Social semiotics

Qualitative Inquiry
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Social Semiotics and Fieldwork : Method and Analytics
Phillip Vannini Qualitative Inquiry 2007 13: 113 DOI: 10.1177/1077800406295625 The online version of this article can be found at: http://qix.sagepub.com/content/13/1/113

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Social Semiotics and Fieldwork
Methodand Analytics
Phillip Vannini
Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada

Qualitative Inquiry Volume 13 Number 1 January 2007 113-140 © 2007 Sage Publications 10.1177/1077800406295625 http://qix.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Drawing from recent analytical developments in semiotics and postmodern ethnography, this article exposes and assesses the combination of socialsemiotics and fieldwork as a form of qualitative inquiry. Approaches to semiotics and fieldwork are not new—structural ethnographers in cultural anthropology and structural interactionists in sociology and communication studies have previously laid the foundations for the integration of formal methods of analysis and inductive approaches to data collection—yet, as this article argues, structuralism’slimitations have hampered the growth of semiotics within qualitative inquiry. By presenting social semiotics as a viable alternative to structural semiotics, by describing in clear pedagogical fashion how social semiotics can be used as a research strategy, and by exposing its potential for applicability, this article attempts to bring sociosemiotic ethnography to the forefront of contemporaryqualitative inquiry. Keywords: ethnography; methodology; social semiotics; theory

espite the existence of a great variety of theoretical, methodological, and empirical works on the connection between semiotics and interpretive sociology (e.g., Denzin, 1987; Gottdiener, 1995; MacCannell, 1976; MacCannell & MacCannell, 1982; Manning, 1987, 1988, 2004; Manning & Cullum-Swan, 1994; Perinbanayagam, 1985,1991; Vannini, 2004; Wiley, 1994), most sociologists still perceive semiotics as an arcane, precious, and unintelligible intellectual enterprise. As proof of its uncertain status, take the role played by semiotics in the universe of contemporary qualitative inquiry. For instance, the recent successful International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry featured no sessions on semiotics, and the solesignificant mention of semiotics in the highly influential Handbook of Qualitative Research edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (2000, 2005) dates as far back as its first edition (Manning & Cullum-Swan, 1994). My goal for this article is to uncover, hopefully for once and for all, the potential of semiotics
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Qualitative Inquiry

for current qualitative inquiry, and in particular to shed light on the value of the combination between fieldwork and social semiotics. Semiotic approaches to fieldwork are not a novelty. Examples of structural semiotic approaches to ethnological research are legion in cultural anthropology and cultural studies, and even sociologists and communication studiesscholars have witnessed the genesis of unique combinations of semiotics and pragmatism for the solution of ethnographic research problems (see Manning, 1987, 1988). In this article, however, I am concerned with a different version of semiotics, one that differs significantly from the structural and Saussurean perspective embraced by anthropologists, cultural studies researchers, and some symbolic...