(response essay -- semiotics)

Man’s experience of life is inextricable from man’s capacity to make meanings out of situations and things they encounter. Objects and events have a bearing upon a person’s life because they mean something to him. The production of meaning is essentially a process of sign-making: people typically interpret things by (unconsciously) relating them to familiar systems of conventions. Semiotics studies this process; it looks at the ways meaning is produced in the system of sign-making.

The Saussurean sign is the total that results from the relationship between the signifier and the signified. The model excludes reference to objects that exist in the real world. In the Saussurean model, the signifier is the form that sign exists in, while the signified is the concept in the mind that a signifier evokes. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as ‘signification’. The signifier and the signified of a sign are interdependent: a sign must have a signified and a signifier to function. A sign is then a combination of a signifier with a particular signified. The same signifier can stand for a variety of signifieds. An arrow painted on a road sign alongside a name of a place signifies the direction one should follow to reach the place, while the arrow next to the address bar in an Internet browser indicates that one should click on it to continue. In the same way, a number of signifiers can stand for a particular concept (signified). Black and white, for example, are both colours that can signify mourning.

Saussure's idea of meaning was distinctively differential: he emphasized the differences between signs. He did not define signs in terms of some 'essential' or intrinsic nature. If one signifier can stand for different concepts, similarly a particular concept can be signified by a variety of signifiers, it follows that the relationship between a signifier and a signified (a signification) is arbitrary. A chess piece, for example, does not have much value in a domino game. This is because the domino game works within a framework (a system) that differs from the framework of a game of chess. The chess piece is a signifier. In a chess game, it matters whether a chess piece is a Bishop, a King, or a Queen. In a domino game, a Bishop and a King will share an identical signified as signifiers: they do not matter. Moreover, when the idea of a system is brought in, in addition to being differential, meaning is also relational. The meaning or the value of a sign (the chess piece) depends on the system (the game) in which it is located. This may suggest that, in the manner that langue pre-exists parole, the signified precedes the signifier. The signified, however, does not make possible the production of signs. To return to the idea stated earlier in the essay: people interpret things by (unconsciously) relating them to familiar systems of conventions. Signs are produced when people assign meaning to passive objects; it is the systems of conventions that make possible the production of signs.

To interpret things by relating them to familiar systems of conventions is the classic way of thinking. Interpretation is then a process of signification. The previous paragraph has discussed the arbitrariness of signs. Divested of meaning, an object is passive and neutral; to assign meaning to and convert an object into a sign is, in a way, to allocate connotative meanings to the object. In literary texts, semiotics function largely in this connotational aspect. It is of real value that words – like objects in themselves (divested of meaning) – are neutral. The inherently neutral quality of words makes it possible to assign limitless number of connotations (signifieds) to them. This quality will also be significant when one enters into discussions on Deconstruction.

Any occasion of interpretation or meaning production involves the creation of signs. A film like Bend It Like Beckham, for example, trusts almost completely in its audience’s capacity for sign-making. The primary code is one of identity – cultural and gender. The audience must recognise the intended signs in the film in order to appreciate the conflicts in it, and to finally respond to their resolution. In the meantime, do recall the perfect tagline: “Who wants to cook Aloo Gobi when you can bend a ball like Beckham?”

The creation of any work of art involves, on the part of the creator, certain assumptions with regards to the audience’s regulative matrix (in this case, the regulative matrix is the set of socio-cultural conventions which will enable the audience to respond to the film). The audience is expected to recognize the assumptions that accompany a family of Indian immigrant living in Britain – of their place in the society, their need to adapt and to retain their cultural heritage at the same time. The audience must also, to a degree, be able to appreciate the complexity of the relationships between the children and their parents (of both families – the Bhamras and the Paxtons) that are affected by ideas of cultural identity and notions of propriety.
Within the codes of sports, masculine (gender) identity, and Britain’s mainstream culture, Beckham is an obvious sign. Then there is Jess Bhamra, who gradually acquires the function of a sign.

The film provides scenes of day-to-day activities in the Bhamra household; this helps to locate Jess within a specific system that is the family and, in a larger milieu, people who share a similar cultural identity with the family. To the framework outside this system, Jess becomes more or less a sign, which signifies the system. When the two signs (Jess and Beckham) are contrasted (the act of contrasting is a part of the syntagmatic structure of the film), each becomes heavily loaded with connotations. The audience understands that what one is the other is not (to emphasize the arbitrariness of signification, one should say, rather: what one is, the other cannot be). What Beckham is, Jess Bhamra cannot be – and vice versa. This opposition is of course what creates the main conflict in the movie. The intended meaning of the movie is constructed out of this opposition too. One knows, so far, that Jess and Beckham, as signs, are opposites: each carries a set of connotational values that are conflicting. When Jess gives up aloo gobi and takes up soccer, the conventions that are responsible for the construction of each sign is modified. In the process of modification, the film communicates its meaning: bend the rules, get what you want.

