Public semiotics are semiotics known to many people, semiotics that many people within a society or culture will respond to in similar ways.

Some examples of public semiotics are conventions in literature, film, news, customs, clothing, language use, courtship styles, and so on.

In film and literature, most viewers recognize the semiotic difference between first- and third-person narratives as well as typical plot-lines such as “the individual against the group,” “the individual who overcomes a tragedy,” or simply “good versus bad.”

Viewers responses are controlled by these narratives through expectation, emotion, and habit. Due to their short lengths, most popular films rely very heavily on a single strong emotion for narrative effect, while serious literature generally deals with more complex themes.

A recent scholarly study of US politics came to some conclusions about public semiotics and our perceptions of them that are not likely to surprise readers of this site.

The study and an interview with one of its authors can be found here: Scholar Behind Viral ‘Oligarchy’ Study Tells You What It Means.

In the interview co-author Gilens has this to say about the study:

I’d say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests. (Source: same as above. This source has the study as well as the interview.)

What this study says about public semiotics is the public does not control them. Rather, the public is controlled by them.

Interestingly, the study left out some of the main ways that public semiotics are controlled by elites. Public semiotics are not just controlled by interest groups and lobbies influencing legislation, they are also greatly controlled by:

• elite control of the media
• elite control of which topics the media covers
• elite control of presidential debates by the Democratic and Republican parties through the Commission on Presidential Debates
• elite control of members of congress by the parties they “represent”

In the linked interview, which is well-worth reading, Gilens mentions non-business lobbying groups, but does not say who they are.

If we do not understand that our public semiotics come from somewhere—that many of them are created and maintained by special interest groups—we will fail to understand how we are manipulated by them.

As this study shows, voting for a very limited selection of candidates who rarely, if ever, fulfill their very limited campaign promises is an exercise in public hypnosis. It is a complex semiotic that fosters the illusion of participation where there is none.

I do not think any of this will change. But I do think it is important for individuals, and especially FIML partners, to understand where the semiotics that jostle around in their heads are coming from. As individuals, we can have great control over what we believe, value, do, and understand about human life, and need not be controlled by the self-serving agendas of others.

It is important to understand that much of what is construed as “public life” is actually a complex mix of semiotics consciously controlled by people who work to create and maintain illusions of plots and themes in the world in much the same ways that plots and themes are created and maintained in film.

UPDATE: I wrote and posted this on APRIL 23, 2014. It’s just as true today and far more obvious. Semiotics is the study of how messages are sent and received. Since language and semiotics are loosely hierarchical, control of the top levels or meta-levels of language and semiotics yields control of whole societies. This can be seen in fashion as much as politics. The real-world result is most people are following semiotic illusions behind which the real wheels of governance are being turned by, for the most part, those who control the money—the huge investment funds, central banks, the super rich. The Ukraine War has been a semiotic fantasy, as was covid and the covid government response, as was the 2020 fraudulent election, the manufactured ‘crisis’ at the border, inflation, soon to be CBDC. We are right now living in an algorithmic psyop which strictly controls the ‘information’ we are allowed to see, the topics we are allowed to address. Boiled down, that information is the dominant public semiotics proposed and furthered by the forces mentioned above. This is why if the government said it or MSM said or a choir of HoWo influencers said it, you can be sure it’s not true. ABN