Reproducing Meaning: A Dialogic Approach to Sports and Semiotics

Abstract

The wide variety of the components of signs stems from verbal communication to visual gestures, ciphers, images, music, and Morse code. Barthes’ Semiotic Theory restructured the theory of analyzing signs and allowed for a new understanding and interpretation of signs through seeing diverse cultures and societies. Saussure’s definition of the sign as a combination of signifier and signified led Barthes to further elucidate sign as connotative (cultural) and denotative (literal) processes. Semiotics can be applied to all aspects of life, as meaning is produced not in isolation but in totality, establishing multiple connotations and denotations. In the article “The World of Wrestling” published in Mythologies (1957), Barthes focused on images portrayed by the wrestler resulting in understanding of the wrestler’s image and the image of spectator. In Morse code, gestures can make any sport a spectacle of suffering, defeat and justice, representation of morality, symbols, anger, smile, passion etc., from which derive denotative and connotative meanings. Similarly, Thomas Sebeok identifies sign as one of six factors in communication, and which makes up the rich domain of semiotic research. These are message, source, destination, channel, code, and context. The present paper will focus on a dialogic relation between semiotics and sports, thus making it a text that reproduces meaning and represents certain groups. It focuses on various aspects of semiotics and their relation to sports. The paper also contemplates the versions and meanings of signs in sports that establish sport as an act of representation.