Finished chapter 1

I'm a bit behind on my reading, so I am trying to get caught up. Just finished chapter 1 on the assigned reading, and there is a lot to talk about.

     Learned a bit about ideology, and after parsing over the section I now have a bit better understanding of it. Ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures. Images are an important means through which ideologies are produces and onto which ideologies are projected. Ideology has come to be understood as a much more mundane process, in which we all engage and about which we are all for the most part aware in some way or another. Our ideologies are diverse and inform our everyday lives in often subtle or barely noticeable forms. One of the most important aspects of ideology in the modernist period was that they appeared to be natural or given.
      An example of this would be the way that what constitutes beauty in a person's body is a thin, athletic shape, with clear and soft toned skin. It is so ingrained into most Westerners' understanding that this is what makes a body beautiful that it appears to be natural. However, when considered, a person realizes that this is nothing but a cultural construct, there is nothing "naturally" beautiful about a person with this ideal body type.
     Whenever we interpret an image around us, consciously or not, we are using tools of semiotics to understand its meaning.
     When looking at the principles of semiotics, there are two figures that have influenced how it is understood and applied: Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Pierce.
     Saussure's writing have had the most influence on theories of structuralism that informs the ways of analyzing visual culture. Saussure claimed that "language is a game of chess", and suggested that language depends on conventions and codes for meanings. He argued that a relationship between a word and things in the world are arbitrary and relative, not fixed. For example, how the word "dog" in English and "hund" in German both refer to the same kind of animal. Therefore he states, that the relationship between the words and animal itself are dictated by conventions of language rather then some natural connection..
     To Pierce, language and thought are processes of sign interpretation. He believed that meaning resides not in the initial perception of a sign or representation of an object but in the interpretations of the perception and subsequent action based off that perception. Piece argued that every though is a sign without meaning until a subsequent thought (interpretation) allow for its interpretation.
     A quick word on Barthes's model of semiotics. In addition to the two levels of meaning of denotation and connotation, there is the sign, which is composed of the signifier - a sound, written word, or image, and to the signified, which is the concept evoked by the word or image.
   For example, the 1960s inspired smiley face icon. In this case, the smile is the signifier, and happiness is the signified. The image (or word) and its meaning together (the signifier and the signified together) form the sign.