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171-404: Cultural studies was initially developed by British Marxist academics in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and has been subsequently taken up and transformed by scholars from many different disciplines around the world. Cultural studies is avowedly and even radically interdisciplinary and can sometimes be seen as anti-disciplinary. A key concern for cultural studies practitioners is the examination of

342-407: A computational semiotics method for generating semiotic squares from digital texts. Pictorial semiotics is intimately connected to art history and theory. It goes beyond them both in at least one fundamental way, however. While art history has limited its visual analysis to a small number of pictures that qualify as "works of art", pictorial semiotics focuses on the properties of pictures in

513-473: A monetarist , Thatcher started out in her economic policy by increasing interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thus lower inflation. She had a preference for indirect taxation over taxes on income, and value-added tax (VAT) was raised sharply to 15%, with a resultant actual short-term rise in inflation. The fiscal and monetary squeeze, combined with the North Sea oil effect , appreciated

684-596: A basis for musical allusion." Subfields that have sprouted out of semiotics include, but are not limited to, the following: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher [REDACTED] Margaret Thatcher 's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 4 May 1979 when she accepted an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding James Callaghan of the Labour Party , and ended on 28 November 1990 upon her resignation. She

855-404: A busy world; but even these may be fine-tuned for specific cultures. Research also found that, as airline industry brandings grow and become more international their logos become more symbolic and less iconic. The iconicity and symbolism of a sign depends on the cultural convention and are, on that ground, in relation with each other. If the cultural convention has greater influence on the sign,

1026-431: A central focus of cultural studies. Jeff Lewis summarized much of the work on textuality and textual analysis in his cultural studies textbook and a post-9/11 monograph on media and terrorism. According to Lewis, textual studies use complex and difficult heuristic methods and require both powerful interpretive skills and a subtle conception of politics and contexts. The task of the cultural analyst, for Lewis,

1197-430: A clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge. Thomas Sebeok would assimilate semiology to semiotics as a part to a whole, and was involved in choosing the name Semiotica for the first international journal devoted to the study of signs. Saussurean semiotics have exercised a great deal of influence on the schools of structuralism and post-structuralism. Jacques Derrida , for example, takes as his object

1368-402: A connotation that is culturally-bound, and that violates some culture code. Theorists who have studied humor (such as Schopenhauer ) suggest that contradiction or incongruity creates absurdity and therefore, humor. Violating a culture code creates this construct of ridiculousness for the culture that owns the code. Intentional humor also may fail cross-culturally because jokes are not on code for

1539-433: A form of production (of meanings, of identities, etc.) in its own right. Stuart Hall , John Fiske , and others have been influential in these developments. A special 2008 issue of the field's flagship journal, Cultural Studies , examined " anti-consumerism " from a variety of cultural studies angles. Jeremy Gilbert noted in the issue, cultural studies must grapple with the fact that "we now live in an era when, throughout

1710-430: A general sense, and on how the artistic conventions of images can be interpreted through pictorial codes. Pictorial codes are the way in which viewers of pictorial representations seem automatically to decipher the artistic conventions of images by being unconsciously familiar with them. According to Göran Sonesson, a Swedish semiotician, pictures can be analyzed by three models: the narrative model, which concentrates on

1881-463: A key site of political and social struggle. In his view, capitalists used not only brute force ( police , prisons , repression , military ) to maintain control , but also penetrated the everyday culture of working people in a variety of ways in their efforts to win popular "consent." It is important to recognize that for Gramsci, historical leadership, or hegemony , involves the formation of alliances between class factions, and struggles within

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2052-614: A kind of empty version of " postmodern " analysis, others hold that at its core, cultural studies provides a significant conceptual and methodological framework for cultural , social , and economic critique. This critique is designed to " deconstruct " the meanings and assumptions that are inscribed in the institutions, texts, and practices that work with and through, and produce and re-present, culture. Thus, while some scholars and disciplines have dismissed cultural studies for its methodological rejection of disciplinarity, its core strategies of critique and analysis have influenced areas of

2223-429: A kind of radical interdisciplinarity as the basis for cultural studies. One sociologist whose work has had a major influence on cultural studies is Pierre Bourdieu , whose work makes innovative use of statistics and in-depth interviews. However, although Bourdieu's work has been highly influential within cultural studies, and although Bourdieu regarded his work as a form of science , cultural studies has never embraced

2394-459: A major part in driving elected governments from office." Nigel Lawson, View from No. 11 , p. 161 Coal miners were highly organised and had defeated Prime Minister Heath. Thatcher expected a major confrontation, planned ahead for one, and avoided trouble before she was ready. In the end the miners' strike of 1984–85 proved a decisive victory for her—one that permanently discouraged trade unionists. The National Coal Board received

2565-543: A prestigious chair in sociology at the Open University , and Richard Johnson took over the directorship of the centre. In the late 1990s, "restructuring" at the University of Birmingham led to the elimination of CCCS and the creation of a new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (CSS) in 1999. Then, in 2002, the university's senior administration abruptly announced the disestablishment of CSS, provoking

2736-495: A priority, but her pioneering election was widely hailed as an achievement for women in general. Thatcher, having to share the media spotlight with Queen Elizabeth II and Diana, Princess of Wales , increasingly assumed regal poses, such as taking the salute at the victory parade after the Falklands War , and becoming the centre of attraction on foreign visits. Tensions between the two were kept hidden until 1986, when

2907-500: A question of class alliance . The rise of cultural studies itself was based on the decline of the prominence of fundamental class-versus-class politics. Edgar and Sedgwick write: The theory of hegemony was of central importance to the development of British cultural studies [particularly The Birmingham School . It facilitated the analysis of the ways subordinate groups actively resist and respond to political and economic domination. The subordinate groups needed not to be seen merely as

3078-675: A range of studies on media policy , democracy , design , leisure , tourism , warfare , and development. While certain key concepts such as ideology or discourse , class, hegemony, identity, and gender remain significant, cultural studies has long engaged with and integrated new concepts and approaches. The field thus continues to pursue political critique through its engagements with the forces of culture and politics. Many cultural studies practitioners work in departments of English or comparative literature . Nevertheless, some traditional literary scholars such as Yale professor Harold Bloom have been outspoken critics of cultural studies. On

3249-421: A reform in the education system (if one changes the education system, then one can change the culture). Hall viewed culture as something that is institutionalized, which could only be studied through the interactional patterns that people within a culture exhibit and experience. Culture is something that makes up society, is a learned trait, and is influenced by various forms of media that help to establish it. Power

3420-471: A shock even to some supporters of the strikes. The NUM never held a strike vote, which allowed many miners to keep working and prevented other unions from supporting the strike. The mounting desperation and poverty of the striking families led to divisions within the regional NUM branches, and a breakaway union, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM), was soon formed. More and more frustrated miners resigned to

3591-404: A standpoint of radical contextualism . In other words, cultural studies rejects universal accounts of cultural practices , meanings, and identities. Judith Butler , an American feminist theorist whose work is often associated with cultural studies, wrote that: the move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to

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3762-457: A strike by the NUM long in advance by building up coal stocks, keeping many miners at work, and co-ordinating police action to stop massive picketing. Her policies defeated the NUM strategy of causing severe cuts in the electricity supply—the legacy of the industrial disputes of 1972 would not be repeated. The images of crowds of militant miners attempting to prevent other miners from working proved

