Semiotic Grammar:

Binary Representations of Marked and Unmarked Classes1

Paul Miers, English Dept.

Towson Univ., Towson, MD 21252
miers@towson.edu

These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The
significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible
messages. The system must be designed to operate for each possible selection, not just
the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design.
.
C. E. Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”

This document presents a model for understanding the semiotics of socially constructed
classification system in terms of binary trees and constraints on the representation of
marked and unmarked features. I start with long standing problem from cultural
anthropology, kin classification, and show how variation in a few simple constraints on a
binary tree can generate very different representations of social kinship and marriage
preferences.

I then apply this same model to a binary classification tree built from two different
underlying structures – the high order classes of the pure and the impure and a tree for
marked and unmarked features of male and female classes. Finally, I apply that tree to
the film Pretty Woman (1990) to show how that film begins with contention over the
representation of gendered purity and concludes with a paradigm that results from
moving selected marked and unmarked classes from one side of the tree to another. I
suggest that this final classification paradigm reflects a social ideology where elite (pure)
consumption is set against the common (impure) exchange of money for sex. The
paradigm undercuts whatever claims might be made that the film disrupts the social order
it reflect by first allowing a prostitute to expose the narrow minded thinking of the elites
and then to join them as the pair bonded partner of their most marked male specimen.

1
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. See Terms of Use for
details.
 2

I use the examples from kin classification because they provide concrete illustrations of
certain key issues I want to discuss here:

1. Binary structures can be used to build a classification tree which has at its terminal
nodes an ordered set of multiple classes.

Although we may start with a conventional gender binary of male/ female, the terminal
class structure of the tree can be much more complex. An asymmetrical structure such as
that used in the kin classification tree can generate three terminal classes from a
descending series of binary partitioning of the topmost, dominant category space.

2. Coding is determined by the dominance hierarchy of the classification tree.

This concept is regularly mystified in semiotic theory whenever various “codes” are
somehow pulled from a hat as needed to support a particular interpretation. Where
exactly does the encoding and decoding take place? Where do the codes themselves
actually live? In a classification tree the “codes” are simply the internal class structure of
the tree which determines how much information is carried by a particular signifier
relative to some structured set of classes. To encode is to generate terminal nodes for an
output representation; to decode is to extract the information in the tree from the signifier.
This narrow definition of coding, far from limiting the possible interpretations of the
signifier, is what allows us to account for how a signifier can bear information from many
different systems of representation

The English kin term “aunt,” for example, is a lexeme which carries with it the encoded
information – G+1collateral female. That information resides in the dominance hierarchy
of classes created by the classification tree for English kin terms. To decode “aunt” as
also being “mother’s or father’s sister” requires accessing a genealogical representation
of kinship which is itself a socially constructed representation based on “folk” beliefs
regarding shared substance, procreation, etc. Just as with spoken and written language,
we are always dealing with what Bakhtin called heteroglossia, i.e. complex, mixed forms
of representation.

3. Changing a very few constraints on a class expression can lead to radically different
encodings.

In some classification grammars, constraints on markedness force classes to be broken up

and recomposed such that signifiers appear to “move” from one part of a tree to another
and merge with members of another class. The most striking example of this move and
merge phenomenon in kin classification appears in the example of “Dravidian” kin
classification described here where constraints which ban marking a distinction between
lineal and collateral classes causes some collaterals to become members of a parent class
for ego and then causes some of ego’s “cousins” to be marked as “sibs.” This “covert”
movement is directly connected to the “overt” exchange of marriageable children
according to a very patterned economy, one which Levi-Strauss saw, under the rubric of
the giving and taking of wives, as the fundamental social contract.
 3

4. The underlying logic of class membership is controlled by the expression or

neutralization of marked features.

This logic, which is much more than a“primitive” analogic form of thought, lies at the
core of the classification mechanism, and there is reason to believe that all such
mechanisms share this logic because they evolved from a ancestral cognitive tool kit that
social primates used to categorize both each other and the many “natural” and
“constructed” things they consume and exchange.

Cognitive scientist have focused a great deal of attention on the “prototype” problem, i.e.
the problem of determining exactly what kind of mental representation counts as being
the representative case or exemplar for a class. Although this problem is indeed an
important one, focus on it has drawn attention away from the logic of how equivalence
classes partition a domain and how selection of a marked or unmarked element from one
side of a binary partition can alter the representation of all members of a higher order
class.

