Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of sign and symbol systems. Semiotic analyses explore the ways in which meaning is constructed and understood. Semiotics includes written and spoken language as sign systems, but, unlike linguistics, is not limited to language. Images, soundsboth natural and linguistic, gestures, or associations of any two or more of thesecan all be parts of sign systems. For the curriculum field, semiotic studies tend to be focused on curricular language and media, institutional environments (e.g., the hidden curriculum), and visual images. From the standpoint of semiotic theory, analyzing words, images, gestures, and situations is always an interpretive act; there is no such thing as a “literal reading.” Hence, all sign systems, as entities to be “read” or interpreted, regardless of form, may be referred to as “texts.” A semiotic standpoint runs contrary to any assumption that there is a discernable or final meaning to be obtained for any particular text, including, for example, religious texts, school textbooks, “best practice” teaching methods, or state curriculum standards. Similarly, semiotic theory challenges any notion that the curriculum can be an innocent conduit for transmitting academic knowledge. As such, semiotic analyses might undermine arguments that curriculum can be designed and implemented as an objective scope and sequence of any particular discipline, or that it can be fairly and accurately evaluated by student performance on standardized tests.

Arguably, the most important theorists of semiotics to the contemporary curriculum field are Charles Sanders Peirce (18391914) and Ferdinand de Saussure (18571913). Saussure proposed a dyadic structure in which a signifier (a word or phrase) relates to a signified (a mental concept). To illustrate, the marks c-a-t placed together become the signifier for the concept cat, the signified, that evokes among English language speakers a four-legged furry animal. But, Saussure asserts, the relationship between the signifier and the signified is an arbitrary one, with no necessary connection between the word and the concept. That is, any number of other words could just as well have been chosen to signify cat. And indeed, there are many other words to signify the animal in languages other than English. What is more, the meanings attached to words (signifiers) often change over time with changes in ideology and other aspects of culture. Language, for Saussure, differentiates concepts that might otherwise be experienced as a continuum. For example, as one experiences the color spectrum moving through shades of blue, there are no lines drawn at points of change; it is only words that enable distinctions in the experience. Saussure's theorizing was limited to linguistics, but many have transposed this system of thought onto nonlinguistic sign systems, making it a theory of semiotics.

For Peirce, semiosis involves the interaction among three subjects: the sign, its object, and its interpretant. Peirce's sign is most analogous to Saussure's signifier. Peirce's object is that which is signified. Hence, smoke would be a sign for the object, fire. The interpretant might be characterized as the understanding (interpretation) one has of the sign-object relationship. For Peirce, a sign signifies only through its being interpreted; hence, each part of the triad is essential to signification. And this signification is not closed to itself, but is a sign process. Peirce's interpretant is itself again interpreted and so becomes a sign in relation to yet another interpretant, in endless semiosis.

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