Search Results - Salience (semiotics)

In semiotics, salience refers to the relative importance or prominence of a piece of a sign. The relative salience of a particular sign when considered in the context of others helps an individual to quickly rank large amounts of information by importance and thus give attention to that which is the most important. This process stops an individual from becoming mentally overloaded with data.

The human senses provide a vast quantity of data to the mind at any given moment. The human brain has been configured through the process of neuro-cognitive evolution to process the incoming data so that it can be managed meaningfully. In the course of the development of the science of semiotics, the process of converting signs into meaning has come to be called semiosis. Salience is an integral aspect of the sign or signs involved in semiosis that allows the mind to interpret the so-called data stream and to filter out the irrelevant, leaving only the salient signs. This is a metacognitive process working through schema that constitute a model of the world. Such schema are created through, and monitored by, a range of skills including pattern matching, analysis, and synthesis.

Meaning can be described as the “…system of mental representations of an object or phenomenon, its properties and associations with other objects and/or phenomena. In the consciousness of an individual, meaning is reflected in the form of sensory information, images and concepts.” (Bedny & Karwowsky, 2004). It is either denotative or connotative but the sign system for transmitting meanings can be uncertain in its operation or conditions may disrupt the communication and prevent accurate meanings from being decoded.