The standard notion of an equivalence class is given by:

where an equivalence relation ~ is defined on the set X such that the equivalence class of
a in X is the subset of all elements in X which are equivalent to a.. The binary of the
marked and the unmarked can thus be understood as governing the selection of the
element a from a set because it has some feature or property which partitions the set X
into disjoint subsets (a is marked as the special case ) or taking a as having some property
common to all members of the set of (a is unmarked). Here I am concerned not with the
question of which properties of a are common to a higher order class and which marked
property partitions that class into disjoint subsets. Rather I want to focus on what happens
when the lower order partitioning is blocked and yet a marked feature from one side or
the other of that partitioning surfaces in the higher order set as a property common to all
members of the class simply by dint of their membership in that class.

Consider, for example, a class distinction I will be using here between the pure and
impure as applied to the high order category of fruit:

fruit

pure impure

unmarked marked unmarked marked

special
generic special generic
impure
pure fruit pure fruit impure fruit
fruit
 4

In this case, then we have four possible terminal figures or signifiers: 1) the generic or
prototypical pure fruit – e.g. a generic red apple without discoloration, etc.; and 2) a
specially marked fruit which makes salient some distinctive property of purity in fruit –
e.g. a bowl of perfectly ripe strawberries or bright red cherries. Likewise, we can have
the generic impure or rotten fruit or some special marked case of impurity.

Now these four terminal classes really give us too much information if all we are after is
a signifier for impure fruit that we shouldn’t eat. Thus the three tiered tree can effectively
be reduced to a two tier tree where we selectively insert or move up one or the other of
the pairs of terminal nodes. Given our concern with impure fruit, the most efficient class
representation would be:

fruit

pureunmarked impuremarked
generic special
pure fruit impure fruit

In other words, we want the general paradigm for pure fruit and a special case
representation of some marked feature that best predicts impurity: a generic apple and a
rotten banana with black splotches, for example.

This sort of variable logic for forming equivalence class representations clearly has an
evolutionary efficacy to it. Sometimes we might want to use the fully extended four
terminal tree to get a useful sample that lets us understand some class partitioning of a
cognitively salient category. In other cases, the two tiered tree is more efficient – we have
an image of the generic or prototypical pure fruit and the special case of some fruit
marked for a critical feature indicating we should not eat it.

Consdier, however, how this variable logic of equivalence class formation can also be
manipulated by constraints on the structure of the classification tree itself. For the three
tiered tree above, suppose we have a constraint that bans the division between the pure
and the impure. That constraint thus leaves us with a dominant top most category – fruit
– and elements designated by the four terminal nodes which must collapse upwards as
equal members of the top most category:
 5

fruit

unmarked marked unmarked marked

special
generic special generic
impure
pure fruit pure fruit impure fruit
fruit

In this case we have competition between the marked and the unmarked versions of the
pure and the impure to be a , the element which defines the equivalency relationship on
the entire class “fruit.” Suppose then that we impose another constraint: the impure
must be marked so that the two constraints are ordered: no pure/impure partitioning > the
impure must be marked. Satisfaction of this constraint order yields:

fruit marked impure

That extremely efficient one tiered classification tree might be useful if the crisis of
impure fruit were so severe that the safe option was to simply avoid eating fruit. But it
can also be used to induce such behavior even if there is no impurity crisis. Given the
constraint order, all elements in the set Xfruit are presumed by their very membership in
that now unpartitioned set to be impure. Moreover, the property or feature that makes
fruit impure need not be discernable or even testable. It may be some unspecified genetic
mutation or herbicide; or it simply may be a curse or interdiction on all fruit. It does not
matter. We have a particularly nefarious kind of reification: all fruit is now marked
impure by the equivalency relationship of being a member of the class “fruit.”

