Lesson 4: Visuals and Semiotics

Applying Semiotics as an Instructional Designer

As an instructional designer or instructional technologist, your goal is to promote different types of skills, such as psychomotor, intellectual, and attitudinal skills. Semiotics can especially serve an important role when teaching or promoting skills in the attitudinal domain. Think about alcohol, smoking, and drug prevention, for example. On an intellectual level, most people know about the health effects of these substances and know that they are not healthy. Regardless, substance abuse remains a problem. For example, smoking may generally not connote 'unhealthy' to young people. Rather it may remind them of 'living in the present', 'being cool and nonconforming', and other cultural and social aspects of smoking. As an instructor, you can apply semiotics with students and ask them to look at the connotations, myths, and ideologies surrounding these substances. For example, instructors deconstruct these connotations, myths, and ideologies by analyzing alcohol and cigarette advertisements with students and make them understand the underlying ideologies that these advertisements try to promote. We already saw one example of a deconstruction of cigarette ads in Dr. Streeter’s introduction as he looked at the Marlboro man, in which smoking connoted being in control, independent, and tough.

Source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N89pY7Xzi9w/T7k-LDueeuI/AAAAAAAABhw/jFkiL7bDP60/s1600/Picture%2B1.png

Semiotic analysis can also be applied with students to analyze food ads in health education. Instructors can look at the covers of food packaging and compare it to the actual content of the food. For example, for example, certain cereals display images of fruits and other images connoting how healthy the product is, while the cereal itself does not contain these fruits. Instructors can also analyze teen, sports, or beauty magazines when discussing gender stereotypes or eating disorders with students.

Other examples of how semiotics can be used by instructional designers relate to promoting health, food, and occupational safety in the workplace. Examples of these safety issues are hand washing, safely preparing food, and the use of helmets or safety goggles. Even though people generally know how and when to wash hands or when to wear safety equipment, this is not always done.

The use of certain signs in the workplace to remind people to engage in safety behaviors can influence whether people would engage in these behaviors. Each sign connotes certain meanings. Depending on the purpose of the sign, you can develop signs that would promote specific meanings. If people generally do not engage in a specific behavior because they do not think the behavior may result in danger or accidents, a designer may develop a sign that connotes this sense of danger. If engaging in a certain behavior (such as wearing a helmet) is not seen as a “cool” thing to do, a designer may create a different sign, to try to counter the uncool connotation of wearing a helmet. One could for example try to pair the wearing of a helmet with signs that do have a connotation of being cool or stylish.

Semiotics can therefore not only be used for analyzing visuals, it can also aid in the design of appropriate signs for specific audiences. In order to change try to change a person’s attitude or behavior, it is first essential to be able to understand the meaning (denotation, connotations, myths, and ideologies) attached to signs. After having a better understanding of this, one can play with existing meanings in order to create new meanings. Jonathan Bignell (2002) mentioned an example of this in his book Media Semiotics. He stated that a shoe advertisement containing a photo of someone stepping out of a Rolls-Royce does not only denote the shoes and a car, but also adds the connotations of luxury, wealth, and richness which are available through the sign of the Rolls-Royce. This suggests a mythic meaning in which the shoes are part of a privileged way of life (Bignell, 2002).

To better understand the meanings of signs and, semiotic analysis can therefore be an important tool. When designing new meanings, caution is warranted. Please watch the first four minutes of the video below in which Jake Paerce explains what happens when the meanings you try to connote do not align with each other.

Messages are most powerful when the conventions they use seem so natural to us that it is difficult for us to realize that they are constructed. When we become so used to these conventions, and take what is signified for granted, we may interpret something as a “transparent window through which we see the world.” (Chandler, 2014). This is of course not the case. Semiotic analysis can help making us more aware of what we take to granted when representing the world. It helps to remind us that we are always dealing with signs that are constructed rather than an unmediated objective reality (Chandler, 2014).