Preliminary Exercise 2 - Semiotics

Ferdinand de Saussure's Theory of Semiotics 

     Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. Saussure believed that semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign, and he called it semiology. Saussure's theory is considered as the proponent to the thought that "language does not reflect reality but rather constructs it" because we do not only use language or give meaning that exists in the world of reality, but also to anything that does not exist in it. 

     In this plot from "The Hunger Games", the children from District 12 are being selected by the people from District 1 to participate in a series of games that are life threating and where only one child from the district will make it out alive. District 12 is scared for their lives, and everyone is praying that they are not called in to participate in the games because the ballot represents death to them. Primrose is suddenly selected to participate in the games and Katniss, her older sister, steps up to take her place.