Consider what happens when this same logic is applied to humans with respect to the
contested issues of ethnicity, gender, and social class. If we block or ban the unmarked
generic representation, then we can always define a class by way of some marked feature.
If the special case is the socially valorized half of the binary, then we can effectively
indict all other members of the class for failing to be the special case. If the special case
is drawn from the devalued half of the binary, then we effectively move all members of
that higher order class into the devalued partition even though the partitioning that
divides some category into some valued and devalued classes is no longer part of the
coding. .
 6

a) genealogical tree

generation+1 Δ Ο Ο Δ Δ Ο
MB MZ M F FB FZ

generation0 Ο Δ Ο Δ Ο ego Δ Ο Δ Ο Δ
MBD MBS MZD MZS Z B FBD FBS FZD FZS

M = mother; MZ = mother’s sister; MB = mother’s brother; F=father; FZ = father’s sister; FB = father’s brother
Z = sister; B= brother; Δ = male; Ο = female
MBD = mother’s brother’s daughter; MBS = mother’s brothers son; MZD = mother’s sister’s daughter; MZS=mother’s sister’s son
FBD = father’s brother’s daughter; FBS=father’s brother’s son; FZD=father’s sister’s daughter; FZS = father’s sister’s son

b) kin classification tree

rank generation+1
▲

lineal+1 collateral+1
“parent” “parent’s sibs”

lineal0 collateral0 = lineal+1 sex ≠ lineal+1 sex

= lineal0 ≠ lineal0
♀ ♂ sex sex ♀ ♂ ♀ ♂

♀ ♂ ♀ ♂
cross & parallel
ego sibs”
cross & parallel cousins

►
order

Fig. 1 – genealogy and kin classification The top figure (a) shows the standard two
generation genealogical tree anthropologists have used to represent kin classification systems
which assign kin terms (e.g. uncle / aunt) to kin types (mother’s brother / mother’s sister). What
has long been puzzling is the fact that classification systems vary widely in how they map kin
terms to kin types and, more importantly, many of them appear to ignore or violate genealogically
defined classes.

The bottom tree (b) is a binary classification tree which can capture the logic of the genealogical
tree and yet can generate different classification systems depending on how constraints are
defined on the use of lexically interpretable classes in the tree, that is on classes which reflect
information that is directly encoded in the kin term.
 7

a) lineal paradigm generation+1

lineal+1 collateral+1

lineal0 collateral0
ego sibs cousins

b) G+1 kin terms

generation+1

lineal+1 collateral+1

♀ ♂ ♀ ♂
mother father aunt uncle

c) G0 kin terms generation0

lineal +1 collateral+1
cousin

lineal0 collateral0
♀ V ♂ ego

♀ ♂
sister brother
marry out
►

Fig. 2 – lineal kinship – no parity classes; single collateral class composed of “aunts
and uncles;” neutralizes both sidedness (patrilateral / matrilateral ) and consanguinity /
affinity (by blood / by marriage) within collaterals. English kinship terms; variations also
found in some hunter-gatherer bands.
 8

generation+1

lineal+1 collateral+1

lineal0 collateral0 = lineal+1 sex ≠ lineal+1 sex

♀+1 ♂+1 ♀+1 ♂+1

paternal maternal paternal maternal
ego sibs parallel parallel cross cross
cousins cousins cousins cousins

generation+1

lineal+1 collateral+1

♀ ♂ = lineal+1 sex ≠ lineal+1sex

ana baba

♀+1 ♂+1 ♀+1 ♂+1

diaza apça hala dayí

generation0

lineal+1 collateral+1

lineal0 collateral0 lineal+1 =sex ≠ lineal+1 sex

♀ V ♂ ego

elder younger ♀+1 ♂+1 ♀+1 ♂+1

kardaş diaza çocuğu apça çocuğu hala çocuğu dayí çocuğu

▲ ▲ ▲ ▲
♀ ♂
aga aba

marriage by collateral lineage

Fig. 3 – bifurcate collateral - maximize collateral classes; no lineal parity classes; creates
possible marriages with one of four collateral lineages. Common in Mideast, also China; example
here is Turkish.
 9

a) bifurcate merging kin classification

generation+1

= lineal+1 sex ≠ lineal+1 sex

parents & parallel sibs parents’ cross sibs

= lineal0 sex ≠ lineal0 sex

same sex opposite sex

ego & parallel sibs cross sibs
cross cousins cross cousins

b) G+1 kin terms

generation+1

= lineal+1 sex ≠ lineal+1 sex

♀ ♂ ♀ ♂
iten timin uhun un

c) G+2 kin terms generation 0

= lineal+1 sex ≠ lineal+1 sex

= lineal0 sex ≠ lineal0 sex = lineal0 sex ≠ lineal0 sex

elder younger ♀ ego ♂ ego ♀ ego ♂ ego ♀ ego ♂ ego

noatun noatahan nauvnen namanin newum nevin rahniaruman rahnpetan
▲ ▲
can marry
can marry

