Intertextuality/Intermediality
The theory of intertextuality assumes that meaning and intelligibility in discourse and texts is based on a network prior and concurrent discourse and texts. Every text is a mosaic of references to other texts, genres, and discourses. Every text or set of signs presupposes a network of relationships to other signs like strings of quotations that have lost their exact references. The principle of intertextuality is a ground or precondition for meaning beyond "texts" in the strict sense of things written, and includes units of meaning in any media. Expanding the theory for cross-media symbolic activity, we could call this "intermediality" or "intersemiality" (the structures of meaning presupposed or embedded in any set of signs like nodes in a network). The notion of "intersemic" describes the interdependence and implied relation of any unit of signs (like a movie) to a network of other texts, genres, artifacts, documents, and symbolic works (images, artworks) in a culture.Interpretation and SemiosisInterpretation is the main outcome of the semiotic process, or semiosis. Interpretation is the discursive result or output of positing meaning in any sign system. An extension of the theory of semiosis (Peirce, Eco)--the temporal sequences of sign relations in generating meaning--is the notion of the homology of form in sign systems: interpretations often take the same form as the set of signs being interpreted. For example, the interpretation of a text usually takes the form of another text; the interpretation of an art object can be found in subsequent art works or supplementary texts. The important point is to see acts of interpretation, making meaning, as occurring within a system of symbolic relationships. An interpretation is a supplement to a prior set of signs. An interpretation is not an opinion but an act of positing meaning in a culturally significant expression or work. In the terms of semiotics, nothing is prior to interpretation except intelligibility--something is presented as meaning something, it has the signature of significance, the grounds of intelligibility, language community recognition, interpretive community recognition, a sense that something is or isn't "in our language."
Ideology
A contested and slippery term in the variety of its ordinary and specialized uses. For our context, "ideology" does not refer to individually held "personal" beliefs, but to a set of mediated views of the world that circulate in a culture and provide self-replicating views of power and inclusion and exclusion. Operative senses of the term:
Ideology as the world framed in discourse (Foucault) mediating the structures of power and authority to individuals. Individual subjects are said to take up social positions--identity positions, subjectivity--already formed in discourse (for example, in laws, social class language, religious language, social institutions).
Ideology as the socially constructed sense of identity and values, functioning to obscure the real sources of power, and to reproduce/perpetuate existing power structures (by gender, race, class, nationality, etc.) (an extension of the earlier Marxist notion of ideology as "false consciousness").
Ideology as the consciously held belief system of individual members of a social group, which may or may not reflect the underlying structures of power and authority.
Code
A code is a learned rule for linking signs to their meanings. The term is used in various ways in media studies and semiotics. In communication studies, a message is often described as being "encoded" from the sender and then "decoded" by the receiver. The encoding process works on multiple levels. For semiotics, a code is the framework, a learned a shared conceptual connection at work in all uses of signs (language, visual). An easy example is seeing the kinds and levels of language use in anyone's language group. "English" is a convenient fiction for all the kinds of actual versions of the language. We have formal, edited, written English (which no one speaks), colloquial, everyday, regional English (regions in the US, UK, and around the world); social contexts for styles and specialized vocabularies (work, office, sports, home); ethnic group usage hybrids, and various kinds of slang (in-group, class-based, group-based, etc.). Moving among all these is called "code-switching." We know what they mean if we belong to the learned, rule-governed, shared-code group using one of these kinds and styles of language. Someone from rural Australia might at first be lost with kind of English spoken in south LA, a poor neighborhood in the Bronx, or rural Alabama.But codes also function at the symbolic and ideological level. These interpretive frames or linking grids were termed "myths" by Roland Barthes in his seminal collection of essays called Mythologies. The nearly automatic and unconscious use of codes pervades all aspects of culture from basic verbal communication to mass media. We have codes for all kinds of popular culture genres, all the symbolic moves in advertising, political terms, race, and identity.
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