Semiotics has attracted a lot of attention in recent weeks. The Center for Semiotic Applications at the University of Tartu has finally completed an analysis of the slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," for which the police fined five pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the end of last year. The full publication of the report is still pending, but its central conclusion is clear: the slogan supports acts against humanity.

But how do you write and produce semiotic analyses? Andreas Ventsel, a political and social semiotics professor at the University of Tartu, and Martin Oja, head of the Center for Semiotic Applications at the University of Tartu, explain this to ERR's Science Portal (Estonian: Novaator). Please keep in mind that the two semioticians are not the authors of the analysis in question.

According to Ventsel, the goal of semiotic analysis is to map the possible field of meaning that accompanies the use of the symbol or slogan being studied. The client always formulates specific questions to guide this process.

For example, the prosecution and the defense may be arguing in court about whether the use of a symbol or slogan falls under a section of the criminal code. According to Ventsel, the most common questions are whether the use of the sign in question is hate speech, racist, or undermines the Estonian constitutional order.

"The expert, specifically the semiotician, bears the responsibility of determining whether semiotic methods can provide answers to these questions. So when asked about the meaning of a symbol, the goal is to map the possible meanings of the symbol together with the connotations and also to disentangle the context of use," Ventsel said.

For example, if EKRE MPs took their oath of office in parliament a few years ago with a hand sign that could stand for several things – a white supremacy, a sign of positive will, or a sign referring to the location of the Croatian spice industry with a similar symbol on its logo – a semiotic analysis can determine which meaning is most likely in this context.

"The semiotician has to take into account who used it and where. In the case of EKRE, we are dealing with a radical right-wing party in the Estonian context. And among them, the use of signs to express white supremacist sentiments is a common practice. However, we can only study signs and their uses. We do not study the cognitive processes of the people who use them," he said.

Martin Oja said that the most common approach to semiotic expertise is semiotic discourse analysis, which includes the pictorial, verbal, but increasingly also the sonic (e.g., voice pitch, intonation, background noise, etc.) side of analysis. According to Oja, the semiotician's toolbox often gives them access to meanings that the person commissioning the analysis cannot foresee. 

"A semiotician never creates meaning in a vacuum; analysis reveals a text or sign within its context. This is certainly one of the advantages of semiotic analysis: we can reveal contexts that are unexpected even for the client," he said.

Also, what is not explicitly expressed or stated in the text under scrutiny is important in this kind of analysis; it may also result from deliberately directing the audience toward a particular interpretation of the message in question.

Oja said that judicial commissions are not the exclusive domain of semiotics. Professionals in branding and marketing who concentrate on text creation use similar types of analysis abroad. This is particularly true when it is necessary to assess the impact of a message in different contexts of use. For instance, the Ministry of Agriculture has commissioned semioticians to investigate the meaning of "Estonian food" from this perspective.

Semioticians take into account the sign's user and place of use, as well as its historical connotations, the influence of the accompanying visual, and the potential for malicious exploitation of the sign in foreign contexts.

"For instance, someone could misuse the slogan 'From the river to the sea' to support Hamas, implying that Estonia supports terrorists. Of course, the slogan's user could have merely protested against the killing of innocent people and the occupation," Ventsel said.

He went on to say that such maneuvers, such as taking a text out of its original context and presenting it in a new one, are common in Russian influence operations. And such a twist also changes the meaning of the original message, Ventsel said.

So the judge was also puzzled by the report's identification of Palestine with Hamas. The court now expects the author of the analysis to explain the reasoning behind the conclusions.

The professor said that the changing modality of the signs under analysis makes semioticians' work increasingly complex. This can be seen in social media, where a great deal of information is squeezed into the language of images and symbols, as well as in messages that deliberately use coded language to obfuscate meanings or simply icons added at the end of an otherwise racist remark to turn it into a joke. 

Oja said that the biggest challenge of modern semiotic analysis is the study of multilingual or hybrid sign systems. "We are talking about cases where meaning is created polyphonically, that is, from different components, voices, and their combinations. For example, there may be a conflict of modalities where different languages begin to convey different messages," he said.

Ventsel said every semiotic analysis has two basic rules the researcher should always follow. First, the semiotician should know the limits of his competence, i.e., he should honestly assess whether he can answer the client's questions with semiotic tools. On the other hand, the semiotician can never unambiguously determine the meaning of the sign under study. Such unambiguity can only be conditional if a symbol is unambiguously defined within a certain framework. For example, the Estonian Flag and Coat of Arms Act defines the procedure for the use of national emblems, but does not further define what the blue, black, and white or the three lions mean.

If someone says that a symbol is univocal, i.e., that all people, regardless of culture, etc., understand it in the same way, a semiotician would  disagree. Furthermore, a client commissioning a semiotic analysis typically isn't concerned with the symbol's inherent meaning, but rather with the manner and intent of its use.

"Semiotic expertise can only point out the conditions under which one or another meaning or intention is more likely. For example, the context in which it is used, who is using it, what other symbols it is used with, to whom the message might be addressed, etc. However, it is always the court that decides guilty or not guilty," Ventsel said.

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