Commutation Test (semiotics) - An Example

An Example

Take the phrase:

the man hit the boy.

Now substitute "boy" with "baby", "girl", "child", "pansy", "thief". Each of these alternatives affects the implication of the phrase. A "man" rather than a father or parent randomly striking a baby or girl might be considered sexist and a crime. If the boy was a thief, this would explain but not excuse the man's behaviour as retaliation or revenge. If the boy is a pansy which has pejorative connotations of cowardice or homosexuality, the man may be intolerant or overly judgemental but the victim is also presented in a less sympathetic way. The use of child not differentiated by gender is a more common usage in the context of paedophilia. When the signifiers of boy and man are transposed, the relative inequality in strength is also reversed and the interpretation shifts to more playful and less threatening images. Hence, the subjective view may be that the phrase as originally conceived was the most neutral of the possible formulations given the original form.

If we now contextualise the image in a school, seminary, prison, training gym or home environment different sets of meanings emerge depending on the presence or absence of other signifiers demonstrating the relationship between the protagonists, the time the image was created (a Victorian image of corporal punishment in a school would have a different significance from a more recent image of judicial caning in Britain, Canada or Singapore), the nature of the activity (e.g. a boxing training session or a game of tennis in which the blow is struck accidentally, etc.), the presence or absence of other people, etc.. The values are therefore added or subtracted according to the presence or absence of other signifiers.