Language, Semiotics, and Deleuze

Chapter 4 opens with the issue of the “film language” and examines how the concept served to ground film semiotics. Both film and music have been called universal languages, and this languagelike quality meant that both areas were inviting objects to the emerging academic field of semiotics. After a general overview of “film language,” this chapter considers the contributions of Jean Mitry and Christian Metz to the field of film semiotics and what film semiotics contributes to the theory of the soundtrack. The chapter closes with a discussion of Gilles Deleuze, whose philosophy of cinema draws extensively from the semiotic tradition of Charles S. Peirce. Deleuze himself offers mostly cryptic comments about the soundtrack, and this chapter uses the typology Deleuze developed for the movement-image and seeks analogues in the treatment of the soundtrack.