Semiotics in Othello.

             In Othello, Iago often describes Othello as 'black' or 'the moor'. Using semiotics, you can see that Othello is not black, but that Shakespeare has used a sign to tell us that Othello is black. In the play Hamlet, Hamlet refers to: 'the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature' and being 'true-to-life' (Act three, Sc.two) This is probably still a key judgement of literary worth using semiotics.
             If by the phrase 'the moor' we understand 'the moors' experience, then the claim that realism reflects the word means that realism reflects the word constructed in language. If through a system of signs, which signify by means of their relationship to each other rather than to black people, all it can reflect is the particular discourses, not the nature of 'the moor'.
             Words seem to be symbols for things because things are inconceivable outside the system of differences, which constitutes the language. Similarly, these very things seem to be represented in the mind, in a realm of thought, because thought is in essence symbolic, dependent on the differences brought about by the symbolic order. And so language is 'overlooked', suppressed in favour of a quest for meaning in experience and/or in the mind.
             Beyond its 'literal' meaning (its denotation), a particular word may have connotations, for instance, sexual connotations, such as the word 'prank' used by Iago in Act Three Scene Three.
             In semiotics, denotation and connotation are terms describing the relationship between the signifier and its signified. 'Denotation' tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign.
             The term 'connotation' is used to refer to the socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign, which Othello is easily classed into as he psychologically...

More Essays:

APA     MLA     Chicago
Semiotics in Othello.. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 13:26, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/2727.html