Semiotics

Semiotics refers to the study of signs, their production, use, and meaning. The meanings provided by signs contribute to social identities, and thus, semiotics is often incorporated into studies of identity, communication, and culture. Semiotics covers four areas: semantics, syntactics, pragmatics, and semiosis.

Semantics is the study of the relationship between signs and the things they reference. For instance, one might study the relationship between an object and its name. Charles Morris refers to objects of reference as designata, or something designated by a certain sign. For instance, when one thinks of the word dog, several things can come to mind, such as a beloved golden retriever, the menacing pit bull that bites, or the evil man that broke a woman's heart by cheating.

Syntactics refers to scholarship that deals with the formal properties of signs and symbols. Specifically, scholars look at the rules that govern how words come together to form phrases and sentences. In other words, syntactics is the study of how signs relate to each other in formal settings. Under syntactics, scholars find interest in how we use words together in particular sentences, phrases, settings, and occasions.

Semiosis refers to the use of signs. Under semiosis, a scholar investigates the ways in which cultural groups produce, use, and assign meaning to signs. Pragmatics functions within semiosis because it deals with the practical and natural elements of sign usage. Pragmatics represents the study of how signs affect the people who use them from psychological, biological, and sociological perspectives. For example, under pragmatics, a researcher could study how using a term directly correlates to a community's cultural production.

Cultural and communication scholars trace the origins of semiotics back to Ferdinand de Saussure, and later, Charles Sanders Peirce. Many consider Saussure the “father” of modern linguistics, specifically in relation to the signified and the signifier. The signified relates to the referent, object, or mental concept. The signifier relates to the sign, or word or phrase, one utters to conjure that mental concept. According to Saussure, the signifiers we assign are arbitrary; there exists no necessary connections between a sign and its meaning. The communicator decides what a particular sign means for his or her audience.

Roland Barthes, a famous philosopher and scholar, found semiotics useful in his studies of bourgeois society. In Mythologies, he looked at the symbol of the wine bottle as a signifier, and the act of consuming wine as the signified. The bourgeois class used the wine bottle as a signifier of whatever they wanted it to mean, in this case, a normal and healthy, robust, and relaxing activity. For others not a part of the bourgeois class, wine might signify something unhealthy and expensive.

Peirce founded the school of pragmaticism. He broke semiosis down into action, or influence, that is or involves the cooperation of a sign, and object, and an interpretation. Thus, he caused a shift in the understanding of semiotics because he studied the use of signs rather than Saussure's structure. Peirce deemed the study of the ways in which cultures produced and assigned meanings as important. This understanding of semiotics continues to develop in the field of communication, culture, and identity.

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