Code construction and reification processes in the short film El empleo, by Santiago Bou Grasso

Abstract

The object of study of this article is Santiago Bou Grasso’s short film El empleo (The employment) (2008). Two aspects stood out as extremely interesting for the development of the analysis. First, the code construction based on the articulation of incompatible fields of experience in a primary circumstance; this aspect addresses the rules that allow us to establish codes of a heterogeneous composition that nevertheless give rise to cohesive entities in a general secondary circumstance and context (textual articulation). Second, the way in which ideologized routes of meaning that ultimately pertain to states of the world are represented. Our disciplinary approach is mainly based on social-semiotics, since in parallel with the intratextual analysis, we aim to specify the relation between textual and social structures. In addition, we include certain notions that tend to explain processes of perception, particularly in terms of the circumstances that surround the generation of the text.