Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512183
114 M PS E . O R G listen to a piece of score music, their logogenic meanings will be very different, they will use different words to express what it means to them but the semantic meaning will be precisely the same. He also argues that music cannot be expected to live up to a linguistic (logogenic) criteria of semiotic precision rather than a musical (musogenic, i.e., suited to expression in music rather than in words) criteria of semiotic precision. He asks rhetorically, "If it's accepted that the same location can be visually symbolised in different ways for different purposes, how come music, whose basic nature and functions differ so obviously from those of language or from graphic forms of representation, is expected to live up to linguistic or visual rather than musical criteria of semiotic precision?" Music in film can be used to signify a plethora of meanings and emotions. As we've established before, music relies mainly on iconic and indexical signs to produce meaning. Tagg describes icon, index, and symbol thus; Index. "Indices are signs connected either by causality, instances: Reverberance or lack of it can inform us about the size of the space where the sounds are occurring. Sound reverberation can thus be an index of size. Positioning of off-screen sound effects in the mix can be an index of their source. And their amplitude can be an index of distance and size. Signs in Dialogue. "In the beginning, in the uterine darkness, was the voice, the Mother's voice." (Chion, 1999). The human voice is the first sound we learn to pay attention to. This is why our hearing is so closely wired to dialogue in films, it is difficult to ignore a line of dialogue, even if we try to. Dialogue lines can say (denote) one thing in the script and mean something completely different in a scene, the connotations of a line of dialogue depend on how the line is spoken, the quality of the actor's voice. There is a sub-language in speech that we learn to recognise as we grow up and we never cease to develop it; if the voice sounds relaxed, strained, shaky, loud, quiet, raspy, happy, angry, nervous, ecstatic, etc., the human voice will signify different connotative meanings and then what is actually said becomes secondary to how it is said. Dialogue editing is a crucial part of sound post-production. If done carelessly, it can render a whole line meaningless or change the message entirely. Signs in Music. According to musicologist Philip Tagg, music "is an alogogenic sign system whose semantic precision relies largely on connotation and on iconic or indexical signs." Here, Tagg is using alogogenic as opposed to logogenic to point out that music cannot be put into words, it's unverbalisable. Tagg explains that is "because its semiotic precision, linked to gestural, tactile, corporeal, emotional, and prosodic forms of communication relies mainly on iconic, indexical, and connotative types of semiosis." (Tagg, 2013). Just because music is connotative, it doesn't mean it is less precise at forming meaning. Umberto Eco explains the difference between connotation and denotation the following way; 'The difference between denotation and connotation is not ... the difference between "univocal" and "vague" signification, or between "referential" and "emotional" communication, and so on. What constitutes a connotation as such is the connotative code which establishes it; the characteristic of a connotative code is the fact that the further signification conventionally relies on a primary one." (Umberto Eco cited in Tagg, 2013). Tagg's posture is that music is only polysemic from a logogenic standpoint, that is, when an audience from the same culture Lissa's 10 basic film music functions. Note: Reprinted [adapted] from Tagg: Music's Meanings: A Modern Musicology for Non-Musos (p. 547), by Tagg, 2013, Mass Media Music Scholars' Press.