THE DİFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEMIOTIC SCHOOL & THE PROCESS SCHOOL AND EXAMPLES OF THE SEMIOTIC SCHOOL


 

THE DİFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEMIOTIC SCHOOL & THE PROCESS SCHOOL AND EXAMPLES OF THE SEMIOTIC SCHOOL

          

 

             Humanity has always produced some sciences from beginning of the life and people improve their abilities, skill with these year by year. One of important science is social sciences and the social sciences based on the communication. For this reason, people has produced some theories about the communication, so they used the media for the communication after the 18th century. The media has improved the communication theories. According to John Fiske, there are mainly two schools in media theories; which are Process School and Semiotic School. Today, we will try to explain these schools and their differences with the giving examples semiotic school perspective.

             First of all, the communication is exchange of emotions, thoughts, behaviors and information between sender and receiver. The exchange happens between person or group of people, this activity came from the beginning of the human exist. The communication used the media in a historical; photography, telegraph, film, radio, television and the internet. The communication cannot think without signs and codes, because these codes and signs are practice of the social relationship. The signs are signifying the something and the codes is a system which manage the reflection, relationship of these signs and meaning of the codes are system of the common meaning among each cultures or subcultures, it is unique symbols for the people who belongs to own unique culture. Also, there must be a channel which the connection of the communication tools such as radio waves, telephone cables and so on. The way of transforming the message into a signal that can transmit across the channel in technical or physical is called medium. (Alparslan Nas, 2020, 6) Also, a person who a presenter is showing a photo via television; using the presentational media as the face and the voice, using the representational media as a photograph and using the mechanical media as a television.

            The first school is The Process School. The first sees communication as the transmission of messages. It is concerned with how senders and receivers encode and decode, with how transmitters use the channels and media of communication (Fiske, 1990, 2).  This school focuses on the efficiency and accuracy and the senders affect the receiver thinking or behavior because the senders send the message and receiver interprets the message her/his own words. The basic explanation of this school is looking the communication as a process and the senders send their message without any thought about receiver. The receiver actions or reactions don’t important for the senders, it is the basic transmission of the messages. For this reason, there are some main elements which are sender, receiver, channel, media, decoding and encoding. If the process of the communication happens wrong, communication can not happen well and failure occurs. Namely, if it would be expected, the communication failure happens. For example, the artistic novel written by the writer and the writer creates his own symbols, motives with his/her emotions so the receiver cannot understand like writer, the receiver comments the message with own emotions. The receiver seems free in this school and this school called as linear school and it makes use of sociology and psychology in general.

            The second school is The Semiotic School. This school sees communication as the production and exchange of meanings. It is concerned with how messages, or texts, interact with people in order to produce meanings; that is, it is concerned with the role of texts in our culture. It uses terms like signification, and does not consider misunderstandings to be necessarily evidence of communication failure- they may result from cultural differences between sender and receiver (Fiske, 1990,2). It is the mixture of the signs, symbols and messages because there is an expectation communication here. The sender sends the message and expect a specific reaction from the receive, but there is no failure in this school because the culture can be different between receiver and sender. The culture affects the meaning of the words, behaviors, thoughts, so the sender wants to say good something but the receiver can understand bad something because of her/his cultural background. However, it is not seeing as a failure, there is sensibility in this school. For example, the sign of the V. The V has mostly a meaning peace, seeing as a peace sign, but in different countries can give different meaning this sign such as Australia and South Africa give meaning to the V as a disrespect behavior, if this sign is done in public sphere by people. Also, there is meaning in Ethiopia as a supporter of the specific political party called ‘’Kinijit’’. In Turkey, we have the same meaning in political area, if you do this sign as a group, it can be understood supporter of the politic party HDP. Also, it makes use linguistics and arts in general.


             There are lots of differences between the semiotic school and the process schools and the firs one is looking the social interactions. The process school defines it as a process of the him/herself relate to other one and state of mind and opposite one. The Semiotic school defines it as an individual who member of her/his culture. One of them focuses on the linguistics and arts in general, other one focuses on the sociology and psychology in general. The semiotics give pretty attention or priority the text more than other stages, but the process school looks equal these stages and they don’t give more attention than other stages. The receiver has important role in the semiotic school because the receiver gives the meaning to the messages and makes certain meaning. On the other hand, the process school gives the message to the receiver and the receiver cannot do that. Other difference is that the semiotic school sends the message to the receiver and the senders can expect a specific reaction from the receiver sign itself, but the process school is simple transmission of messages. Also, the semiotics look the cultural background, but the process doesn’t look it. On the other hand, one of them sees the individual as a member of the culture, other one is seeing the individual as in itself. The process school see the message as a process and intention is important for the constituted the message. In the semiotic school, the sender is not important and the text become important, how to receiver understand the messages.