3933-481: A strike, and to abolish the closed shop. Further laws banned workplace ballots and imposed postal ballots. "The miners' strike was the central political event of the second Thatcher Administration. Just as the victory in the Falklands War exorcised the humiliation of Suez, so the eventual defeat of the NUM etched in the public mind the end of militant trade unionism which had wrecked the economy and twice played

4104-530: A substantial impact on sociology . For example, when Stuart Hall left CCCS at Birmingham, it was to accept a prestigious professorship in Sociology at the Open University in Britain. The subfield of cultural sociology , in particular, is disciplinary home to many cultural studies practitioners. Nevertheless, there are some differences between sociology as a discipline and the field of cultural studies as

4275-566: A substantial international outcry. The immediate reason for disestablishment of the new department was an unexpectedly low result in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, though a dean from the university attributed the decision to "inexperienced 'macho management'." The RAE, a holdover initiative of the Margaret Thatcher-led British government of 1986, determines research funding for university programs. To trace

4446-422: A suggestion that rioting was caused by unemployment, observed that the unemployment of the 1930s was far worse than that of the 1980s—and that his father's generation never reacted by rioting. "I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father", Tebbit said. "He did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he went on looking until he found it." Over two million manufacturing jobs were ultimately lost in

4617-566: A surplus on services and a deficit on goods." In her first six months as prime minister, Thatcher repeatedly prioritised defence spending over economic policy and financial control. However, in 1980, she reversed this priority and tried to cut the defence budget. The 1981 Defence Review by John Nott , the defence minister, dramatically cut the capabilities of the Royal Navy's surface fleet. She replaced Francis Pym as defence secretary because he wanted more funding. The cuts were cancelled when

4788-420: A view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure. It has marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with

4959-514: A wave of patriotic enthusiasm and contributed to Thatcher's re-election, with one poll showing that 84% of the electorate approved of the Prime Minister's handling of the crisis. Restoring British control over a small colony was a response to aggression, but it also represented a sensibility that Britain had a responsibility to protect its " kith and kin ." Thatcher saw the issue as freedom versus oppression and dictatorship. Her sensibility

5130-421: A whole. While sociology was founded upon various historic works purposefully distinguishing the subject from philosophy or psychology , cultural studies have explicitly interrogated and criticized traditional understandings and practices of disciplinarity. Most CS practitioners think it is best that cultural studies neither emulate disciplines nor aspire to disciplinarity for cultural studies. Rather, they promote

5301-427: A wide variety of possibilities for pictorial semiotics. Some influences have been drawn from phenomenological analysis, cognitive psychology, structuralist, and cognitivist linguistics, and visual anthropology and sociology. Studies have shown that semiotics may be used to make or break a brand . Culture codes strongly influence whether a population likes or dislikes a brand's marketing, especially internationally. If

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5472-587: Is a branch of science that generally studies meaning-making (whether communicated or not) and various types of knowledge. Unlike linguistics , semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems . Semiotics includes the study of indication, designation, likeness, analogy , allegory , metonymy , metaphor , symbolism , signification, and communication. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological dimensions. Some semioticians regard every cultural phenomenon as being able to be studied as communication. Semioticians also focus on

5643-467: Is called cultural studies in all of the universities and colleges in the English-speaking world, and everyone knows what that phenomenon is. I mean, the...now-weary phrase 'political correctness' remains a perfectly good descriptive phrase for what has gone on and is, alas, still going on almost everywhere and which dominates, I would say, rather more than three-fifths of the tenured faculties in

5814-440: Is combining methods and theories developed in the disciplines of semiotics and the humanities, with providing new information into human signification and its manifestation in cultural practices. The research on cognitive semiotics brings together semiotics from linguistics, cognitive science, and related disciplines on a common meta-theoretical platform of concepts, methods, and shared data. Cognitive semiotics may also be seen as

5985-439: Is consumed, mediated and negotiated, etc. Hall has also been accredited with the expansion of cultural studies through “the primacy of culture’s role as an educational site where identities are being continually transformed, power is enacted, and learning assumes a political dynamic.” He viewed politics as being used mainly for power instead of the betterment of society. This led to the belief that political dynamics could change with

6156-485: Is covered in biosemiotics including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics . The importance of signs and signification has been recognized throughout much of the history of philosophy and psychology . The term derives from Ancient Greek σημειωτικός (sēmeiōtikós)  'observant of signs' (from σημεῖον (sēmeîon)  'a sign, mark, token'). For the Greeks, 'signs' ( σημεῖον sēmeîon ) occurred in

6327-519: Is deeply concerned with non-linguistic signification. Philosophy of language also bears connections to linguistics, while semiotics might appear closer to some of the humanities (including literary theory ) and to cultural anthropology . Semiosis or semeiosis is the process that forms meaning from any organism's apprehension of the world through signs. Scholars who have talked about semiosis in their subtheories of semiotics include C. S. Peirce , John Deely , and Umberto Eco . Cognitive semiotics

6498-658: Is generally thought that this was because the Thatcher government had not made public funding available for the NHS sufficient in creating its own supplies. It has been alleged that the Thatcher cabinet attempted to "cover up" the events of the scandal. In 2017, the Infected Blood Inquiry was announced into the scandal and a group legal action (Jason Evans & Ors) was brought at the High Court. Thatcher

6669-399: Is generated, disseminated, contested, bound up with systems of power and control, and produced from the social, political and economic spheres within a particular social formation or conjuncture. The movement has generated important theories of cultural hegemony and agency . Its practitioners attempt to explain and analyze the cultural forces related and processes of globalization . During

6840-467: Is not political". After nine more men had died, most rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but official recognition of their political status was not granted. Thatcher later asserted: "The outcome was a significant defeat for the IRA." Thatcher also continued the " Ulsterisation " policy of the previous Labour government and its Secretary of State for Northern Ireland , Roy Mason , believing that

7011-743: Is offered by Jean-Jacques Nattiez who, as a musicologist , considered the theoretical study of communication irrelevant to his application of semiotics. Semiotics differs from linguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense. The branch of semiotics that deals with such formal relations between signs or expressions in abstraction from their signification and their interpreters, or—more generally—with formal properties of symbol systems (specifically, with reference to linguistic signs, syntax )

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7182-687: Is one of the distinctive Australian contributions to the field, though it is not the only one. Australia also gave birth to the world's first professional cultural studies association (now known as the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia) in 1990. Cultural studies journals based in Australia include International Journal of Cultural Studies , Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , and Cultural Studies Review . In Canada , cultural studies has sometimes focused on issues of technology and society , continuing

7353-486: Is possible to successfully pass a sign perceived as a cultural icon, such as the logos for Coca-Cola or McDonald's , from one culture to another. This may be accomplished if the sign is migrated from a more economically developed to a less developed culture. The intentional association of a product with another culture has been called "foreign consumer culture positioning" (FCCP). Products also may be marketed using global trends or culture codes, for example, saving time in

7524-406: Is referred to as syntactics . Peirce's definition of the term semiotic as the study of necessary features of signs also has the effect of distinguishing the discipline from linguistics as the study of contingent features that the world's languages happen to have acquired in the course of their evolutions. From a subjective standpoint, perhaps more difficult is the distinction between semiotics and

