RE: film | mother tongueJust reverse, language is a subset of code. In information theory, which is the original source for the contemporary concept of code, a code is a system of signals - any signals not just language ones. E.g. digital code is basically numerical or just two value switch of whatever; traffic light code is three color code, DNK code is amino acid one etc. Because human language is our the most familiar and all-present code we frequently use it as a conceptual proxy (metaphor) for any code, so we speak of 'computer language', 'semaphore language', 'gene language'... But our language is just one peculiarly evolved type of code.
Personally, I find the concept of 'code', as well as the concept of 'language' displaced outside linguistics, and outside the information theory. Usually these concepts are used just as metaphors for any regularity or pattern we can find in this or that field. Some regularities that govern e.g. continuity editing are metaphorically proclaimed to be 'editing code' (or 'language of edit', 'editing rules'), some regularities that are at the basis of narrative construction are proclaimed as 'narrative code' ('language of narration') etc.
But, the bad side of the metaphor use in theory is that we do not import just a bare core of the metaphorical concept but all paraphernalia of it. So language metaphor usually imports not just the idea of a 'rule governed behavior' into the film study field, but a host of particular linguistic concepts and distinctions that are then forced on film. And 'code' metaphor does not import just an idea of combinatorial (typically sequential) regularity into the thinking about movies, but it brings along the idea of the existence of limited (atomic) elements and limited 'combination rules' - all on the model of digital processing. Which has as a consequence a futile chase for them.
So, let us forget the 'code' and 'language' metaphor. Let us use non-metaphoric general terms instead - regularity or pattern. Or rules, if you prefer it (if you want to point to the social side of filmic regularities).
Hrvoje
----- Original Message -----
From: Frank, Michael
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: film | mother tongue
i don't know colin's book, and don't read french [ is it available in english? ] but perhaps boris can say whether from his POV it's possible to talk about "codes" without talking about language? . . . that is, isn't the concept of code in some way a subcategory of, and thus dependent on, some notion of language
i agree that the word language has been co-opted and abused, and that we need to be more meticulous in how we use it . . . but doesn't the idea that film uses code imply a linguistic foundation of some kind?
mike
-----Original Message-----
I strongly advocate the use of the term "language" in a narrow sense. I
know that it has been popular for almost 100 years to call every
phenomenon which has some recognisable pattern and significance a
"language". So we have a langage of fashion, a film language, etc. This,
in my opinion, obscures more than it sheds some new light on things
declared to be a "lanugage". And when Metz wrote about film as a
language he spent more space on describing the differences between
natural languages and film than he explained why he thought film should
be a language. So, yes, we can talk about, say, codes in films, but to
take for granted the metaphor "film is lanugage" simply doesn't work.
All that being said, the best book built upon this argument is not Metz,
but Michel Colin's _Langue, film, discours_ in which he tried to
establish "une sémiologie générative du film".
Boris
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