Fig. 4 - bifurcate merging – no lineal / collateral class division; parents are merged with
same sex sibs; ego belongs to a class with same sex sibs; merges same sex parallel
cousins into that class; creates extended marriage exchanges which blend lineages and
often generations; example here is from Telugu – a language spoken in south India.
 10

human

♂ ♀

unmarked marked unmarked marked

generic special generic special
male male female female

purity

pure impure

♂ ♀ ♂ ♀

unmarked marked unmarked marked unmarked marked unmarked marked

generic special generic special generic special generic special
pure guy pure guy pure girl pure girl impure guy impure guy impure girl impure girl

Fig. 5 – Gendered Purity. The two tier “human” category with marked and unmarked
options for male and female nodes generates four terminal types. When this tree is joined
to a simple one tier tree for the pure/impure binary, eight terminal types are generated.
 11

purity

pure impure
unmarked
♂ ♀ marked
all males → generic pure guy all females →special impure girl

a) simple two class binary tree with all males unmarked for purity; all females must be marked for impurity

purity

pure impure
marked
♀ ♂unmarked
all females →special pure girl all males → generic impure guy

b) simple two terminal class binary tree where all females must be marked for purity; all males unmarked
for impurity

purity

pure impure
♀ unmarked
♂unmarked ♀marked
all males → some females → most females →
generic pure guy special pure girl generic impure girl

c) binary tree with three terminal classes: males unmarked for purity; pure females must be marked;
unmarked females are impure.

Fig. 6 - Possible grammars for marked / unmarked human purity

 12

Pretty Woman (1990)

synopsis from Internet Movie Database; film available on YouTube
playlist
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=945F716DA38262F2

A very successful, wealthy lawyer, Edward Lewis, hires a beautiful and unlikely prostitute, Vivian Ward (Julia
Roberts), from Sunset Blvd to bring along to various business events. An attraction develops between the two, and
Edward finds it harder and harder to let the infectious, kind-hearted Vivian go.

Businessman Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) breaks up with his girlfriend, who doesn't want to be at his "beck and call"
at a swanky party held by his partner Philip Stuckey, and cuts loose in Stuckey's Lotus. He gets lost and stops along
Hollywood Boulevard for directions from hooker Vivenne (Julia Roberts). She charges, gets in and ends up driving him
to his hotel in Beverley Hills. He asks her up to his penthouse suite on a whim and pays her to stay all night, although
seems uncomfortable at first.

The following morning he asks her to stay all week for

$3000. He also gives her money for clothes and says she
needs to be at his "beck and call" with no strings attached.
She calls her room-mate Kit (Laura San Giacomo) to leave
her money for the rent, and goes shopping on Rodeo Drive
for more appropriate clothes. However, snooty saleswomen
won't serve her as she is still dressed like a hooker, and she
returns to the hotel, where she gets stopped by the Hotel
Manager, Barney (Hector Elizondo). He wants to make it
clear that they are making an exception having her at the
hotel as Edward is such a special guest. Vivienne gets upset
as she still has no outfit for dinner, and Barney helps her,
along with coaching her on dinner etiquette. When Edwards
returns, he is amazed by Vivienne's new look. The business
dinner goes well, but Edward is preoccupied with the deal
afterwards.

The next day, Vivienne tells him about the experience

shopping the previous day, and Edward takes her back to
spend an obscene amount of money on clothes, leaving her
to go back to his work as she is transformed from hooker to
lady. She goes back the shop from the previous day to show
them the big mistake they made! Back at hotel, she looks
like a genuine guest, but when Edward gets home he is still
busy with work, and they take a bath together and talk into
the night about their pasts and how they ended up where
they are today.

The following day, Edward takes Vivienne to the polo. While Vivienne chats to David Morse, the grandson of the man
involved in Edward's latest deal, Philip is worried she is a spy. Edward reassures him by telling him how they met, and
Philip then comes on to Vivienne. When they return to the hotel, she is furious with Edward for telling him, and plans
to leave, but he persuades her to see out the week. Edward leaves work early the next day and takes Vivienne on a date
to the Opera in his private jet. She clearly is moved by the music, and says "If I forget to tell you later, I had a
wonderful time tonight". On returning to the hotel, he falls asleep (the first time we have seen this) while she is getting
ready for bed, and she kisses him on the lips - she doesn't do this with clients - and they make love as partners, rather
than client and hooker. Over breakfast, Edward offers to put her up in an apartment so he can continue seeing her, but
she feels insulted and says this is not the fairytale she wants. He then goes off to work without resolving the situation.
Kit comes to the hotel and sees that she has fallen for him, but she denies it.