7695-684: Is relatively undeveloped in Germany , probably due to the continued influence of the Frankfurt School , which is now often said to be in its third generation, which includes notable figures such as Axel Honneth . Cultural studies journals based in continental Europe include the European Journal of Cultural Studies , the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies , French Cultural Studies , and Portuguese Cultural Studies . In Germany,

7866-414: Is the so-called semiotics (Charles Morris) which is now commonly employed by mathematical logicians. Semiotics is the theory of symbols and falls in three parts; Max Black argued that the work of Bertrand Russell was seminal in the field. Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted . This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be

8037-469: Is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning . In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs. Signs often are communicated by verbal language, but also by gestures, or by other forms of language, e.g. artistic ones (music, painting, sculpture, etc.). Contemporary semiotics

8208-874: Is the underlying tone of Hall’s cultural studies. Hall believed that culture has some power, but the media's use of it is what sways and dictates culture itself. In the US, prior to the emergence of British Cultural Studies, several versions of cultural analysis had emerged largely from pragmatic and liberal-pluralist philosophical traditions. However, in the late 1970s and 1980s, when British Cultural Studies began to spread internationally, and to engage with feminism , poststructuralism , postmodernism , and race, critical cultural studies (i.e., Marxist , feminist, poststructuralist, etc.) expanded tremendously in American universities in fields such as communication studies , education , sociology , and literature . Cultural Studies ,

8379-643: Is to engage with both knowledge systems and texts and observe and analyze the ways the two interact with one another. This engagement represents the critical dimensions of the analysis, its capacity to illuminate the hierarchies within and surrounding the given text and its discourse . Cultural studies has evolved through its uptake across a variety of different disciplines— anthropology , media studies , communication studies , literary studies , education , geography , philosophy , sociology , politics , and others. While some have accused certain areas of cultural studies of meandering into political relativism and

8550-582: The Journal of African Cultural Studies . In Latin America , cultural studies have drawn on thinkers such as José Martí , Ángel Rama , and other Latin-American figures, in addition to the Western theoretical sources associated with cultural studies in other parts of the world. Leading Latin American cultural studies scholars include Néstor García Canclini , Jésus Martín-Barbero , and Beatriz Sarlo . Among

8721-583: The "dry" faction she purged most of the One Nation "wet" Conservatives and took full control. By the late 1980s, however, she had alienated several senior members of her Cabinet with her opposition to greater economic integration into the European Economic Community , which she argued would lead to a federalist Europe and surrender Britain's ability to self govern. She also alienated many Conservative voters and parliamentarians with

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8892-582: The Argentine Navy back to its home harbours. However, it had to deal with a nearby land-based Argentine Air Force , using primarily surface-to-air heat-seeking missiles, Harriers , and V bombers, the last to crater the Port Stanley runway. Argentine forces in the Falklands surrendered on 14 June ; the operation was hailed as a great triumph, with only 258 British casualties. Victory brought

9063-581: The Labour Party to the Conservative Party had to be explained in terms of cultural politics, which they had been tracking even before Thatcher's first victory. Some of this work was presented in the cultural studies classic, Policing the Crisis , and in other later texts such as Hall's The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left , and New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in

9234-806: The Lancaster House Agreement of December 1979. It resumed British control of Rhodesia, declared a ceasefire, ended guerrilla action, and quickly led to the creation of the Republic of Zimbabwe . Thus Thatcher's refusal to recognise the Muzorewa government ultimately allowed Mugabe to take power, an outcome that outraged whites in Rhodesia but which satisfied British opinion and was applauded internationally. Hugo Young (p. 183) states, "She had been instrumental in creating another Third World country." According to Robert Matthews ,

9405-688: The Unionists of Northern Ireland should be at the forefront in combating Irish republicanism . This meant relieving the burden on the mainstream British Army and elevating the role of the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary . The " Falklands Factor ", along with the resumption of economic growth by the end of 1982, bolstered the Government's popularity and led to Thatcher's victory in

9576-437: The logical dimensions of semiotics, examining biological questions such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world. Fundamental semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study. Applied semiotics analyzes cultures and cultural artifacts according to the ways they construct meaning through their being signs. The communication of information in living organisms

9747-728: The mujaheddin . Thatcher visited Pakistan in October 1981 meeting with Pakistan leader General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq . She visited some of the many hundreds of thousands of Afghans gathered in refugee camps there giving a speech stating that the 'hearts of the free world were with them'. Five years later two of the Mujaheddin warlords Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Haq met Thatcher in Downing Street. The Polish crisis of 1980 and 1981 involved large-scale anti-Communist protests in

9918-569: The nature–culture divide and identifying symbols as no more than a species (or sub-species) of signum . A monograph study on this question was done by Manetti (1987). These theories have had a lasting effect in Western philosophy , especially through scholastic philosophy. The general study of signs that began in Latin with Augustine culminated with the 1632 Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot and then began anew in late modernity with

10089-477: The philosophy of language . In a sense, the difference lies between separate traditions rather than subjects. Different authors have called themselves "philosopher of language" or "semiotician." This difference does not match the separation between analytic and continental philosophy . On a closer look, there may be found some differences regarding subjects. Philosophy of language pays more attention to natural languages or to languages in general, while semiotics

10260-462: The real exchange rate . These moves hit businesses—especially the manufacturing sector—and unemployment exceeded 2 million by the autumn of 1980, up from 1.5 million at the time of Thatcher's election just over a year earlier. Political commentators harked back to the Edward Heath government 's "U-turn" and speculated that Thatcher would follow suit, but she repudiated this approach at

10431-585: The social sciences and humanities ; for example, cultural studies work on forms of social differentiation , control and inequality , identity , community-building , media, and knowledge production has had a substantial impact. Moreover, the influence of cultural studies has become increasingly evident in areas as diverse as translation studies , health studies, international relations , development studies , computer studies , economics , archaeology , and neurobiology . Cultural studies has also diversified its own interests and methodologies, incorporating

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10602-504: The structuralism of Louis Althusser , and later in the 1970s turned decisively toward Antonio Gramsci . Cultural studies has also embraced the examination of race, gender, and other aspects of identity, as is illustrated, for example, by a number of key books published collectively under the name of CCCS in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women's Subordination (1978), and The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (1982). To understand

10773-471: The values of the culture , and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life. To explain the relationship between semiotics and communication studies , communication is defined as the process of transferring data and-or meaning from a source to a receiver. Hence, communication theorists construct models based on codes, media, and contexts to explain the biology , psychology , and mechanics involved. Both disciplines recognize that

10944-482: The " Birmingham School " of cultural studies, thus becoming the world's first institutional home of cultural studies. Hoggart appointed as his assistant Stuart Hall , who would effectively be directing CCCS by 1968. Hall formally assumed the directorship of CCCS in 1971, when Hoggart left Birmingham to become Assistant Director-General of UNESCO . Thereafter, the field of cultural studies became closely associated with Hall's work. In 1979, Hall left Birmingham to accept

11115-617: The " Suez Syndrome " to rest and again projecting Britain as a great power. Celebration of the SAS was a key component in the popular militarism of the 1980s, fuelled by the continuing "war" against international terrorism and by the Falklands conflict and Gulf War . The storming of the Iranian Embassy had shown that Britain could meet terror with counter-terror: Mrs Thatcher's black-clad "terminators" would protect us. Commenting on

