Semiotic Criticism in Cinema Research

Semiotics is known as the branch of science that examines the process of creating and producing meaning through signs. Semiology; it has found place in cinema, television, theater, medicine, architecture, veterinary, in short, in many fields of science and art. It is thought that the main important move of semiology is to take linguistics as a model and to apply linguistic concepts to communication phenomena. These phenomena can be movies, serials, programs, advertisements, fashion, food, etc. and anything that conveys information. These phenomena, to be analyzed, are called text and meaning is derived from the relations between signs.

Among the theorists studying on relationship between semiotics and cinema, Christian Metz stands out as the one who did the first studies. Metz used the semiotic method to reveal the meaning in motion pictures. Metz aims to put film criticism on a scientific basis and to reveal the laws that can be applied to all films as a result of the analysis of films frame by frame.

In the study, articles on film criticism and semiotics published in the journals in DergiPark were scanned and how they used semiotic analysis methods in films was examined. It has been tried to reveal in articles which theorists’ perspectives and concepts use more in the field of film criticism. In the preliminary scan, it was seen that Greimas’ actantial model, Saussure’s distinction between signifier/signified and Barthes's denotation/connotation concepts were used.

Keywords

Film criticism, Semiotics, cinema, semiotic criticism, cinema semiotics