Edward meets Morse, about to close the deal, and changes his mind at the last minute. His time with Vivienne has
shown him another way of being - taking time off and enjoying life - and working. He wants to create things rather than
just making money. Philip is livid, and goes to the hotel. Vivienne is there and he blames her for changing Edward - he
comes onto her again, and then hits her before Edward returns and pulls him off and chucks him out.

Vivienne leaves, and is seen back at home with Kit, packing up to leave for San Francisco. Edward gets into the car
 13

with the chauffeur that took her home, and rather than going to the airport, he goes to her apartment and climbs up the
fire escape (despite being afraid of heights) with a rose in his mouth, to woo her like in a fairy-story.

purity

pure impure

♂ ♀ ♂ ♀

unmarked marked unmarked marketed unmarked marked unmarked marked

generic special generic special generic special generic special
pure guy pure guy pure girl pure girl Impure guy impure guy impure girl impure girl

Edward’s drive by Carlos-

Philip Edward
girlfriend ? johns the dealer
Kit Vivienne

Fig. 7 - Starting classification grammar for Pretty Woman

Pure world – marked and unmarked males compete for unmarked females
Impure world – marked males dominate marked and unmarked females
All marked females are impure; some marked males are pure; some unmarked females
are impure

purity

pure impure

♂ marked ♀marked ♂ unmarked ♀ unmarked

special special generic generic

pure guy pure girl impure guy impure girl

Ø Edward Vivienne Philip Kit Ø

▲ ▲

Fig. 8- Concluding classification grammar of Pretty Woman

Pure world – marked males pair with marked females.
Impure world – unmarked males pair with unmarked females.
Purity is always marked; impurity is never marked
 14

The marked impure girl who gives her clients colored condoms.
She must be checked at the clinic once a month.

Purification of the marked impure girl.

The bubble bath jouissance of becoming Julia Roberts
 15

Briefly, the account of the Pretty Woman goes as follows. The pure / impure binary in
this film partitions a world into two domains, one defined by purity of taste for elite
commodities (cars, penthouses, champagne and strawberries, etc.) and the other by the
impurity of sex for money which requires protection from disease. We start with the
typical male and female buddy pairings: two males inhabiting the world of pure, high
end products and values, and the two prostitutes living off the streets in contention with a
drug dealer. When the film begins both of these worlds are overpopulated, but there is
one figuration missing from the pure world: the marked female. All women in the pure
world are unmarked as generic members of a social class. Edward’s unmarked girl
friend leaves at the very start of the film and the implication is that all unmarked generic
women in this world will marry someone else. It is not so much that Edward resists
domestication but that none of them are good enough for him to break through the barrier
of his secretary.

This “full” representation can be taken as the input, and the final representation is the
output which satisfies the constraints or grammar of this world. That grammar turns out
to be rather simple: purity is always marked; impurity is never marked. Thus not only
does Edward’s generic girl friend leave the scene, but Phillip, the generic sidekick, is
shown to be the very embodiment of the common impure male. The one marked male in
the impure world, Carlos the drug dealer, is neutralized by the gun carried by Edward’s
black chauffeur. And finally, of course, the marked impure girl becomes the marked pure
girl because Edward returns to climb the fire escape and fetch her from a life in the
impure world. Phillip and Kit are presumably left behind in the impure world as the
common female for whom sex is work and the common male who must work to get sex.

The political ideology of this input / output transformation seems evident enough. The
pure world is a restricted domain filled with rare individuals who act out the fantasy of
high end consumption which the impure world of the commoners can never directly
experience except by way of a fantasy: the jouissance of being Julia Roberts as the
object of Richard Gere’s desire. The grammar of Pretty Woman, that is, just is that of
Hollywood itself. Moreover, these rare elites, our elites, when allowed to run the order of
things, have conveniently neutralized the one disturbing element which might make the
necessary continuation of impure world dangerous for the stars: the marked impure male.