Principles of pattern recognition
Allan Kellehear · 2020
The techniques of pattern recognition used by the post-structuralists are often called semiotic analysis. Content analysis is the act of developing categories prior to searching for them in the data. Frequently, the category is quantified, that is, the number of times it occurs is counted. Thematic analysis derives much of its approach from the sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss. Semiotics today therefore refers simply to the uncovering of rules, relations and mentality behind written texts but also to social life and all its symbols in general. The influence of psychoanalysis and feminism frequently guides semiotic work to look at the role of the unconscious in the shaping of culture and its many social and aesthetic expressions. Interpreting the manifest or surface meaning of a photograph or a line of text can be a tricky albeit pedestrian task. The concern expressed here reflects, to some extent, a conservative reaction to radical critique.