Interpreting the Meanings of the “Sunflower Student Movement” from the View of Roland Barthes’ Semiotics

• Main Authors: Hsing-Tsu Hsieh, 謝幸足
• Other Authors: Jeng-Ti Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35937100891067280289

碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 公共行政與政策學系 === 103 === The meanings of “Sunflower Student Movement” (abbrev. SSM) are interpreted disparately due to the different mental attitudes. Therefore, this thesis attempts to conduct an investigation, which uses Barthes’ semiotics as theoretical approach. Generally speaking, Barthes’ semiotics is classified into the so-called “Structuralism”. It pays more attention to the interpreting intelligibility of the meanings of the SSM, rather than its causal relationship. Consequently, the interpretation of the meanings of SSM in this thesis is a hermeneutical self-understanding. From the viewpoint of Barthes’ semiotics, SSM can be regarded as an encoded sign, and it has two meaning-layers. The first meaning-layer is denotation, which indicates the literal meaning of a sign. The second meaning-layer is cultural meaning, which can be further divided into three aspects, namely connotation, myth and symbol (including metaphor and metonymy). It is worth mentioning, that each of the three aspects corresponds to a specific reading attitude. This thesis concludes as follows: Firstly, the denotation of SSM is that SSM is a student movement, which makes use of sunflower as symbol. Secondly, the connotation of SSM is that SSM is a democratic movement, which is initiated by students, in order to protest against the backroom deals of “the Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services”. Thirdly, the myth of SSM is that the younger generations try to speculate in the movement to accumulate its political capital; the opposition party schemes to topple the government. Fourth, the symbol of SSM is conveyed in two types, metaphor and metonymy. The metaphor of SSM indicates that the Cross-Strait relationship remains unimproved; the metonymy of SSM indicates that it is pessimistic for the Legislative Yuan to pass “the Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services” in a short time. To sum up, my personal reading attitude toward SSM is to adopt the connotation.