11286-510: The "fundamental questions" in life, but theorists have rarely realized this potential. English departments also host cultural rhetorics scholars. This academic field defines cultural rhetorics as "the study and practice of making meaning and knowledge with the belief that all cultures are rhetorical and all rhetorics are cultural." Cultural rhetorics scholars are interested in investigating topics like climate change , autism , Asian American rhetoric , and more. Cultural studies have also had

11457-408: The 1970s but were also intended to ensure that the consequences for the participants would be severe if they took any future action. The reforms were also aimed, Thatcher claimed, to democratise the unions and return power to the members. The most significant measures were to make secondary industrial action illegal, to force union leadership to first win a ballot of the union membership before calling

11628-452: The 1980 Conservative Party conference, telling the party: "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning ". That she meant what she said was confirmed in the 1981 budget, when, despite concerns expressed in an open letter from 364 leading economists, taxes were increased in

11799-402: The 1990s . In 2016, Duke University Press launched a new series of Stuart Hall's collected writings, many of which detail his major and decisive contributions toward the establishment of the field of cultural studies. In 2023, a new Stuart Hall Archive Project was launched at the University of Birmingham to commemorate Hall's contributions in pioneering the field of cultural studies at CCCS. By

11970-485: The Commons what she meant by socialism: [S]he was at a loss to reply. What in fact she meant was Government support for inefficient industries, punitive taxation, regulation of the labour market, price controls – everything that interfered with the functioning of the free economy. Under Margaret Thatcher's government, the taming of inflation displaced high employment as the primary policy objective. As

12141-512: The Conservatives now had an overall majority of 144 MPs. The second term saw Thatcher in full charge. Thatcher was prime minister during what The Guardian described as "the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS." Thousands of haemophiliacs were infected with HIV, Hepatitis C , or both, via the clotting-agent Factor VIII . Britain had imported infected supplies of Factor VIII from risky overseas commercial sources; it

12312-521: The Conservatives won 42.4% of the vote, the Labour Party 27.6% and the Alliance 25.4%. Though the gap between Labour and the Alliance was narrow in terms of votes, the Alliance vote was scattered, and they won only a fraction of the seats that Labour held, with its concentrated base. The Conservatives' share of the vote fell slightly (1.5%) since 1979. Labour's vote had fallen by far more (9.3%), and

12483-432: The English-speaking world, who really do represent treason of the intellectuals, I think, a 'betrayal of the clerks'." Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton is not wholly opposed to cultural studies, but has criticised aspects of it and highlighted what he sees as its strengths and weaknesses in books such as After Theory (2003). For Eagleton, literary and cultural theory have the potential to say important things about

12654-465: The Greek semeîon , 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to

12825-531: The NUJ urged them not to work there; the " refuseniks " refused to go to Wapping. Enough printers did come—670 in all—to produce the same number of papers that it took 6,800 men to print at the old shop. The efficiency was obvious and frightened the union into holding out an entire year. Thousands of union pickets tried to block shipments out of the plant; they injured 574 policemen. There were 1,500 arrests. The pickets failed. The union tried an illegal secondary boycott and

12996-623: The Prime Minister and suggested she should resign; according to her adviser, Tim Bell , "Margaret just told them to go away". Thatcher's key ally in the party was Home Secretary , and later Deputy Prime Minister, William Whitelaw . His moral authority and support allowed her to resist the internal threat from the " Heathite " wets . Following the Brixton riot in West London in April 1981, employment secretary Norman Tebbit , responding to

13167-453: The SAS men involved and sat among them watching a re-run of the attack. The breaking of the siege by the SAS was later ranked by the public as one of television's greatest moments. Her decisiveness—christened the "resolute approach" by the Prime Minister herself—became Thatcher's trademark and a source of her popularity. In the words of one historian: The mood reflected Mrs Thatcher's Iron Lady stance, her proclaimed intention of laying

13338-538: The SAS's action, social services secretary Norman Fowler agreed: "Mrs Thatcher attracted public support because she seemed to be taking action which the public overwhelmingly thought was right but never thought any government would have the nerve to carry out". When the Soviet Union troops entered Afghanistan in December 1979 , Thatcher saw it as a typical example of "relentless Communist imperialism". However,

13509-524: The Saussurean relationship of signifier and signified, asserting that signifier and signified are not fixed, coining the expression différance , relating to the endless deferral of meaning, and to the absence of a "transcendent signified". In the nineteenth century, Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he would sometimes spell as "semeiotic") as the "quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs," which abstracts "what must be

13680-502: The Saussurean semiotic is dyadic (sign/syntax, signal/semantics), the Peircean semiotic is triadic (sign, object, interpretant), being conceived as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial. Peirce would aim to base his new list directly upon experience precisely as constituted by action of signs, in contrast with the list of Aristotle's categories which aimed to articulate within experience

13851-626: The Sunday Times reported on the Queen's alleged criticism of Thatcher's policies, especially regarding the people of the Commonwealth, as "uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive." Thatcher often ridiculed the Commonwealth, which the Queen held in very high esteem. Biographer John Campbell reports that in July 1978, before Thatcher became prime minister, when asked by a Labour MP in

14022-716: The Treasury , Minister for the Civil Service , and Leader of the Conservative Party . In domestic policy, Thatcher implemented sweeping reforms concerning the affairs of the economy , eventually including the privatisation of most nationalised industries , and the weakening of trade unions. She emphasised reducing the government's role and letting the marketplace decide in terms of the neoliberal ideas pioneered by Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek , promoted by her mentor Keith Joseph , and promulgated by

14193-582: The United States, Reagan was supportive, but he also launched diplomatic initiatives to resolve the crisis without a war. Thatcher assembled and sent a naval task force to take back control in three days. In the six weeks it took to arrive, she engaged in diplomatic efforts moderated by Reagan's secretary of state Alexander Haig , but Argentina rejected all compromise proposals. Public opinion, and both major parties, backed Thatcher's aggressive response. The task force sank an Argentine cruiser , forcing

14364-497: The United States. Success came with the thaw in superpower relations, the consolidation of Thatcherism at home and the march of neo-liberal ideas internationally. On 2 April 1982, the ruling Argentine military junta invaded the Falkland Islands , and on 3 April invaded South Georgia , British Crown Colonies that Britain had always ruled but which Argentina had claimed . Thatcher had not previously shown concern for

14535-409: The agency of subordinated people run counter to the work of traditional structuralists . Some analysts have however been critical of some work in cultural studies that they feel overstates the significance of or even romanticizes some forms of popular cultural agency. Cultural studies often concerns itself with the agency at the level of the practices of everyday life, and approaches such research from

14706-435: The animal Umwelt a relation of self-identity within objects which transforms objects experienced into 'things' as well as +, –, 0 objects. Thus, the generically animal objective world as Umwelt , becomes a species-specifically human objective world or Lebenswelt ( ' life-world ' ), wherein linguistic communication, rooted in the biologically underdetermined Innenwelt ( ' inner-world ' ) of humans, makes possible

14877-421: The attainment of any end, especially happiness: or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts. Locke then elaborates on the nature of this third category, naming it Σημειωτική ( Semeiotike ), and explaining it as "the doctrine of signs" in the following terms: Thirdly,