As far as literature is concerned, in the process of interpretation, the reader brings into the act of reading her knowledge of the world. In Linguistics Poetics, Culler speaks of texts as having been written in such a way that they are not immediately intelligible. Texts need to be transformed into more straightforward statements for comprehension. The transformation is in fact the process of interpretations. This is the process of naturalization, during which the reader makes known whatever is initially unknown in the text. Her socio-cultural knowledge should supply information that is needed for familiarity with the particularities of the poem. The process of naturalization is similar in manner to the convention of significance that Culler proposes. While it is conventional that all readers involve their socio-cultural knowledge in the act of reading, the nature of that knowledge varies between readers. Any interpretation of the text is therefore arbitrary. It is the reader who, assisted by her social or cultural conventions, invests meaning in objects, ideas or images in the poem, making signs out of them. It is the reader who reads the text as a sign. Considered in this manner, the readers are producers, rather than consumers, of meaning.
Consider this poem:

Listen to the song of the reed flute,
It sings of separation.
Torn from the leaf-layered, wind-voiced
Banks of the pond,
It is joined to sorrow and joy
By a slender sound.
Who, asked Rumi, can understand
The Reed’s longing to return?
Let its raw lips rest then;
Let all words be brief then.
And I, O Believers, cried Rumi
(Having lost the man he loved),
I who am not of the East
Nor of the West, un-Christian,
Not Muslim or Jew, neither
Born of Adam nor Eve,
What can I love but the world itself,
What can I kiss but flesh?
Let my raw lips rest then.
Let all words be brief.


Khair’s “Rumi and the Reed” locates Rumi and Sufism in the present day context. Examined in the context of Sufism, the contemporary assumption of categorical identity is absurd. Sufism, of which Rumi is a practitioner, believes that the essence of Being is unmanifested, yet is present in and indivisible from all things. It follows that all beings come from a single source. All beings, therefore, share one essential identity. The concept of categorical identity cannot figure in Sufism. On the contrary, in the contemporary context where identity is categorical, Rumi is inevitably rootless. Rumi belongs to all categories of identity since all categories, for a Sufi, is one. The contemporary context cannot admit this anomalous contingency: one must belong; one must be a part of a category. The poem is founded on the contrast between the concept of identity as derived from the belief of Sufism and the way identity is perceived in the contemporary world.

The reader interprets a poem through a set of signs. Rumi, the East/ the West, Christian / Muslim / Jew, and Adam / Eve are present as signs in the poem. Rumi is a sign that acquires meaning within the code of Sufism. Knowledge of Sufism enables the reader to invest meaning in Rumi and to thereby make out the connotation Rumi has to the basic belief of Sufism, that the essence of Being is present in and indivisible from all things. The rest of the signs acquire their meaning within the code of identity, as it is understood in the contemporary context. The reader needs to be able to grasp the connotation that the contrast between East and West suggests. The situation of the world in the present day suggests a sharp distinction between an Eastern and Western cultural identity. There are sets of values associated with each, and the reader must work under the assumption that Eastern and Western values are firmly not interchangeable.

The reader is required to understand the criticality that the concept of identity has acquired in the present world. There is suggested, for example, a sense of potential violence when one category of identity is contrasted with another – particularly religious identity. This is however a connotation that the concept of identity has adopted in the contemporary context. In order to interpret the poem completely, the reader needs to be able to comprehend the nuances of meaning – the connotative meanings – that each sign carries. This is possible only when the codes of Sufism, and of identity in the contemporary context, are a part of the reader’s regulative matrix.

In order to account for the production of meaning, there needs to be a paradigmatic analysis of the poem. The ‘reed flute’ is chosen out of the paradigm of musical instruments. Since a poem must cohere, the reader may conclude that the reed flute is chosen because it’s particular to the Persian culture, which is the origin of Sufism. Having identified the connotation of Sufism that Rumi carries, the reader understands that one of the several ideas the poem operates by is the doctrine of Sufism – that all beings share an essential identity. This recognition assists in converting the reed flute that sings of separation into a metaphor. The reed flute that sings of separation comes to emphasize the longing the human self must feel as a result of the self’s secession from its pool of essence. The choice of ‘reed’ (from the paradigm of other plants, for example) enables the author to suggest to the readers the sense of being plucked from a life-giving source (the pond), while at the same time permitting him to hint at the Persian connection.

The reader can therefore conclude that to introduce the categorization of identity is nothing less than the act of plucking reeds from their banks in the pond, causing the longing the return in the subjects being plucked (the reed and the human self).
The syntagmatic analysis of the poem must focus on the manner in which the signs are combined. At the point where Rumi says he is “not of the East nor of the West, un-Christian, not Muslim or Jew, neither born of Adam nor Eve”, what is implied is Rumi’s rootlessness. The categories exist. The reader, assisted by her cultural conventions, presumes that any human being must position himself within any of these categories. The positioning of East / West, Christian / Jew / Muslim, Adam /Eve, is such that it entails that one must either be a part of this or that. There are no interstices. But the reader’s knowledge (through the earlier act of signification) that the poem operates – among others – by the doctrine of Sufism, causes the signs which function within the code of identity to turn out an ironical effect. Sufism believes that all beings share an essential identity. The reader understands that instead of failing to belong, Rumi belongs everywhere. The syntagmatic structure brings out a sense of irony in the poem. In the apparent emphasis of his rootlessness, Rumi is extremely rooted. A semiotic analysis will also look at suppositions that an author, in creating a text, takes for granted. What accounts for this, if one returns to semiotics, is the assumption that authors and readers operate in certain similar codes.

“Rumi and the Reed” operates under the assumption that all readers share identical understanding of the concept of identity, and that they are familiar with the idea of Sufism. The reader arrives at her interpretation through the process of signification, and syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses of the poem.