There are several definitions for content from different perspectives. E.g, content refers to information and experiences that may provide value to an end-user/audience (Wikipedia), from another perspective, some definitions do not differentiate between the media and content.
What is the best acceptable definition for 'content' in the literature?
In structural semiotics (approach going back to F. de Saussure), "content" is defined as one of the both sides of a sign; the second side is the expression of content. For "content" you also hear the French "signifié", and for "expression" you here the French "signifiant".
Example
The word "heart": the letters of this word constitute the expression of the content "muscular organ of an animal that pumps blood, etc". This content can also be expressed by a visual image, by a spoken word, by a whole phrase, by a chain of gestures, etc.
The content of same chain of letters "heart" can vary; in one context, it can be the already quoted "muscular organ ...", in another context, it can be "the center of love" (cf. the expression "sweet-heart"), in a third context, it can be the "epistemic or cognitive centre" (cf. the expression "the heart of a problem"), in a fourth context, the content can be "the geographical or spatial centre" (cf. the expression "the heart of Paris is ..."), etc.
In comparing these different contents or meanings, one may identify a more generic meaning or content (a generic figurative content) of centrality.
Those generic contents (which are not necessarily abstrzct ones) constitute classificational categories by the means of which (competent) speakers of a (natural) language (or, more generally speaking, comptent user of any sign systems) interpret, organise, make understandable, reason about, ... the world, the other, themselves, etc.
Peter
Very interesting explanation - cannot top that!
Regards
Theodora Issa
thnx Hanafizadeh for asking the question which i wanted to be answered. (but could not ask bcz of laziness :P ).... n thnx Peter for such an easy to understandable answer
Thank you, Theodora and Sana, for your compliments!
With all my best regards Peter
Great Answers, I´ve learn a lot with you, Claudia and Peter. If I, the unique ""problem"" that i see is Saussure front Pierce: about the third element, because before being a interpretant, the "user" is inserted at society, in the "bosom" that, once to know a language it is speak in community.
Therefore I cant see the interpretant. An interpretant from Brazil, e. g., then undertood the sentence´s entry "your heart is dark" as "your dog is bad" very likely he doesnt share the semantic field, values and paradigm from the Portuguese.
There appear the diference between Langue & Parole.
Sorry about my bad English
I'll throw in a wider perspective (micro VS macro semiotics): Semiosis is about the process of meaning-making, so would have to define what we mean by content (what is being 'contained'?). A film or novel usually has a narrative drawing on recognisable real-world situations and life patterns. Making meaning is about containing (distinguishing from/against other signs) which - somewhat paradoxically - requires a constant exchange with context, a continual recycling, redefining and updating. Film and lit work on the principle of repetition with variation, i.e. meaning made intertextually (genre, style...) but also, and just as importantly, in reference to the wider context (personal, social experience, other media texts...). In other words, at the risk of stating the obvious... , for 99.99% of readers/spectators content is meaningless without the referential dimension. The content is always reaching out to the world, otherwise it goes stale, dies, until rediscovered and revived by new readers/writers. The whole point of Saussure is the two sides of a coin. They're inseparable and the content elusive, except as a process. We try to catch or freeze the moment but when we do the meaning has moved on. Meaning is a slippery customer. Barthes' Saussure-based notion of myth is a basic example of this semiological dynamic (not going into semiotics VS semiology...). Semiotic content is a fluid notion of containment that will never be contained... Doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying to make sense (and define content)
@ Payam Hanafizadeh, @Peter Stockinger, @Olivier Olivier Nilsson-Julien
Hi, I have another way to answer the question about “content”. Following Peter Stockinger's response, in which Hjelmslev's notion of “content/expression” and Saussure's “signified/signifier” are defined, I would recommend exploring semiosis as conceived by François Rastier and Textual Semantics.
As Olivier Nilsson-Julien points out in this blog, the word “content” can be misleading because it implies that something has to be “contained”. While this is not necessarily how “content” is meant to be interpreted – and I still use the word content regularly --, Olivier’s comment is worth noting.
From a Saussurean perspective, meaning is the result of a negative ontology (a “de-ontontology”): in other words, linguistic values are actualized through differences. In contrast, the idea that something is an “expression of something else”, and that the expression has a corresponding content, is part of the tradition that views semiosis in ontological terms. In brief: Saussure’s “sign” is empty (a “kenome”), while the classical semiotic “sign” is something that is “full”, a “monad” (something that exists positively). The latter approach makes it difficult to account for differences in interpretation! If you want to explore this difference at length, I recommend reading Rastier (see references below)
This brings me to Olivier’s comment: “{Signifier & signified] are inseparable and the content elusive, except as a process.” Well said. For any so-called “sign” is only a “moment” of relative stability in an interpretive process. At the same time, the so-called “two sides” of Saussure’s sign are in fact NOT two sides of anything. They are inseparable from each other. They are indivisible and make a whole (Saussure, Writings in General Linguistics, p.63). So, two things are happening here:
(1) Expression (signifier) and content (signified) are not seen as two separate things with independent existence; rather they are two points of view from which to describe semiosis; and
(2) Together, these two planes (expression/content) can only be separated syntagmatically into “signs” or “units” as the result of an interpretive path or process --which always varies--, and not in any real or pre-existing way (even though convention would have us believe so).