15048-628: The attempt in 1867 by Charles Sanders Peirce to draw up a "new list of categories ". More recently Umberto Eco , in his Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language , has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers. John Locke (1690), himself a man of medicine , was familiar with this "semeiotics" as naming a specialized branch within medical science. In his personal library were two editions of Scapula's 1579 abridgement of Henricus Stephanus ' Thesaurus Graecae Linguae , which listed σημειωτική as

15219-457: The balance of payments in manufactured goods was in deficit. Chancellor Nigel Lawson told the Lords' Select Committee on Overseas Trade : "There is no adamantine law that says we have to produce as much in the way of manufactures as we consume. If it does turn out that we are relatively more efficient in world terms at providing services than at producing goods, then our national interest lies in

15390-689: The beginning of the 1990s. Cultural studies journals based in Asia include Inter-Asia Cultural Studies . In India, the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore and the Department of Cultural Studies at The English and Foreign Languages and the University of Hyderabad are two major institutional spaces for Cultural Studies. Marxism has been an important influence upon cultural studies. Those associated with CCCS initially engaged deeply with

15561-553: The bishop. White Rhodesians expected Britain to recognise the Muzorewa regime and end crippling sanctions. However, Thatcher reversed herself. She withheld recognition and manoeuvred the Muzorewa government into accepting new elections. They had to include Joshua Nkomo and his Zimbabwe African People's Union as well as Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union . These were revolutionary movements that Rhodesian security forces had been trying to suppress for years. Under her direction, foreign secretary Lord Carrington brokered

15732-450: The capitalist world, the overriding aim of government economic policy is to maintain consumer spending levels. This is an era when 'consumer confidence' is treated as the key indicator and cause of economic effectiveness." Cultural studies, drawing upon and developing semiotics , uses the concept of text to designate not only written language, but also television programs , films , photographs , fashion , hairstyles , and so forth;

15903-522: The changing political circumstances of class , politics , and culture in the United Kingdom, scholars at The Birmingham School turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci , an Italian thinker, writer, and Communist Party leader. Gramsci had been concerned with similar issues: why would Italian laborers and peasants vote for fascists ? What strategic approach is necessary to mobilize popular support in more progressive directions? Gramsci modified classical Marxism , and argued that culture must be understood as

16074-418: The characters of all signs used by…an intelligence capable of learning by experience," and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes. Peirce's perspective is considered as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial, and sign processes, modes of inference, and the inquiry process in general. The Peircean semiotic addresses not only

16245-541: The company did not research the codes underlying European culture. Its storybook retelling of European folktales was taken as elitist and insulting, and the strict appearance standards that it had for employees resulted in discrimination lawsuits in France. Disney souvenirs were perceived as cheap trinkets. The park was a financial failure because its code violated the expectations of European culture in ways that were offensive. However, some researchers have suggested that it

16416-511: The company is unaware of a culture's codes, it runs the risk of failing in its marketing. Globalization has caused the development of a global consumer culture where products have similar associations, whether positive or negative, across numerous markets. Mistranslations may lead to instances of " Engrish " or " Chinglish " terms for unintentionally humorous cross-cultural slogans intended to be understood in English. When translating surveys ,

16587-478: The constitutional affairs of Northern Ireland is a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, this government, this parliament, and no-one else ". In 1981, a number of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison (also known in Northern Ireland as Long Kesh , its previous official name) went on hunger strike to regain

16758-419: The contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. In recent decades, as capitalism has spread throughout the world via contemporary forms of globalization , cultural studies has generated important analyses of local sites and practices of negotiation with and resistance to Western hegemony . Cultural studies criticizes the traditional view of the passive consumer, particularly by underlining

16929-559: The conversation surrounding musical tropes—or "topics"—in order to create a collection of musical figures that have historically been indicative of a given style. Robert Hatten continues this conversation in Beethoven, Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (1994), in which he states that "richly coded style types which carry certain features linked to affect, class, and social occasion such as church styles, learned styles, and dance styles. In complex forms these topics mingle, providing

17100-400: The cultural realm of everyday common sense. Hegemony was always, for Gramsci, an interminable, unstable and contested process. Scott Lash writes: In the work of Hall, Hebdige and McRobbie, popular culture came to the fore... What Gramsci gave to this was the importance of consent and culture. If the fundamental Marxists saw the power in terms of class-versus-class, then Gramsci gave to us

17271-511: The development of British Cultural Studies, see, for example, the work of Richard Hoggart , E. P. Thompson , Raymond Williams , Stuart Hall, Paul Willis , Angela McRobbie , Paul Gilroy , David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon , Richard Dyer , and others. There are also many published overviews of the historical development of cultural studies, including Graeme Turner's British Cultural Studies: An Introduction , 3rd Ed. and John Hartley's A Short History of Cultural Studies Beginning in 1964, after

17442-462: The different ways people read , receive and interpret cultural texts, or appropriate other kinds of cultural products, or otherwise participate in the production and circulation of meanings. On this view, a consumer can appropriate , actively rework, or challenge the meanings circulated through cultural texts. In some of its variants, cultural studies has shifted the analytical focus from traditional understandings of production to consumption – viewed as

17613-512: The dimension of being that is independent of experience and knowable as such, through human understanding. The estimative powers of animals interpret the environment as sensed to form a "meaningful world" of objects, but the objects of this world (or Umwelt , in Jakob von Uexküll 's term) consist exclusively of objects related to the animal as desirable (+), undesirable (–), or "safe to ignore" (0). In contrast to this, human understanding adds to

17784-562: The dream started with "dream thoughts" which were like logical, verbal sentences. He believed that the dream thought was in the nature of a taboo wish that would awaken the dreamer. In order to safeguard sleep, the midbrain converts and disguises the verbal dream thought into an imagistic form, through processes he called the "dream-work." Semiotics can be directly linked to the ideals of musical topic theory, which traces patterns in musical figures throughout their prevalent context in order to assign some aspect of narrative, affect, or aesthetics to

17955-669: The emphasis in the work of Marshall McLuhan , Harold Innis , and others. Cultural studies journals based in Canada include Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies . In Africa, human rights and Third-World issues are among the central topics treated. There is a thriving cultural and media studies scholarship in Southern Africa, with its locus in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Cultural Studies journals based in Africa include

18126-462: The existence of signs that are symbols; semblances ("icons"); and "indices," i.e., signs that are such through a factual connection to their objects. Peircean scholar and editor Max H. Fisch (1978) would claim that "semeiotic" was Peirce's own preferred rendering of Locke's σημιωτική. Charles W. Morris followed Peirce in using the term "semiotic" and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals. While

18297-444: The external communication mechanism, as per Saussure, but the internal representation machine, investigating sign processes, and modes of inference, as well as the whole inquiry process in general. Peircean semiotic is triadic, including sign, object, interpretant, as opposed to the dyadic Saussurian tradition (signifier, signified). Peircean semiotics further subdivides each of the three triadic elements into three sub-types, positing

18468-522: The flagship journal of the field, has been based in the US since its founding editor, John Fiske , brought it there from Australia in 1987. A thriving cultural studies scene has existed in Australia since the late 1970s, when several key CS practitioners emigrated there from the UK, bringing British Cultural Studies with them, after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979. A school of cultural studies known as cultural policy studies

