A Study On Baudrillard's Early Sign Culture Theory

structural linguistics as his theoretical method, combining it with psychoanalysis, sociology, economics, media theory and so on, to analyze consumer society .His analysis and proof which form his systematic sign culture theory are convinced. Baudrillard starts from analyzing objects. In his view, not only founction-objects, non-founction-objects, but also meta-founction-objects, pseudo-founction-objects exist in sign. They form a hierarchical system of objects by the promotion of advertisement and the support of credit loan, in which model/series of objects circulates and develops incessantly. It reflects the differentiation logic of social reality and caters to the need of people's social status identity and self-status identity, people and objects forming a closed cycle. Therefore, consuming is free superficially, while, as a matter of fact, it is only an alienation dominated by the sign system. In consumer society, people are alienated not only in working but also in consuming. This is a development of Marx's alienation theory. In the meantime, signization infiltrates the whole society, including body, work, leisure and interperson's relation, even politics, media, art, culture and aesthetics. Baudrillard's sign culture theory is based on structural linguistics. Objects gain their meanings from their differential relations. However, Baudrillard has developed structural linguistics. In his point of view, the way of objects'gaining their meanings is different from the one of language. It is a hierarchical meaning of model/series, which he calls sign value. Any objects, including thing, body, work, leisure, art, culture, can get signifier and gain sign value. Sign value signifies the ability of differentiating social status which the sign possesses as the signifier of social status. This is the first meaning of Baudrillard's definition of sign, while the second one is as the followings: Objects can also become a reflection sign of people's psychological images. For instance, non-founction-objects, meta-founction-objects and pseudo-founction-objects exist principally in this way. The third meaning signifies formalization and superficialization, such as systematical smiles, simulating aesthetics and the formalization of politics and media. Sign value is the central concept of Baudrillard's sign culture theory. It is people's continuous chasing after sign value that pushes forward the infinite circulation of model/series and promotes the infiltration of sign in the entire society. The concept of sign value has developed theoretically Marx's labour value theory, having a significant directing meaning to develop socialism market economy and cast famous brands as well. It is a pity that Baudrillard himself has not expounded specifically and abundantly the formation of sign value. But we can deduce that objects with big use value or high economic exchange value have higher sign value, according to his idea that use value, economic exchange value, sign value and symbolic exchange value can transform one another and model/series circulates continuously, so can sign value and brand value. Media theory is an important part of his sign culture theory. Media, especially advertisement, tells the sign value of objects and leads people chasing after sign value. Baudrillard has not systematically analyzed art and aesthetics. He also pays a necessary attention to them as they have important effects on the formation of sign value. His ideas of aesthetics recycling, industry aesthetics, simulating aesthetics and hyper-aesthetics are very profound. The weakness of Baudrillard's sign culture theory is very clear, because he lacks the vision of history development and is tied by the inherent limit of structurism. He exaggerates the dominating function of sign. As a result, he has not sought the way of getting rid of the domination of sign, and has not seen the future of consumer society, either. In fact, it is not necessary that people chase after sign value and differentiate one another by sign in the society that everyone is equal. Only overthrowing the capitalism in the whole world can we thoroughly remove all kinds of unequal phenomenon. This is also the only way that we come out of the consumer society dominated by sign.