Long story short, I would approach the question of “content” from an interpretive point of view, as part of a process of constructing meaning. As several bloggers above have mentioned, content is always relative to the interpreter, the situation ,the context, etc. That’s why “content” should be seen as a value (or “action value”, as Simone Bouquet says) and NOT as a “face” or “something contained” or even as “something expressed by something else”.
I think it’s OK to continue referring to the “expression” and “content” planes of language. However, to avoid confusion, we might be better off going with Rastier’s terms “VALUE” (=content) and “PHORE” (=expression). Regardless of the terminology you choose, the most important thing is HOW “content” (value) is conceived. The ideas I am presenting here are part of Textual Semantics, which means that they are specifically oriented toward the description of oral and written linguistic texts, in other words: literature (@ Payam). As anyone who studies literature knows, interpretation is unstable and ever-changing. Therefore we need to bring in a theory of action (a praxeology) to account for the ways meaning is constructed, and avoid ontologies which tend toward universalism and away from cultural diversity. Content should also be treated as open ended: a word opens up to its immediate context; a text opens up to the intertext, etc.
REFERENCES:
Bouquet, Simone. “Saussure’s Unfinished Semantics”. In C. Sanders, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Saussure. Cambridge UP. 2004. pp. 205-218.
Rastier, François. “On Signs and texts: Cognitive Science and Interpretation”. In P. Perron, L.G. Sbrocchi, P.Colilli, and M. Danesi, Eds. Semiotics as a Bridge Between the Humanities and the Sciences. Legas. 2000, pp. 409-450.
Rastier, François. Arts et sciences du texte. PUF. 2001.
Rastier, François. Meaning and Textuality. Toronto UP, 1997.
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William Carrasco
Stella Maris Academy
@ Claudia: The interpretant is not a “third” element that can be added to Saussure’s sign. Actually, Saussure’s “signifié” closely resembles Peirce's notion of “Interpretant”. The third element that Saussure EXCLUDES is the “object” (or the “referent”).
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Nicolas Meeus
Sorbonne Université
Saussure's signifiant/signifié is lexical: it forms stable associations in the language considered and it is the role of lexiques/dictionaries to record these associations.
Benveniste defined this as the semiotic meaning properly speaking. He stressed, however, that we do not speak with words, but with phrases, which produce meaning by a different process. There exists no dictionary of phrases, because their meaning is unpredictable: Benveniste calls this the semantic meaning.
Semiotic meaning is somehow frozen in the language considered. Semantic meaning on the other hand is indeed constructed in the process of semiosis, as William Carrasco indicates above. Rastier certainly was influenced by Benveniste.
Benveniste also stresses that music lacks semiotic meaning (there is no musical vocabulary), but that it may have semantic meaning. I do believe that music is a good case because it forms a system that does not depend on reference to the world. Natural languages are supposed to express the world and as such ain't good models for a general semiotics.
Reference should probably be considered external to the semiotic process. Hjelmslev had claimed that a true semiotic existed only if the planes of expression and content were not isomorphic; but it probably is not so, because the form of expression and the form of content necessary are one and the same. It is only in the substance of content that natural languages are anisomorphic, because their substance of content depends on reference.
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Alexandre Felipe
University of São Paulo
Nicolas, Ça va? ;)
Please, master, explain it to me, and be patience about me : Hjelmslev said that there hasnt isomorphism on the plane of content and expression? was it in Prolegomena to a language theory? I ask because he would never say something like that or
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Nicolas Meeus
Sorbonne Université
I checked in my (French) edition of Prolégomènes. It is at the end of the Chapter "Language and non-language", but what Hjelmslev says is somewhat ambiguous. He writes (my retranslation): "the condition requiring that one operates ackowledging two planes must be that, when one tries to posit them, one cannot demonstrate that the two planes have exactly the same structure with a univocal relation between the functives of one plane and those of the other. We will express that by saying that the two planes must not conform to each other". And later: "We propose to call systems of symbols those structures which can be interpreted, because one can attach to them a sense of content, but which are not biplane [...]. From this point of view, the word symbol should be used only for elements [grandeurs] that are isomorphic to their interpretation..."
I think this hardly acceptable. The meaning of the word /heart/, as form of expression, can only be «heart», as form of content, and not «muscular organ of an animal that pumps blood», as Peter Stockinger wrote above, because that belongs to the substance and involves an interpretation -- including an interpretation of the outer world. The truly semiotic function can only exist between forms, and not between substances. It is at the level of the substance that the meaning of «heart» may vary; the only way to express its "generic meaning", as Peter says, is to express it as /heart/. It is all the more so that the generic meaning is language-dependant: it may not be exactly the same if the form of expression/content becomes "coeur" or "coração" (as Hjelmslev shew for colours, or "wood").
This has to do with what Saussure called the "arbitrary of the sign". If both signifier and signified are mental (a mental image and a concept, as he said), their relation cannot be arbitrary. Only the relation to an external reference is.
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Payam Hanafizadeh
Allameh Tabataba'i University
Hi ! I have recently published an article entitled " An integrated conceptualization of content in an information society" in which a new definition of content is presented. I believe it would be of your interest. Please take a look at the attached file and kindly provide me with your invaluable comments. Thank you
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