are concepts of practical import, oriented to effecting an action, rather than conceptual abstractions that describe, explain, and express. Normative sentences imply “ought-to” types of statements and assertions, in distinction to sentences that provide “is” types of statements and assertions...
s which, for the most part, are stable over long periods of time. Individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
s are therefore able to build up a cognitive framework which identifies the possible meanings from any grouping of signs and selects one considered the most appropriate from the context. This intuitive
Intuition (knowledge)
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify...
system is continuously tested through the audience's responses. If the responses are satisfying, intuition prevails. If the responses are obviously inappropriate, the audience will consciously review the thought process and decide whether to modify the framework. Semiotics has developed a more precise methodology for this interpretive process, seeking to expose the unstated habitual practices for interpreting signifiers.