New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics (Sightlines) [Paperback]

Robert Stam (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 041506595X | ISBN-13: 978-0415065955 | Publication Date: April 24, 1992 | Edition: annotated edition

New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics provides a comprehensive lexicon of semiotic concepts. It defines over 500 critical terms and describes how they have been used, building a film semiotics dictionary. The authors address key aspects of contemporary semiotic and cultural debate - Genette's narratology, the feminism of Mary Ann Doane, Bakhtinian concepts and the work of Jean Baudrillard. The book explores linguistically-oriented terminology in cinema studies; the semiotics of film narrative; the psycho-semiology of the cinema; and intertextuality, discourse and transtextuality. References to individual films drawn from the work of a wide range of directors including Orson Welles, D.W. Griffiths, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Cocteau and Chantal Akerman illustrate the concepts under discussion.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Stam is Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. Robert Burgoyne is Associate Professor of English at Wayne State University. Sandy Flitterman-Lewis is Associate Professor of English and Cinema Studies at Rutgers University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; annotated edition edition (April 24, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041506595X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415065955
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #375,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An academic treatment for an academic audience, April 30, 2006

By 

Sachet (Dr. Fontaine Moore) (Easton, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics (Sightlines) (Paperback)

As the book's title implies, it is intended for an academic audience--one interested in knowing how semiotics, which has traditionally been applied to the written word, relates to film. Since this book is searchable, a casual perusal of the back cover and table of contents should be sufficient to alert the reader to the book's style as well as as its highly academic treatment of content. Nor does it disappoint the serious student in this regard. Relevant theorists and theory are thoroughly examined. (Daniel Chandler's online introduction to Semiotics should be most welcome to someone unfamiliar with it.)

The book is useful to the serious student of film--how it negotiates meaning between creator/s and viewer/s. Semiotics, despite the author's claim to be a discipline, is more of an analytical method of how a cultural artifact like film goes about its communication work. Like any analytical method, it has developed a specific vocabulary that has been refined and modified over time via the input of various theorists and schools of thought. This can make reading a bit tedious, especially for someone new to the language, history, and concepts.

Ultimately, however, this book and others like it, are intended to shed light on how movies communicate and what makes one "good" and another not so good. For anyone seriously interested to the answers to these questions who isn't simply intellectually lazy, mastery of terminology is extremely useful and hardly a waste of time. Easy answers given in everyday language is available but for a very different audience than the one for which this book was written.

I gave the book 4 stars because the authors don't make much effort to make their explanations more accessible to those without a PhD, which they could easily have done with a little effort. To their credit, however, they do use some techniques such as bolding for new terminology. However, they would probably have fared better had they demonstrated expertise in creating text that is more "user-friendly."

3 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beginning of the end, December 31, 2004

By 

N. P. Stathoulopoulos "nick9155" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics (Sightlines) (Paperback)

If you've ever sat through film studies and wondered what on earth was going on, don't fret.

There is probably something to be gained from studying how we watch films, but unfortunately most of those engaged in the world of film studies as academics aren't interested. Instead, many are content to wallow in unreadable texts with long, impressive terms that, in the end, have little at all to do with films.

Studying modes of production, the words of the filmmakers themselves, trends, etc, we can figure out a lot about films. But that's not good enough for some people because it's too straightforward and obvious. Instead, an entire vocabulary needs to be invented--poststructuralism, film semiotics, etc, etc, in order to mask the quite obvious fact that we still don't know a thing.

If we had any concrete understanding of how films 'work' on our minds, then someone could write a book that a 12 year old could read and understand. Instead, we get books like this: inpenetrable, heavy, intellectual tripe.

If you believe there is actually a 'theory' to film, and that such a 'theory' can be applied to a large body of film and work, then this might be for you. If you're more interested in the real world, on planet Earth, you may want to avoid the subject altogether...