18639-414: The flavor championed by Stuart Hall, lacks a stable research agenda, and privileges the contemporary reading of texts, thus producing an ahistorical theoretical focus. Many, however, would argue, following Hall, that cultural studies have always sought to avoid the establishment of a fixed research agenda; this follows from its critique of disciplinarity. Moreover, Hall and many others have long argued against

18810-482: The following five main characteristics of cultural studies: Dennis Dworkin writes that "a critical moment" in the beginning of cultural studies as a field was when Richard Hoggart used the term in 1964 in founding the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham . The centre would become home to the development of the intellectual orientation that has become known internationally as

18981-681: The forces within and through which socially organized people conduct and participate in the construction of their everyday lives. Cultural studies combines a variety of politically engaged critical approaches drawn including semiotics , Marxism , feminist theory , ethnography , post-structuralism , postcolonialism , social theory , political theory , history , philosophy , literary theory , media theory , film/video studies , communication studies , political economy , translation studies , museum studies and art history /criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies and historical periods. Cultural studies seeks to understand how meaning

19152-881: The foreign ministry said the Kremlin was desperately trying to save its failing ally there. Thatcher supported the American plan to boycott the Moscow Olympics, as did Parliament. However, the athletes disagreed, and they went to Moscow anyway. Thatcher gave the go ahead for Whitehall to approve MI6 (and the SAS) to undertake 'disruptive action' in Afghanistan. Supporting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Operation Cyclone , they also supplied weapons, training and intelligence to

19323-413: The further dimension of cultural organization within the otherwise merely social organization of non-human animals whose powers of observation may deal only with directly sensible instances of objectivity. This further point, that human culture depends upon language understood first of all not as communication, but as the biologically underdetermined aspect or feature of the human animal's Innenwelt ,

19494-414: The gesture. Danuta Mirka's The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory presents a holistic recognition and overview regarding the subject, offering insight into the development of the theory. In recognizing the indicative and symbolic elements of a musical line, gesture, or occurrence, one can gain a greater understanding of aspects regarding compositional intent and identity. Philosopher Charles Pierce discusses

19665-484: The heartland of Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. Thatcher recognised that Soviet hegemony was vulnerable in Poland and offered public support for Lech Wałęsa and his Solidarity labour union , in close co-operation with the United States and Pope John Paul II (a long-time leader of Polish Catholicism). Thatcher considered Poland as a key centre of Soviet vulnerability. She offered limited help to Solidarity in tandem with

19836-408: The high number of people claiming unemployment benefit while working, unemployment never reached three million. By 1983, manufacturing output had dropped by 30% from 1978, although economic growth had been re-established the previous year. The productivity turnaround from labour-shedding proved to be a one-off and was not matched by growth in output. The industrial base was so reduced that thereafter

20007-404: The idea because it would lead to a "property-owning democracy". By the 1970s, many working-class people had ample incomes for home ownership, and eagerly accepted Thatcher's invitation to purchase their homes at a sizeable discount. The new owners were more likely to vote Conservative, as Thatcher had hoped. The downside to this was that it eventually led to council house shortages, as the share of

20178-433: The idea that it should aspire toward "scientificity," and has marshalled a wide range of theoretical and methodological arguments against the fetishization of "scientificity" as a basis for cultural studies. Two sociologists who have been critical of cultural studies, Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner , argue in their article, "Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn," that cultural studies, particularly

20349-535: The impending failure of the strike and, worn down by months of protests, began to defy the union's rulings, starting splinter groups and advising workers that returning to work was the only viable option. The miners' strike lasted a full year before the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. Conservative governments proceeded to close all but 15 of the country's pits, with the remaining 15 being sold off and privatised in 1994. Since then, private companies have acquired licences to open new pits and open-cast sites, with

20520-476: The imposition of a local poll tax . As her support ebbed away, she was challenged for her leadership and persuaded by Cabinet to withdraw from the second round of voting – ending her eleven-year premiership. She was succeeded by John Major , her Chancellor of the Exchequer . Thatcher was Britain and Europe's first female prime minister. She appointed few women to high office and did not make women's issues

20691-439: The individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. To coin a word to refer to a thing , the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their language, but that word can transmit that meaning only within the language's grammatical structures and codes . Codes also represent

20862-663: The initial appearance of the founding works of British Cultural Studies in the late 1950s, Stuart Hall 's pioneering work at CCCS , along with that of his colleagues and postgraduate students, gave shape and substance to the field of cultural studies. This would include such people as Paul Willis , Dick Hebdige , David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon , John Clarke, Richard Dyer , Judith Williamson, Richard Johnson, Iain Chambers , Dorothy Hobson, Chris Weedon , Tony Jefferson, Michael Green and Angela McRobbie . Many cultural studies scholars employed Marxist methods of analysis , exploring

21033-683: The islands and had proposed large-scale cuts to her naval forces . Thatcher listened primarily to Admiral Henry Leach , the First Sea Lord ; and to Admiral Sir Terence Lewin , the Chief of the Defence Staff . She immediately decided to expel the invaders. She replaced foreign minister Lord Carrington with Francis Pym and rounded up diplomatic support. The United Nations Security Council denounced Argentina's aggression, and France and other allies provided diplomatic and military support. In

21204-527: The key issues addressed by Latin American cultural studies scholars are decoloniality , urban cultures , and postdevelopment theory . Latin American cultural studies journals include the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies . Even though cultural studies developed much more rapidly in the UK than in continental Europe , there is significant cultural studies presence in countries such as France , Spain , and Portugal . The field

21375-496: The largest amount of public subsidies going to any nationalised industry: by 1984 the annual cost to taxpayers of uneconomic pits had reached £1 billion. The year-long confrontation over strikes carried out from April 1984 by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in opposition to proposals to close a large number of unprofitable mines, proved a decisive victory for Thatcher. The Government had made preparations to counter

21546-613: The late 1970s, scholars associated with The Birmingham School had firmly placed questions of gender and race on the cultural studies agenda, where they have remained ever since. Also by the late 1970s, cultural studies had begun to attract a great deal of international attention. It spread globally throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As it did so, it both encountered new conditions of knowledge production, and engaged with other major international intellectual currents such as poststructuralism , postmodernism , and postcolonialism . The wide range of cultural studies journals now located throughout

21717-437: The level of methodology , these scholars dispute the theoretical underpinning of the movement's critical framework. Bloom stated his position during the 3 September 2000 episode of C-SPAN 's Booknotes , while discussing his book How to Read and Why : [T]here are two enemies of reading now in the world, not just in the English-speaking world. One [is] the lunatic destruction of literary studies...and its replacement by what

21888-513: The majority of the original mines destroyed and the land redeveloped. The defeat of the miners' strike led to a long period of demoralisation in the whole of the trade union movement. The 51-week miners' strike of 1984–85 was followed a year later by the 54-week Wapping dispute launched by newspaper printers in London. It resulted in a second major defeat for unions and another victory for Thatcher's union policies, especially her assurance that

22059-417: The meanings and practices that arise from the constant power dynamics that comprise culture. Hall viewed culture as a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled." He perceived culture as a power dynamic, in which the media unintentionally possesses more control over ideology than the public. Hall viewed the media as a source of preserving

