Eliseo Verón

Eliseo Verón (born June 12, 1935 in Buenos Aires ; † April 15, 2014 ibid) was an Argentine semiotic who was particularly active in the field of sociosemiotics . His work is best known in the Spanish and French-speaking areas.

Life

After studying at the University of Buenos Aires , Verón obtained a doctorate from the University of Paris . He taught there until 1995 when he returned to Argentina. Until recently he taught at the University of Buenos Aires. He died at the age of 78 on April 15, 2014 in his hometown.

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In his work, Verón started out from the ideas of Charles Peirce and Mikhail Mikhailovich Bachtin and developed them further. From Peirce he mainly adopted the idea of ​​an infinite chain of signs, semiosis , which he associated with the concept of intertextuality .

La semiosis social (1987)

Verón's main work La Semiosis Social (The Social Semiosis) is a general theory of the creation and reception of texts , whereby “text” is generally understood to mean any closed unit of signs that is produced at a specific historical moment. Verón assumes that the instances of production and reception (understanding) of texts are restricted by a number of conditions. The conditions of production are firmly related to the concept of ideology , while the conditions of reception are related to power , whereby both terms have the character of dimensions for Verón, which brings him closer to the position of Michel Foucault , for example . For Verón, the ideological dimension is the relationship between text and production conditions, while the dimension of power is related to the relationship between text and reception conditions, i.e. its possible effects on the recipient. For Verón, both production and reception conditions also have the character of strings or texts, whereby an infinite network of connections between various texts can be established, similar to that of Peirce and Bachtin.

More work

In addition to this general work, Verón also dealt with the phenomenon of image recognition and the content of audiovisual media, he also created a typology of political discourses.

In the field of image recognition, he created - to overcome the dualism analog / digital in the sense of analogy / convention - a four-dimensional coordinate system to describe the type of connection between the image and its object. This coordinate system is made up of the terms substitution / continuity, similarity / dissimilarity, continuity / discontinuity and arbitrariness / involuntariness (the connection between image and object); a photograph, for example, would have the connections substitution, similarity, continuity and involuntariness.

Verón also analyzed the concept of the sign in audiovisual media. He put forward the thesis that the credibility of informative television programs (such as news programs or magazines) is mainly based on the eye contact between the moderator and viewer (the so-called "eye-eye axis"). Only through this contact does the picture material of the broadcast acquire the character of a sign or indication in the sense of Peirce's character classification for the viewer ; d. H. a sign that proves the existence of its object - in this case the message. The production of such a program also creates a strong identification between the presenter and the audience through a series of techniques, which underlines this credibility. A semiotic analysis of the structure of the protagonists in so-called reality TV in the specific case of the show Big Brother also became known .

The typology of political discourse by Verón deals primarily with the content of these discourses and the components that are used. As a basis, he assumes three types of recipients of such discourses: pro-recipients (partisans), contra-recipients (political opponents) and para-recipients (undecided). With these three receivers the creator of the discourse connects through a number of entities; For example, the identification collective includes the creator and the pro-recipient, whereas the singular meta-collectives are primarily associated with the para-recipient (e.g. “the nation ”). With regard to the components of the discourse, Verón differentiates between the descriptive (purely informative), didactic (explanation of new types of universal truths), prescriptive (connected with the target) and programmatic (connected with the party program / program of the politician). The weighting of the components and the relationship between the creator of the discourse and the entities result in a wide spectrum of types of political discourse with various effects on the three types of recipients.

Reception and criticism

In academic circles, La Semiosis Social is often referred to as a pioneering work in sociosemiotics , as it was one of the first works to analyze the societal dimension of the production of texts against a semiological background. Numerous semiologists of the 1990s and 2000s refer to similar postulates in their work.

Verón received some criticism for his four-dimensional coordinate system in image recognition. This could not overcome the dualism analog-digital, since the dimensions are partially incompatible with each other. For example, according to his theory, the connection between an image and its object cannot be similar and arbitrary at the same time, which other semiologists such as B. Umberto Eco is questioned, since the concept of similarity also depends on an at least partially arbitrary convention.

See also

• Semiosis

literature

• Eliseo Verón: La semiosis social , Gedisa, Buenos Aires 1987
• Eliseo Verón: El cuerpo de las imágenes , Norma, Buenos Aires 2001

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1. ↑ Murió el semiólogo Eliseo Verón. Report on tn.com.ar from April 15, 2014 (Spanish, accessed April 16, 2014).
2. ^ E. Verón: "Él está ahi, yo lo veo, él me habla", in: Communication , No. 38, Paris 1983, pp. 98ff
3. ↑ MT Dalmasso, ¿Que imagen, que mundo? , Córdoba 1994, p. 39