Social Imaginaries and Semiotic Analysis: An Approach to the Narrative Construction of Reality

Abstract

The notion of “social imaginaries” has frequently been used in sociological research in general and in media communication studies in particular, without having achieved a clear and precise conceptual status that would allow it to be used as an analytical category whose meaning is widely agreed upon within the research community. For a semiotics of discourse understood as a social process, an approach is needed that systematizes the concept of social imaginaries in relation to processes of meaning production and the social construction of reality through communicative practices, with particular reference to media communication. Within this framework, semiosis is described in terms of three levels of investiture of meaning: (i) the bases of representation, corresponding to the level of imaginaries; (ii) representations, corresponding to the level of texts; and (iii) systems of representations, corresponding to discourses and regimes of signification. Special attention is paid to the functions of narrativity as a basic cognitive schema for the perception and interpretation of the world in relation to audiovisual media narratives and the legitimation of symbolic power.