Journal of Creative Communications 1:2 (2006)
SAGE PUBLICATIONS New Delhi l Thousand Oaks l London
DOI: 10.1177/097325860600100203
Communication and the Semiotics of Space
ELLIOT GAINES
The purpose of this article is to explicate some common situations relevant to communication and the
semiotics of space. Semiotics provides a systemic way to analyse and understand the characteristics of
signs expressing meaning. In everyday life space is rarely considered for its independent qualities, but is
more generally taken as a category of conceptions that act as a background, or a context for the meaning
of other objects. The study of space as a semiotic phenomenon suggests that the meaning of space, as a
sign, is generally understood in relation to other concerns. Communication draws attention to the content
of messages while space contributes to the meanings of those messages without being obvious about its
role in constructing meaning.
THE SEMIOTICS OF SPACE
Space is a term used to describe dimensional aspects existing between other, significant phenomena.The
semiotics of space is a descriptive process enquiring into the relevant significance
of the relationships between objects and their spatial contexts.Since semiotics is the disciplined
study of the life of signs that ‘stand for or represent’ something, space is generally overlooked
as the background to other objects of attention. Space is the paper on which I write my
words, the silence that makes musical sounds have meaning in relation to other sounds, and
the distance between objects whose meanings are dependent on spatial relations. Space is the
background to a priori perception of the world.
The study of space as a semiotic phenomenon suggests that the meaning of space, as a
sign, is generally understood in relation to other concerns. In everyday life space is rarely
considered for its independent qualities, but is more generally taken as a category of conceptions
that act as background to other objects and relationships. The foundations of such
categorical thinking are shared by many of the greatest systematic thinkers including Aristotle,
Kant, Hegel, and Charles Sanders Peirce (Houser 1992). Peirce, the founder of pragmatism
and a systematic theory of semiotics, introduced many categories, including three essential
descriptive categories of signs that are best explained by Houser: firstness is that which is as it is
independently of anything else. Secondness is that which is as it is relative to something else.
174 Elliot Gaines
Thirdness is that which is as it is as mediate between two others (ibid.). These categories help
describe the meanings of space.
Whenwe speak about the specific qualities of space,we are considering its firstness.However,
if we consider the quality of space in a room, for example, we are already conceptualizing our
enquiry in terms ‘relative to something else’. Firstness has been lost to secondness because the
meaning of the space in a room is necessarily dependent upon the relevance of other objects
within that space. Finally, the thirdness of space is mediated by a third party such as a person
in a particular space; meanings are interpreted from a specific point of view, indicating the
practical consequences of the qualities and relationships within a spatial sign system such as
a room.
EINSTEIN’S GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
According to the general theory of relativity, the geometric properties of space are not
independent, but are determined by matter (Einstein 1961: 113). How do we even consider
the properties of space without objects? Space, in and of itself, does not evoke a reaction
until it becomes the background to something perceived as consequential. Time is the
expansion of space (ibid.: 134). Space is assumed to be static if it is observed only according
to matter or objects that infer some relationship to other objects or matter. Meanings emerge
when distinctions are recognized as qualities of space that are independent of objects or
matter. That is how we begin to discover space as a sign.
PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION
The frontiers of space begin with the body of an individual subject. The physical limits of the
body and its means of conscious perception, through sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and
the reasoning mind, all engage in identifying the meanings the things in the world of experience.
All of science has been a progression of enhanced abilities to perceive and discover new
facts and details that inspire new levels of understanding. For example, human eyes can see a
certain range of things, but a microscope extends human vision to reveal a whole level of
previously invisible phenomena; similarly, the telescope brings distant objects into view.
Knowledge develops when things are considered at new levels that reveal differences that
have meanings. The processes for understanding meanings require the mind to organize
information, establish relationships, and make connections between objects, ideas, events
and relationships. Perceptual experiences, and ‘organization of these experiences into causal
relations’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 97) are the processes by which conscious beings establish a
Communication and the Semiotics of Space 175
semiotic view of the world.When distinctions are recognized,meanings are based onperceived
consequences because understanding is based on one’s relationship with the phenomenon
in question.The effect of this kind of experience has the potential for accumulating knowledge
at various levels.
