Particular features of a semiotic approach in transmedia franchises study

Abstract

The article is devoted to the revealing of semiotic approach specificity in the study of media franchises as the results of transmedia storytelling. The transmedia franchises’ research needs a certain revision of some semiotic notions. In particular, the present article deals with the study of iconic signs’ functioning in the media franchises. The classic definition of iconic sign proposed by Ch. S. Peirce and based on some similarity of icon and its object, seems to contradict to the fictional text characteristics as “denotation without denotate” made by G. Gennette, which means that signs of a fiction work don’t have referents in the extratextual reality. In the article the attempt was made to eliminate this collision, using the understanding of the iconic sign by Umberto Eco, on the one hand, and the principle of “minimal departure” by M.-L. Ryan, on the other. The article concludes that the products of fiction are often nothing more than a result of combination of existing objects or of their parts that creates the illusion of a realism of the fictional world’ characters and locations and retains the credibility of the audience members. The article also deals with the specificity of the notion “semiosis” in the transmedia franchises study. In the case of a fictional world that is constantly expanding and detailing thanks to transmedia storytelling, we are dealing with a specific, transmedia semiosis, in which each new work of the franchise is a kind of interpretant for the other texts included in it.