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09 May 2019

Sociology

Everything we wear, including how we wear our hair is an outward expression of our inner being. A dress may convey different sorts of social messages and information. For instance, there are some events that happen in life, where we confirm to what tradition dictates. Funerals usually involve black dark and dreary dresses. When ceremony is in a church like a wedding or baptism, the main person traditionally wears white and the witnesses wear celebratory colors. Respectively, other's cultures and religions wear the opposite. For instance, the same white colored dresses are worn in Eastern cultures particularly, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to mourn when someone dies. In the same lieu, the dress of Muslim women i.e. Burqa and hijab has been linked to different terrorism acts and a wide speculation among the audiences as a symbol of tyranny as women are forced to cover their heads. Clothes are not only symbols of aesthetic or practical ‘choice’ but of ‘belief’ and ideology too. So when I see a women in a hijab, then I’m going to assume that she probably holds views contrary to mine. Such views might include the following illiberal, beliefs such as homosexuality or apostatizing out of Islam are sins that deserve punishment, possibly even death, first cousin marriage is a good idea, and other religious / cultural practices. Also, the view that non-Muslims girls who don’t wear a hijab are immodest, and therefore shouldn’t object if they are assaulted. The theme is that in west a hijabi woman might be seen as oppressed while in eastern muslim societies such women are seen as pure and honest women who are faithful to Allah.

The purpose of semiotic analysis is to establish and absorb a full-spectrum cognitive grasp and understanding of something. That ‘something’ can be as singular, particular, and specific as a verse of Scripture, a political essay, a short story, novel, or book. It can also be the way one processes their experience of a musical concert, a theatrical performance, a movie or video, or a lecture or presentation, sports event, tour of a museum, cross country road trip, and so on. Most comprehensively, semiotics can be adopted as the basis of one’s entire philosophy or worldview, as a framework for meaning and truth, knowledge and understanding, in all their depth and breadth, including oneself and one’s relationships in life and one’s place in the world and the cosmos we inhabit. It is about the study of meaning, how we construct meaning and interpretation of that meaning. There are many ways that words, phrases and sentences get meaning. Some have a literal meaning to it. Some words have a figurative meaning to it. For example, the sentence "this is a pen" might just mean that the object being referred to is pen. On the other hand, consider a set of sentences like "I love pudding", "I love Paris", "I love my dad". in each of these sentences the word 'love' holds a different contextual meaning. Each person might construct, interpret and contradict the meaning of each sentence in different ways and this is what semotic refers to. When foucssing on clothing, it differs from systematic clothing perspective which might only focus on the current fashion trends at the time like fads like ripped off jeans or flared bottom trousers etc. However, a semiotic analysis involves focusing on underlying messages behind such clothing choices as there are certain aspects of yourself that can be transmitted to the world through the way you dress. For example, if you want to express your rebelliousness, you’ll use accessories like necklaces and rings, making you look like a rockstar (men’s fashion). Such choices may transmit the message that I’m rebellious, mysterious and powerful by nature which are the customary themes of rockstars.

What we wear tells people who we are and how to treat us. Indulging in fashion is our identity, sentiments/states of mind, an impression of our identity and how we need individuals to see us, put all in plain view by the garments we wear. The garments that we purchase show what sort of individual we see us as; however, can be affected by current patterns and what individuals we know prefer, blended in with our own taste and choices. Such dressing choices convey a lot of different social messages to the society. When we take time on our appearance, it shows. Other people will treat us better and we will feel better about ourselves. For instance, in a store a woman wearing a dress will almost always receive smiles and usually have the door opened for her. Her appearance is important to her and the effect she has on others is also important. But in contrast a woman who threw on what was handy would not have much people pay attention to her, or the attention paid is not positive. While the Woman who Dresses Provocatively is saying non-verbally, “Here I am, I’m available. Oh, btw, you can all see what my body looks like, I don’t need to have a relationship with you.” Even in the case of men when a man walks into a store wearing a suit, he gets more positive attention than the man who walks in behind him wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt. We live in a world of people who believe they have the right to express themselves no matter how it looks to others however, the kind of clothes we wear continue to have an influence on the onlookers as each clothing item carries a nonverbal message of its own.

References

Barthes, Roland. The fashion system. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Bouvier, Gwen. "Discourse in clothing: the social semiotics of modesty and chic in hijab fashion." Gender & Language 10.3 (2016).

Croucher, Stephen Michael. Looking beyond the hijab: An analysis of Muslim adaptation to French culture. Diss. 2006.

Evans, Caroline, and Minna Thornton. "Fashion, representation, femininity." Feminist Review 38.1 (1991): 48-66.

Kuruc, Katarina. "Fashion as communication: A semiotic analysis of fashion on ‘Sex and the City’." Semiotica 2008.171 (2008): 193-214.

Shortell, Timothy, and Jerome Krase. "Seeing Islam in global cities: a spatial semiotic analysis." Seeing Religion. Routledge, 2015. 85-108.