Metz' realization, in his classic 1964 essay, 'Le cinéma: langue ou
langage?', that film is not a language in the linguistic sense (it
has no double articulation), but discourse - still adhering to the
communicational model, right up to his final book, L'énonciation
impersonelle (1991) - leads more or less directly to the ANALYSIS of
individual films and their parameters. However, because primary-order
(i.e. linguistic) language is a component of film (dialogue, inter-
and subtitles, text within the iconic image track etc.), obviously
the medium cannot be entirely divorced from linguistic language. Just
watch a film in a language you don't understand to see how crucial
dialogue usually is in anchoring the images. But the analysis of film
does point to certain conventions, i.e. codes, even if they are
always context-specific in the sense of being part of the individual
filmic system which can never be completely subsumed under abstract
categories: a film may be a Western - to take genre as an example of
a set of conventions -, but while this denomination is probably
necessary in an analysis of said film, it is not sufficient in terms
of defining it.
Unlike linguistic language, which consists of digital signs (in
Nelson Goodman's sense), film's image track is an analogue sign
system. So, while for instance a low-angle shot of a character is
often used to make her seem more imposing and powerful (in a given
situation), this is a loose convention and not a code in the strictly
grammatical sense. Filmic codes thus would have to be conceived as
typical or probabilistic in terms of their signification.
Nonetheless, we shouldn't completely debunk the 'film as language'
metaphor (if that's at all possible), for the simple reason that ALL
natural language is ultimately metaphorical, and everything
'originally' meant something else. Metz describes this well in the
fourth section of his book The Imaginary Signifier ('Metaphor/
Metonymy, or, the Imaginary Referent').
H
> Hrvoje writes:
>
>
>
> Just 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).
>
>
>
> and i, for one, find this very helpful and often compelling as an
> argument . . . but it does seem to me to ignore one crucial element
> of this metaphor . . . specifically, what we have in, for example,
> the “combinatorial regularity” of continuity editing is not merely
> a pattern or set of rules that recurs with predictable regularity,
> but a set of rules that communicate [or can be understood to be
> saying] some particular thing . . . to the extent that this
> regularity makes the object being examined communicative according
> to a set of principles, does it not share more with language than
> merely a common use of patterns??
>
>
>
> mike
>
>
>
> .
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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