Search Results - Sign (semiotics)

In semiotics, a sign is "something that stands for something else, to someone in some capacity"^[1]. It may be understood as a discrete unit of meaning, and includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds&_160;– essentially all of the ways in which information can be communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning mind to another.

The nature of signs has long been discussed in philosophy. Initially, within linguistics and later semiotics, there were two general schools of thought those who proposed that signs are ‘dyadic’ (i.e. having two parts), and those who proposed that signs are interpreted in a recursive pattern of triadic (i.e. three-part) relationships.

According to Saussure (1857-1913), a sign is composed of the signifier^[2] (signifiant), and the signified (signifié). These cannot be conceptualized as separate entities but rather as a mapping from significant differences in sound to potential (correct) differential denotation. The Saussurean sign exists only at the level of the synchronic system, in which signs are defined by their relative and hierarchical privileges of co-occurrence. It is thus a common misreading of Saussure to take signifiers to be anything one could speak, and signifieds as things in the world. In fact, the relationship of language to parole (or speech-in-context) is and always has been a theoretical problem for linguistics (cf. Roman Jakobson's famous essay "Closing Statement Linguistics and Poetics" et al.).