In contrast, communication requires the representation of human experience, knowledge
and understanding that are already mediated in the mind of a communicator. Perception is
the capacity to apprehend and interpret the meanings of things both internal and especially
external to the self, whereas communication involves a capacity to interpret and represent
ideas and information to be shared among other conscious beings. ‘Thus perception and
thought have this much in common—that both of them have a future horizon and a past
horizon and they appear to themselves as temporal, even though they do not move at the
same speed or at the same time’ (ibid.: 21). Time and space are indistinguishable at this level
because communication is the representation of objects and ideas originally perceived in a
spatial relationship with the world, but remembered or identified with a particular time
when something became meaningful.But spatial relationships inevitably establish the context
of perceived causality and meaningfulness, and thus conflate the significance and potency of
space and time.
Space plays a less obvious part in constructing meaning than other, more active modes of
communication. Communication draws attention to the content of messages, while space
contributes to the meanings of those messages without being obvious about its role in constructing
meaning.
For Hall (1966: 1), language is more than a ‘medium of expression’ in that languages represent
a‘major element in the formation of thought’.Languages represent different‘culturally
patterned sensory screens’ (ibid.: 2). For example, he observes, ‘Americans and Arabs live in
different sensory worlds much of the time and do not use the same senses even to establish
most of the distances maintained during conversations’ (ibid.: 3). In the same fashion that
McLuhan (1965) speaks about technology as extensions of human capacities, Hall recognizes
the significance of media and technology developed to improve and specialize particular
limits imposed by the nature of the body and its functions. The computer is an enhanced
brain, the wheel is better suited for travel than the foot, and the telephone extends the range
and distance of the voice (Hall 1966: 3). ‘Language extends experience in time and space
while writing extends language [thus] ... man has shifted evolution from his body to his
extensions’, which has accelerated the evolutionary process (ibid.). Therefore, as language
and objects that extend perceptual capacities of the body become normal within a given
culture, they are integrated into relationships and influence the meaning of space. In the case
of communication, media determine a radical departure from the isolating capacities of
time and space. Speaking of the television as an ‘electronic hearth’, Tichi (1991: 42–61) argues
that in the late 1940s American families were sold the idea of television through a spatial
metaphor suggesting that TV continued the traditional role of the family hearth as a space to
176 Elliot Gaines
gather and exchange stories. At the same time, media represent reality to such a great extent
that audiences believe in the immediate presence of the ‘message’ while generally ignoring
the messenger, such as television technology. The technology of television literally brings
distant places close while emulating a cultural space from another time and place. What is
critical about TV is that the technology obfuscates the remote locations of events because
viewers experience television programmes in their homes,so meanings are interpreted locally.
We define space according to its practical consequences in every situation. Imagine a child
with a dollhouse and some tiny objects used for furniture. Starting with all the little objects
piled randomly in the middle of a model room, the child will begin to arrange them according
to a conventional sense of how they would be used. Joseph Brent (personal interview,
28 March 2001) explains that as those objects are arranged within the space, the nature of
the objects and their spatial distribution will begin to define the meaning of the space in a
room according to the potential uses of the objects and their relationships with people. For
example, the meanings produced by a space designated as a classroom can be radically altered;
placing seats in a circle avoids the power structure imposed by traditional rows of seats in
opposition to a formal speaker’s lectern. Thus, the organization of space can be used as an
extension of power in human relations. According to Foucault:
Architecture … is only taken as an element of support, to endure a certain allocation of
people in space, a canalization of their circulation, as well as the coding of their reciprocal
relations. So it is not only considered an element of space, but it especially thought of
as a plunge into a field of social relations in which it brings about some specific effects
(1993: 169; emphasis original).
Thus, the semiotics of interior space is a symbolic representation created to maintain an
established social distribution of power.
PERFORMANCE SPACE
The performance space—whether it is the stage of the live theatre or the cinema and television
screen … transforms the most ordinary and everyday trivia of existence into carriers
of significance. Hang an empty picture frame on the wall—and suddenly the texture of
the wall makes anything within it significant (Esslin 1987: 38).
All media establish a space for recontextualizing the meanings of things that have different
meanings in other contexts.‘WhenMarcel Duchamp put a urinal onto a pedestal and exhibited
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it in an art gallery, he made use of this magical quality of the stage [that] ... proclaims itself of
being on exhibition, being pregnant with significance’ (Esslin 1987).