22230-521: The media as Thatcherism . In foreign policy, Thatcher decisively defeated Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982. In longer-range terms she worked with Ronald Reagan to actively oppose Soviet communism during the Cold War . However, she also promoted collaboration with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in ending the Cold War . In her first years she had a deeply divided cabinet. As the leader of

22401-508: The middle of a recession, leading to newspaper headlines the following morning of "Howe it Hurts", a reference to the Chancellor Geoffrey Howe . In 1981, as unemployment soared (exceeding 2.5 million by the summer and heading towards 3 million before Christmas) and the Government's popularity plunged, the party chairman, Lord Thorneycroft , and two cabinet ministers, Lord Carrington and Humphrey Atkins , confronted

22572-418: The misunderstanding that textual analysis is the sole methodology of cultural studies, and have practiced numerous other approaches, as noted above. Rojek and Turner also level the accusation that there is "a sense of moral superiority about the correctness of the political views articulated" in cultural studies. Semiotics Semiotics ( / ˌ s ɛ m i ˈ ɒ t ɪ k s / SEM -ee- OT -iks )

22743-511: The money from the sale of the houses to be used to construct more council properties gradually fell by the end of the 1980s, and saw fewer councils building affordable housing. To deal with economic stagnation in the inner cities, the Government introduced "enterprise zones" starting in 1981; the idea began in Britain and was adopted by the United States and some EU countries. It targeted designated small, economically depressed neighbourhoods and exempted them from some regulations and taxes. The goal

22914-662: The most decisive landslide since the general election of 1945 . The Labour Party at this time had split, and there was a new challenge in the SDP–Liberal Alliance , formed by an electoral pact between the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party . However, this grouping failed to make its intended breakthrough, despite briefly holding an opinion poll lead. In the June 1983 general election,

23085-672: The name for ' diagnostics ' , the branch of medicine concerned with interpreting symptoms of disease (" symptomatology "). Physician and scholar Henry Stubbe (1670) had transliterated this term of specialized science into English precisely as " semeiotics ", marking the first use of the term in English: "…nor is there any thing to be relied upon in Physick, but an exact knowledge of medicinal phisiology (founded on observation, not principles), semeiotics, method of curing, and tried (not excogitated, not commanding) medicines.…" Locke would use

23256-502: The name to subtitle his founding at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal, Sign Systems Studies . Ferdinand de Saussure founded his semiotics, which he called semiology , in the social sciences: It is…possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from

23427-658: The offer, and on 24 January 1986, its 6,000 members at Murdoch's papers went on strike. Meanwhile, News International had built and clandestinely equipped a new printing plant in the London district of Wapping . The principal print unions—the National Graphical Association (NGA), the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT 82) and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW)—ran closed shops: only union members could be hired at

23598-521: The old Fleet Street plants; most were sons of members. However, the new plant in Wapping did not have a closed shop contract. The company activated its new plant with the assistance of another union, the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU). Most journalists (members of the National Union of Journalists ) moved to Wapping, and NUJ Chapels continued to operate. However,

23769-558: The passive dupes of the dominant class and its ideology. The development of hegemony theory in cultural studies was in some ways consonant with work in other fields exploring agency , a theoretical concept that insists on the active, critical capacities of subordinated people (e.g. the working classes , colonized peoples, women). As Stuart Hall famously argued in his 1981 essay, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular ' ": "ordinary people are not cultural dopes." Insistence on accounting for

23940-542: The police would defend the plants against pickets trying to shut them down. The target was Britain's largest privately owned newspaper empire, News International (parent of The Times and News of the World and others, all owned by Rupert Murdoch ). He wanted to introduce technological innovations that would put 90% of the old-fashioned typesetters out of work. The company offered redundancy payments of £2,000 to £30,000 to each printer to quit their old jobs. The union rejected

24111-602: The post- Baudrillardian world of ubiquitous technology. Its central move is to place the finiteness of thought at the root of semiotics and the sign as a secondary but fundamental analytical construct. The theory contends that the levels of reproduction that technology is bringing to human environments demands this reprioritisation if semiotics is to remain relevant in the face of effectively infinite signs. The shift in emphasis allows practical definitions of many core constructs in semiotics which Shackell has applied to areas such as human computer interaction , creativity theory, and

24282-451: The post-WWII period. Also during the 1970s, the politically formidable British working classes were in decline. Britain's manufacturing industries while continuing to grow in output and value, were decreasing in share of GDP and numbers employed, and union rolls were shrinking. Millions of working-class Britons backed the rise of Margaret Thatcher , through the labour losses. For Stuart Hall and his colleagues, this shift in loyalty from

24453-449: The prominent cognitive semioticians are Per Aage Brandt , Svend Østergaard, Peer Bundgård, Frederik Stjernfelt , Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Jordan Zlatev. Zlatev later in co-operation with Göran Sonesson established CCS (Center for Cognitive Semiotics) at Lund University , Sweden. Finite semiotics , developed by Cameron Shackell (2018, 2019), aims to unify existing theories of semiotics for application to

24624-483: The receiving culture. A good example of branding according to cultural code is Disney 's international theme park business. Disney fits well with Japan 's cultural code because the Japanese value " cuteness ", politeness, and gift-giving as part of their culture code; Tokyo Disneyland sells the most souvenirs of any Disney theme park. In contrast, Disneyland Paris failed when it launched as Euro Disney because

24795-648: The recession of 1979–81. This labour-shedding helped firms deal with long-standing X-inefficiency from over-manning, enabling the British economy to catch up to the productivity levels of other advanced capitalist countries. The link between the money supply and inflation was proven accurate, and by January 1982, the inflation rate had dropped back to 8.6% from earlier highs of 18%. Interest rates were then allowed to fall. Unemployment continued to rise, passing 3 million by January 1982 and remaining this high until early 1987. However, Tebbit later suggested that, due to

24966-531: The relationship between pictures and time in a chronological manner as in a comic strip; the rhetoric model, which compares pictures with different devices as in a metaphor; and the Laokoon model, which considers the limits and constraints of pictorial expressions by comparing textual mediums that utilize time with visual mediums that utilize space. The break from traditional art history and theory—as well as from other major streams of semiotic analysis—leaves open

25137-433: The relationship of icons and indexes in relation to signification and semiotics. In doing so, he draws on the elements of various ideas, acts, or styles that can be translated into a different field. Whereas indexes consist of a contextual representation of a symbol, icons directly correlate with the object or gesture that is being referenced. In his 1980 book Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, Leonard Ratner amends

25308-509: The relationships between cultural forms (i.e., the superstructure ) and that of the political economy (i.e., the base ). By the 1970s, the work of Louis Althusser radically rethought the Marxist account of base and superstructure in ways that had a significant influence on the "Birmingham School." Much of the work done at CCCS studied youth-subcultural expressions of antagonism toward "respectable" middle-class British culture in

25479-656: The rise of neoliberalism in Britain and the US, cultural studies both became a global movement, and attracted the attention of many conservative opponents both within and beyond universities for a variety of reasons. A worldwide movement of students and practitioners with a raft of scholarly associations and programs, annual international conferences and publications carry on work in this field today. Distinct approaches to cultural studies have emerged in different national and regional contexts. In his 1994 book, Introducing Cultural Studies , orientalist scholar Ziauddin Sardar lists

