The Cognitive Semiotics of Film

THE COGNITIVE SEMIOTICS OF FILM Warren Buckland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000,174 pp. In The Cognitive Semiotics of Film, Warren Buckland discusses signification and meaning in film by taking up the timely debate between those who favor theoretical models rooted in linguistics and those who reject such models. The author identifies a major split between the semiotic film theory of the 19605 (in the linguistic tradition of Saussure and Peirce) and more recent cognitive positions, which object to linguistic and semiotic approaches. As Buckland states, the first position insists on a methodological distinction "between the perceptible level of film and the non-perceptible system of codes underlying it" (io). The latter theory can be described as a "cognitive turn" that took place in the 19805; its adherents criticized the hierarchy implicit in the signifying systems, in particularthe assumption that an imperceptible, underlying system drives the perceptible level of film. Cognitive film theory, drawing upon theories of vision and visual perception, favors the notion of direct and unmediated perception. In five chapters, Buckland brings semiotic and cognitivist positions closer together by saying, for example, that imperceptible and perceptible levels of film (the difference is stressed in semiotic theory) must be understood as interrelated. By arguing that the task of contemporary semiotic film theory is to develop a systematic model for understanding the cognitive semantics of film and filmic competence, Buckland suggests a revaluation of the cognitive notions of schemata and innate structures. Nevertheless, a difference remains: semioticians will stress the aspect of mediation that transforms the deep, innate structure to visibility, whereas the cognitivists will reject this idea of a transformation between levels. The merit of Buckland's analysis lies in his recognition that the cognitivists and the semioticians share a key notion: that there are "underlying" "in-variant" structures. These are built-in ecological patterns; they do not come to us from another dimension (of language), but enter our experience directly and immediately. Having established this, Buckland introduces a theoretical model that encompasses the interaction between the two levels of signification (following Saussure and Metz) but is at the same time compatible to the notion of rational comprehension. Buckland makes another interesting point when he examines the role of the semiotic tradition in the context of the European cognitivists, which leads to a discussion of reflexivity and highlights the positioning of the spectator in Metz's bookL'Enonciation impersonnelle ou le site du film (1991). Here again, Buckland identifies a dual structure that connects the underlying system and the perceptible level and that (again) links these to the site of film's metalanguage, which stands for reflexivity. Because enunciation, in Metz's words, expresses the reflexive construction in which the "film talks to us about itself, cinema," it does not involve the positioning of the personal pronoun. As Buckland puts it, "enunciation is precisely a process or production or mediation that transforms the underlying language system, Ia langue, into a text" (53). To summarize: the theoretical rigour of Buckland's book consists at first in his critical evaluation of Metz, which goes beyond the common critiques of psychoanalytic theory and the cognitive-based theory of personal enunciation (Francesco casetti). second, Buckland stengthens the North American cognitive approach to film, which avoids the language model but addresses the specificity and reflexivity of film (also the concern of the semiotic theory) from a formal (formalist) position. Interestingly, though Buckland is discussing film theories that do not merely differ from but actually contradict each other, he shows that they share more than their representatives care to acknowledge. …