The semiotics of mass media are complex spaces insofar as images and stories in a newspaper,
TV show or film are already mediated by the producers and production processes
before they reach an audience. If the story is fiction, the verisimilitude of the image and the
narrative content are intended as poetic and symbolic references to real spaces. If a story is
intended as non-fiction, the nature of spatial realities determines that media events represent
remote locations. The nature of the media, and the value added by the authoritative voice
anchoring elite perceptions, suggest that events are interpreted wherever the audience is.
A camera image defines space through objects, depth of field and inference of what is not
in the frame, but is presumably part of the field vision of the camera operator, and assumed
to be understood by the audience. The intended meaning of representations of space of a TV
image is revealed in the language of the narrator defining the representation of space. The
camera (technology) and the operator establish ‘semantic categories which a particular
language provides for the representation of space’ (Nøth 1990: 414). When the audiences
watch real or fictitious events occurring in remote locations, the meaning has already been
determined for them by professionals using the grammar of representation that attempts to
limit the range of interpretations. Thus, the culture of broadcasting, being endowed with
control over powerful technology and access to mass audiences, tends to communicate the
dominant interpretation of events.
Television has a capacity to communicate and entertain with messages that rely on a shift
of time and space.The multiple levels of perspective represented by such programmes demonstrate
the post-modern condition of the media.News programmes, for example,report stories
that necessarily interpret events that took place in remote locations at an earlier time.
Audiences receive narratives that necessarily include the interpretive perspective of those
retelling the stories. Finally, the identity and perspective of an individual in the audience will
affect the final interpretation of the meaning.
On Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Job Stewart, comedians imitate news reporters.
With Stewart as host and anchorman in New York, fake reporters appear to be speaking to
him from remote locations like England or Iraq. But after the report, the camera pulls out to
reveal the comedic reporter standing in front of a chroma-key screen used to create a visual
illusion so the reporter can appear to be anywhere in the world while actually on stage in
New York with Stewart. Thus, the Daily Show uses media already represented as news reports,
adding another layer of interpretation to stories about real events that have already been told
by someone else, and finally re-represented with comic interpretations of a Comedy Central
television programme.
One of the Daily Show regular features is called, ‘Great Moments in Punditry as Read by
Children’. Children are presented on stage reading transcripts of discussions between rival
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political commentators appearing on the Fox News Channel. The context of the discourse
appears ridiculous with children speaking the words of serious adults who are pathetically
arguing and speculating about the meanings of recent events. The original context of the
text relies upon the assumption that meaning is relevant until it is re-presented by children
in an altered context of space and time.
Stewart often depends on archive recordings of news reports to make fun of a political
official. Using recent footage of Senator Arlen Spector stating that President Bush had made
specific statements that were ‘factually incorrect’, Stewart followed up with multiple examples
of Bush telling blatant lies illustrated by archive footage of earlier news broadcasts (Daily
Show, 1 July 2005). In another example (broadcast on the Daily Show, 7 June 2005), Stewart
played footage (from Fox News, 6 February 2005) of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
defending the notion that the ‘insurgency’ in Iraq could continue for another 12 years,
and then compared these statements with archive footage (from 7 February 2003) when
Rumsfeld stated that the war in Iraq ‘could last six days, six weeks, but I doubt six months’. In
the case of such ironic representations, the manipulation of time and space reveals meanings
generated by real narrative continuity, but the truth clearly has no consequences other than
audience laughter.
The visual component of TV or film asks the audience to suspend disbelief and ignore its
own point of view. In the film Fargo, Steve Buscemi plays a violent criminal who buries a
suitcase full of ransom money in the snow on the side of a straight, flat, visually endless road.
As he digs a hole in the snow, Buscemi looks at a redundantly straight fence line beside the
road.With no distinguishing features to define space, Buscemi sticks a plastic window scraper
in the snow to mark the location, but the viewer knows he will not be able to find the money
later. Again, space appears redundant without objects.
The spatial origins of mediated images happen as chance events, but storytellers define
interpretations that fit random events into a context that portends meaning. The semiotics
of chance events that may have no meaning in and of themselves evoke a generalizing tendency
to ascribe meaning from a given point of view based upon past knowledge and experience
(Sheriff 1994: 9).