25650-534: The same symbol may mean different things in the source and target language thus leading to potential errors. For example, the symbol of "x" is used to mark a response in English language surveys but "x" usually means ' no ' in the Chinese convention. This may be caused by a sign that, in Peirce's terms, mistakenly indexes or symbolizes something in one culture, that it does not in another. In other words, it creates

25821-470: The ships destined for cuts proved essential in the Falklands War. One of Thatcher's largest and most successful policies assisted council tenants in public housing to purchase their homes at favourable rates. The "Right to Buy" had emerged in the late 1940s, but was too great a challenge to the post-war consensus to win Conservative endorsement. Thatcher from her earliest days in politics favoured

25992-494: The signs get more symbolic value. The flexibility of human semiotics is well demonstrated in dreams. Sigmund Freud spelled out how meaning in dreams rests on a blend of images, affects , sounds, words, and kinesthetic sensations. In his chapter on "The Means of Representation," he showed how the most abstract sorts of meaning and logical relations can be represented by spatial relations. Two images in sequence may indicate "if this, then that" or "despite this, that." Freud thought

26163-410: The status of political prisoners , which had been revoked five years earlier under the preceding Labour government. Bobby Sands , the first of the strikers, was elected as an MP for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone a few weeks before he died of starvation. Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for republican prisoners, famously declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it

26334-467: The status quo of a reflection that already exists in society. The media hegemony in question, he emphasized, "is not a conscious plot or conspiracy, it’s not overtly coercive, and its effects are not total." Compared to other thinkers on this subject, he studied and analyzed symbols, ideologies, signs, and other representations within cultural studies. Most of his contributions occurred in the 1980s, where he looked at how media cultivates cultural power, how it

26505-483: The study of meaning-making by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences. This involves conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental investigations. Cognitive semiotics initially was developed at the Center for Semiotics at Aarhus University ( Denmark ), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst

26676-467: The success of the Lancaster House negotiations can be explained by four factors: A balance of forces on the battlefield that clearly favoured the nationalists; international sanctions and their adverse effects on Rhodesia's economy and Salisbury's ability to wage war; a particular pattern of third party interests; and finally, the skill and resources that Lord Carrington as mediator brought to

26847-547: The table. Thatcher's determination to face down political violence was first demonstrated during the 1980 siege of the Embassy of Iran , London, when the armed forces were for the first time in 70 years authorised to use lethal force on the British mainland. For six days in May, 26 hostages were held by six gunmen; the siege came to a dramatic end with a successful raid by SAS commandos. Later that day, Thatcher went to congratulate

27018-556: The technical process cannot be separated from the fact that the receiver must decode the data, i.e., be able to distinguish the data as salient , and make meaning out of it. This implies that there is a necessary overlap between semiotics and communication. Indeed, many of the concepts are shared, although in each field the emphasis is different. In Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics , Marcel Danesi (1994) suggested that semioticians' priorities were to study signification first, and communication second. A more extreme view

27189-607: The term cultural studies specifically refers to the field in the Anglosphere , especially British Cultural Studies, to differentiate it from the German Kulturwissenschaft which developed along different lines and is characterized by its distance from political science. However, Kulturwissenschaft and cultural studies are often used interchangeably, particularly by lay people. Throughout Asia, cultural studies have boomed and thrived since at least

27360-528: The term sem(e)iotike in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (book IV, chap. 21), in which he explains how science may be divided into three parts: All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, first, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for

27531-603: The texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. This conception of textuality derives especially from the work of the pioneering and influential semiotician, Roland Barthes , but also owes debts to other sources, such as Juri Lotman and his colleagues from Tartu–Moscow School . Similarly, the field widens the concept of culture . Cultural studies approach the sites and spaces of everyday life, such as pubs, living rooms, gardens, and beaches, as "texts." Culture , in this context, includes not only high culture , but also everyday meanings and practices,

27702-420: The third branch [of sciences] may be termed σημειωτικὴ , or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Λογικὴ , logic; the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. Juri Lotman introduced Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopted Locke's coinage ( Σημειωτική ) as

27873-449: The way to understanding an action of signs beyond the realm of animal life (study of phytosemiosis + zoösemiosis + anthroposemiosis = biosemiotics ), which was his first advance beyond Latin Age semiotics. Other early theorists in the field of semiotics include Charles W. Morris . Writing in 1951, Jozef Maria Bochenski surveyed the field in this way: "Closely related to mathematical logic

28044-486: The work of Martin Krampen , but takes advantage of Peirce's point that an interpretant, as the third item within a sign relation, "need not be mental". Peirce distinguished between the interpretant and the interpreter. The interpretant is the internal, mental representation that mediates between the object and its sign. The interpreter is the human who is creating the interpretant. Peirce's "interpretant" notion opened

28215-416: The world of nature and 'symbols' ( σύμβολον sýmbolon ) in the world of culture. As such, Plato and Aristotle explored the relationship between signs and the world. It would not be until Augustine of Hippo that the nature of the sign would be considered within a conventional system. Augustine introduced a thematic proposal for uniting the two under the notion of 'sign' ( signum ) as transcending

28386-508: The world, as shown below, is one indication of the globalization of the field. For overviews of and commentaries on developments in cultural studies during the twenty-first century, see Lawrence Grossberg's Cultural Studies in the Future Tense , Gilbert Rodman's Why Cultural Studies? and Graeme Turner's What's Become of Cultural Studies? Hall's cultural studies explores culture as a system that affects individuals' identities through

28557-475: Was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions but, unlike the Heath government, adopted a strategy of incremental change rather than a single Act. Several unions launched strikes in response, but these actions eventually collapsed. Gradually, Thatcher's reforms reduced the power and influence of the unions. The changes were chiefly focused upon preventing the recurrence of the large-scale industrial actions of

28728-474: Was elected to the position in 1979 , having led the Conservative Party since 1975, and won landslide re-elections for the Conservatives in 1983 and 1987 . She gained intense media attention as Britain's first female prime minister, and was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. Her premiership ended when she withdrew from the 1990 Conservative leadership election . As prime minister, Thatcher also served simultaneously as First Lord of

28899-451: Was originally clearly identified by Thomas A. Sebeok . Sebeok also played the central role in bringing Peirce's work to the center of the semiotic stage in the twentieth century, first with his expansion of the human use of signs ( anthroposemiosis ) to include also the generically animal sign-usage ( zoösemiosis ), then with his further expansion of semiosis to include the vegetative world ( phytosemiosis ). Such would initially be based on

29070-635: Was to attract private capital and new business activity that would bring jobs and progress to declining areas. Important projects included those in London Docklands , Salford and Gateshead. Before the 1979 election Thatcher was on record as supporting the all-white government of Ian Smith in Rhodesia. Under intense world pressure it held elections that included some black voters. One of them, Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa , became prime minister of " Zimbabwe-Rhodesia " in June 1979 with Smith's support. Thatcher, new to 10 Downing Street, praised

29241-702: Was widely shared in the UK. Historian Ezequiel Mercau argues that the islanders' demands for decolonisation were weak. Instead their predominant sentiment was a close "kith and kin" identification with the people of Great Britain that gave the Falklanders a "loyalty to the Crown ." In May 1980, one day before Thatcher was due to meet the Irish Taoiseach , Charles Haughey , to discuss Northern Ireland, she announced in Parliament that "the future of

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