Semiotics and Semiology

Signs

If semiotics is the study of signs and sign systems, then defining each of those terms provides an obvious beginning point. Signs are the building blocks of semiotics; everything else rests upon their analysis. Saussure described signs as a duality, each one having two parts: the signifier, the visible or present component, and the signified, the invisible or tacit component. This relationship permits references to invisibles (such as processes, emotions, social roles, or units of time) as well as to concrete elements of the world not currently present (such as a person or thing). Peirce divided signs into three components: the sign, or representatum; the object, that to which the representatum refers; and the interpretant, the meaning it conveys (alternatively, the third part is sometimes understood to be the person making the interpretation). It does not matter whether signs are viewed as having two or three parts; in either case, there is more than one, which leaves a gap between the thing and the meaning it conveys. This can lead to misunderstandings. Polysemy, the fact that one sign can have multiple signifieds or interpretants, can also lead to miscommunication, for the meaning one person intends may not be the meaning another understands. This ambiguity can have negative consequences (confusion, anger) or positive (complexity, leading to the ability of a single sign to convey multiple messages simultaneously).

Signs are generally divided into types. Peirce named 66 types; of these, three are accepted as the most important. They are distinguished by the type of relationship between the signifier and signified. An icon has a relationship of similarity (a photograph is an icon because it normally looks like the person or object depicted). An index has a relationship of contiguity or connection, thus an index points to what it stands for (if their wedding cake topper is saved by the couple to be eaten on their anniversary, that is an index because it was originally part of the wedding cake and only conveys meaning as a result of that connection). A symbol has a relationship of arbitrariness (that the word cat has no whiskers, as Gregory Bateson famously noted, means it is a symbol). Nearly all words are symbols, and certainly all of them are signs (whether in spoken or written form), which is why the study of signs is so central to the discipline of communication. Without the ability of sounds to convey information—that is, without the ability of words to operate as symbols—it would be impossible for any reader to decipher the words in this, or any other, encyclopedia entry, or any other verbal text for that matter.

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