             There are some models about these schools, we will discuss the differences between schools with these models. First model is Shannon and Weawer’s model is that it is a simple linear process and there are three levels of problems in the study of communication: Level A (technical problems) is that how accurately can the symbols of communication be transmitted? level b (semantic problems) is that how precisely do the transmitted symbols convey the desired meanings? and level c (effectiveness problems) is that how effectively does the received meaning affect conduct in the desired way?  (Fiske, 1990, 6-7). In this model, sender try to send the all information to the receiver in a given channel, the noise concept used in this theory first time. For example, when person speak with the friend, he says that I hate this guy, do you? , but the friend understood only I hate. In process school, friend can ask that who do you hate. In Newcomb’s Model, there is relationship between people and they have common social environment. Explain with the last example, she starts to hate this guy new and he heard this action. She and he connect each other, so he starts to hate this guy too. In conclusion, she can have cultural background and she start to hate the guy just because of it, so if he has the same social environment, he will hate too. On the other hand, when she said that hate sentences, she wants to say the whole but he understood different because of the noise or he reflect different meaning of this action with his own words. In minimal-effects model which cannot change the people’s behavior, and expose the people messages which already most familiar. It is semiotic model because there is no change and they already know this behavior which see in the advertisement, so they just remain this behavior. Another model is uses and gratification model is that use the media for people’s emotions. So, this model is the process model because they give a message and the receivers take a message with their own words. It is more individual according to the other model. Moreover, the social learning model is attending to people act aggressively, there are four steps: attention (seeing part), retention (remembering), motor reproduction (imitation the violent) and motivation (there must be social reward and encourages the model of this behavior) (Christopher R. Martin & Bettina Fabos, et all, 2014, 464). For this model, people can attend to violence directly and they see the violence at advertisement, movies so they imitate this behavior just they directly understand this according to the process school. On the other hand, the violence come from the group which receiver belongs, the receiver imitates this behavior because of it is coming from the groups, culture. Another theory is the spiral of silence is coming from the Asch researches. People have different ideas in society, but they behave like other members of the society so it causes that the false decisions, overrated majorities. The people have common ideas and there is no different idea in the society so having different idea is voice of silence. They cannot occur in the society, so they use their cultural requirements.

           Lastly, we will analyze the Garanti Bank advertisement which published in 2016 about the Father’s Day. The analyze in contain the Semiotic School perspective. The advertisement mainly about the relationship between daughter and father, and it is including difficulties of being girl. Moreover, there is a deep relationship and trust between father and daughter. First scene is that father and daughter sit in the chair in principal room and they seem in front of the principal of school which the girl’ school. The principal is yelling and saying that everyone could whistle but Yağmur could not. Is the classroom the place to whistle, Mr.Mehmet’’ and The father say that I am so sorry and I will show the how the whistle can do after the departed this place. Then, the father starts to show really how to whistle do without any yelling. The father does not get angry and he just show how to do it. This scene shows us that the fathers have really deep love against the daughters and the yelling is not a solution for the children. Also, the father seems modern from the middle class because they are not use the minibus for transportation, they use the taxi and, the advertisement shoots probably in İstanbul. Also, the father say that don’t use it in a classroom, if you do it, they get angry. The father says these sentences politely. After that, the little girl getting caught pressing all the bells and the neighbor warns her. The father and the girl come each other at night and the father give a tactics about the pressing bell. This shows that every father has to work and only see their children at night and they can not get angry to them. When they are not with them, they want to protect their children like all Turkish fathers. Another scene is that the girl broke the ship model which belongs to boy’s father, and the boy say that I will say you to my father, he will get angry and yell to you. The girl tries to repair model but it is not working. End of the scene, the guy say that my father will teach you your lesson and it change another scene with the lesson word from the daughter’s father. It shows that the boys are not see politely behaviors from their fathers. Also, the boys have certain trust to their fathers and they have believed that physical strength can be the solution to everything from beginning of the child. Then the father tries to show how to play football but he kicks the ball and the ball hits the car. So, they run to their homes.  This scene shows that every father has interest football and they want to teach their children. In this scene, there is criticism about the football in good and bad way. Good one is that the father wants to teach football his daughter and girls can play football too. Bad way is that every father wants to have a boy and teach the football. The last scene is that the mother is yelling the daughter for drawing the picture on the cabinet, but the girl draws the mom in this picture. Also, the mother uses the warning way of father word. Then father came and turn the cabinet. The father say that draw again but draw me this time. End of the advertisement. The analyze of the advertisement is that the society has already cultures about the father and the daughter relationship. The daughter always trusts their fathers because the fathers are their heroes. The family relationship is strength in Turkish culture so they use this idea. The audiences can find these conclusions; the family structures, violence is not a solution, daughter can do everything, both boys and daughters need happy environment, the street culture is not stop, fathers have deep love and sometimes cannot reflect these feelings and so on. These are details of the advertisement because there lots of messages in the advertisement for this conclusion. These messages for the same cultural context. On the other hand, the more classic families see their daughters for serving. So, they give different messages to them but it will be in a good way because the importance of the daughter is the point of this advertisement.

                  As a result, we looked definition of the Process School and the Semiotic School. Moreover, the differences between each other and discussed these differences by defining different theories and we gave an example to the Semiotic School perspective by analyzing an advertisement semiotically. In my opinion, the media has huge communication theories and ways, we should attend these theories for having a good world. Namely, we should use the media in creating a great world. The cultural differences can occur some problems but it is not big deals.

 

                                                                                                   

                                                                                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

BİBLOGRAPHY

·       John Fiske (1990) ‘’Communication Theory’’ & ‘’Other Models’’, in Introduction to Communication Studies, 2nd Edition, New York: Routledge, pp.6-18

·       Christopher R. Martin & Bettina Fabos (2014) ‘’Media &Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age’’, Boston & New York Bedford/St. Marthins

·       Assoc. Prof. Alparslan Nas (2020), Classical Theories of Communication slides, p 5-6

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