Drawing from recent analytical developments in semiotics and postmodern ethnography, this article exposes and assesses the combination of social semiotics and fieldwork as a form of qualitative inquiry. Approaches to semiotics and fieldwork are not new—structural ethnographers in cultural anthropology and structural interactionists in sociology and communication studies have previously laid the foundations for the integration of formal methods of analysis and inductive approaches to data collection—yet, as this article argues, structuralism’s limitations have hampered the growth of semiotics within qualitative inquiry. By presenting social semiotics as a viable alternative to structural semiotics, by describing in clear pedagogical fashion how social semiotics can be used as a research strategy, and by exposing its potential for applicability, this article attempts to bring sociosemiotic ethnography to the forefront of contemporary qualitative inquiry.
Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang.
2.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. (Original work published 1975)
3.
Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Original work published 1965)
4.
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. (C. Emerson, Ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press. (Original work published 1979)
5.
Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e).
6.
Couldry, N. (2004). Theorising media as practice. Social Semiotics, 14, 115-132.
7.
Coupland, N., & Coupland, J. (1997). Bodies, beaches, and burn-times: Environmentalism and its discursive competitors. Discourse and Society, 8, 7-25.
8.
Davis, F. (1994). Fashion, culture, and identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9.
Denzin, N. K. (1987). On semiotics and symbolic interactionism. Symbolic Interaction, 10, 1-19.
10.
Denzin, N. K. (1989). Review symposium. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 18, 89-100.
11.
Denzin, N. K. (1992). Symbolic interactionism and cultural studies: The politics of interpretation. New York: Blackwell.
12.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.). (2000). The handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
13.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (2003). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research (pp. 1-46). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
14.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.). (2005). The handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
15.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. Brighton, UK: Harvester Press.
16.
Frow, J., & Morris, M. (2003). Cultural studies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research (pp. 489-539). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
17.
Gans, H. (1999). Participant observation in the era of “ethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 28, 540-548.
18.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
19.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor.
20.
Gottdiener, M. (1995). Postmodern semiotics: material culture and the forms of postmodern life. Oxford and Cambridge, UK: Blackwell.
21.
Griffiths, M., & Machin, D. (2003). Television and playground games as part of children’s symbolic culture. Social Semiotics, 13, 147-160.
22.
Gubrium, J., & Holstein, J. (2003). Analyzing interpretive practice. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 214-248). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
23.
Jewitt, C., & Oyama, R. (2003). Visual meaning: A social semiotic approach. In T. Van Leeuwen & C. Jewitt (Eds.), Handbook of visual analysis (pp. 134-156). London: Sage.
24.
Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., & Willis, P. (Eds.). (1991). Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies. London: Routledge.
25.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotics. London: Arnold.
26.
Hodge, R., & Kress, G. (1988). Social semiotics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
27.
Kincheloe, J., & McLaren, P. (2003). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research (pp. 433-488). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
28.
Kress, G. (1993). Against arbitrariness: The social production of the sign as a foundational issue in critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society, 42, 169-193.
29.
Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
30.
Lather, P. (1993). Fertile obsessions: Validity after poststructuralism. Sociological Quarterly, 34, 673-693.
31.
Lemert, C. (1979). Structuralist semiotics. In S. G. McNall (Ed.), Theoretical sociology (pp. 96-111). New York: St. Martin’s.
32.
Lofland, J. (1970). Interactionist imagery and analytic interruptus. In T. Shibutani (Ed.), Human nature and collective behavior: Papers in honor of Herbert Blumer (pp. 35-45). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
33.
Lofland, J. (1995). Analytic ethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 24, 30-67.
34.
MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist. New York: Schocken.
35.
MacCannell, D., & MacCannell, J. F. (1982). The time of the sign: A semiotic interpretation of modern culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
36.
Machin, D. (2002). Ethnographic research for media studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
37.
Manning, P. K. (1987). Semiotics and fieldwork. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
38.
Manning, P. K. (1988). Symbolic communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
39.
Manning, P. K. (2004). Semiotics, pragmatism, and narratives. In L. Reynolds & N. Herman-Kinney (Eds.), Handbook of symbolic interactionism (pp. 1021-1040). Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.
40.
Manning, P. K., & Cullum-Swan, B. (1994). Narrative, content, and semiotic analysis. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (1st ed., pp. 463-478). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
41.
Peirce, C. S. (1931). Collected papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
42.
Perinbanayagam, R. (1985). Signifying acts. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
43.
Perinbanayagam, R. (1991). Discursive acts. New York: Aldine.
44.
Randle, H. (1997). Suntanning: Differences in perception throughout history. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 72, 461-466.
45.
Rochberg-Halton, E. (1982). Situation, structure, and the context of meaning. Sociological Quarterly, 23, 455-476.
46.
Saukko, P. (2003). Doing research in cultural studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
47.
Saussure, F. de (1959). Course in general linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
48.
Snow, D. (2001). Extending and broadening Blumer’s conceptualization of symbolic interactionism. Symbolic Interaction, 24, 367-377.
49.
Snow, D., Morrill, C., & Anderson, L. (2003). Elaborating analytic ethnography: Linking fieldwork and theory. Ethnography, 4, 181-200.
50.
Stone, G. (1962). Appearance and the self. In A. M. Rose (Ed.), Human nature and social process (pp. 86-118). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
51.
Van Leeuwen, T. (1999). Speech, music, sound. London: Macmillan.
52.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Introducing social semiotics. London: Routledge.
53.
Vannini, P. (2004). Toward an interpretive analytics of the sign: Interactionism, power, and semiosis. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 27, 151-176.
54.
Vannini, P., & McCright, A. (2004). To die for: The semiotic seductive power of the tanned body. Symbolic Interaction, 27, 309-332.
55.
Volosinov, V. (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language. New York: Seminar Press.
56.
Wiley, N. (1994). The semiotic self. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
