Umberto Eco: Theory and Practice in the Analysis of the Media

Abstract

As a student and critic of the mass media, Umberto Eco displays a remarkable range and combination of qualities. He has produced, both as a journalist and at a more specialist level, a constant flow of acute, forceful and usually entertaining articles and essays on specific topics in broadcasting, publishing, advertising and related aspects of modern mass culture. At the same time, in his semiotic theory, he has developed an imposingly elaborate conceptual framework, within which the rest of his work is conducted. This combination of theory and practice is clearly a major source of strength, but, to a pragmatic English-speaking public, it is also an obvious source of difficulty; complex theoretical systems tend for us to be objects of suspicion in themselves, and still more when they are proposed as a guide to practical activity. I propose here to look at the nature of this combination (more closely than I was able in an earlier essay (Robey, 1984)), to examine Eco’s work on the media in relation to his semiotic theory as a whole and the claims he makes for it, with a view to understanding better just how the theory affects the practice. As well as helping to characterise the writings of a man who has himself become a significant feature of modern culture, this will, I hope, illustrate something about the nature and use of semiotics as an academic activity.