DEFINING SPATIAL PARADIGMS
The original Star Trek TV series used an opening sequence announcing that space was the
final frontier. While they were referring to the cosmos outside the earth’s atmosphere, the
English word ‘space’ has many possible meanings that all stand for locations or relationships
defined in terms of what separates objects or events. Space is paradigmatic; space defines
categories of distinctions,and all meanings are based upon distinctions.Meanings established
Communication and the Semiotics of Space 179
through spatial relationships are always possible at many levels and from different points of
view; but without a fixed point of view there is no hierarchy among possible interpretations.
Identities are defined by shared perspectives and by asserting value judgements about the
correct interpretation of objects or events that actually have no meaning in and of themselves.
A tree does not necessarily exist to provide lumber, shade or to be appreciated for its beauty,
but all may occur, interpreted as such within a given spatial context. When rain falls, by
definition, water drops through space to the ground. If you have planned a picnic, the rain
might disrupt your plans. But on a farm with young plants withering in dry ground, the rain
may be a positive sign meaning that crops will grow. In other words, language lets us describe
information, ideas and experiences,but our words and manner of representation also demonstrate
a point of view, a context, a set of conditions, and motives that may limit or extend the
meanings of perception grounded in space.
Ultimately, spatial aspects of things in the world have a profound impact on the way we
interpret things in our everyday lives. The term proxemics, coined by Edward T. Hall, refers to
the ‘interrelated observations and theories of man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration
of culture’ (1966: 1). For example, space provides a meaningful dimension contributing to
the non-verbal aspects of communication based upon cultural norms that dictate appropriate
distances for people to stand from each other in specific situations. We individually adjust to
many proxemic considerations established by cultural aspects of non-verbal communication.
Buildings are designed for people to live and conduct social affairs in. Within these spaces,
meaningful settings are constructed in order to carry out social processes according to established
notions of how people and objects are organized in space. Consider the differences
expressed by spatial relationships in a person’s home as opposed to a restaurant,a sales counter
in a store, the structural divider between a client and a bank teller, a courtroom, a prison, a
playground or a classroom. As mentioned earlier, alternative organizations of a classroom
environment can restructure power and relationships between people and objects, and thus
affect learning.
NEGOTIATING THE SEMIOTICS OF SPACE
Although we are not always aware of space and its capacity to alter the meanings of things, in
some situations such as architecture,humans intentionally construct and control some aspects
of space. Kostogriz (2002: 13) uses the term thirdspace to describe a learning environment
privileging multicultural human perspectives where individuals take up different points of
view without a preconceived hierarchy of a dominant ideology. Rather than a geometric
conception of objects located in space, thirdspace describes a cognitive space allowing
180 Elliot Gaines
competition and negotiation of interpretive meanings. In calling attention to a literacy of
multiple perspectives, Kostogriz calls for a
dialectic of multicultural spaces in which we live and learn in order to reveal contradictions
between the global and the local, between centres and peripheries, between the individual
and the social, between the politics of universal knowledge and situated knowing in
everyday practices.In a word,we need a theory (a knowledge) of the production of culturalsemiotic
and intellectual spheres in multicultural conditions; one that injects a third
dimension into thinking about the possibility of crossing, erasure and ‘translation’ of the
boundaries in the cultural production of identities and textual meanings (ibid.).
Space is generally taken as an area between objects, but thirdspace refers to a cognitive space
where the meaning of a sign is negotiable.
The purpose of this paper has been to explicate some common issues of the semiotics of
space. There are many other dimensions of space provoked by concepts such as quantum
physics and string theory that would require study beyond the scope of this project. Semiotics
provides a system to organize and understand the characteristics according to similarity and
differences of signs expressing meaning.When we observe space as a sign, new ways of understanding
are possible, and the meanings of things can be discussed as they pertain to our
everyday lives. Immediate experiences in space tend to appear uniform because of a habit of
seeing things from a limited perspective.Mediated space must be understood in consideration
of multiple levels of representation. The secondness of space as background to other signs
needs to be considered in the process of logical, semiotic analysis intended to reveal or clarify
the nature of meaning.
Elliot Gaines is at Wright State University, Department of Communication, 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy,
Dayton OH 45435, USA. E-mail: eliot.gaines@wright.edu.
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