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In semiotics, the value of a sign depends on its position and relations in the system of signification and upon the particular codes being used.
Value is the sign as it is determined by the other signs in a semiotic system. For linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, for example, the content of a sign in linguistics is ultimately determined and delimited not by its internal content, but by what surrounds it: the synonyms redouter ("to dread"), craindre ("to fear"), and avoir peur ("to be afraid") have their particular values because they exist in opposition to one another. If two of the terms disappeared, then the remaining sign would take on their roles, become vaguer, less articulate, and lose its "extra something" because it would have nothing to distinguish itself from.
For de Saussure, this suggests that thought is a chaotic nebula until linguistic structure dissects it and holds its divisions in equilibriums. This is akin to the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, who indirectly influenced Saussure [1] and believed that the mind could only grasp an idea through distinguishing it from something that it is not. He reasoned that the two objects would otherwise collapse together for the mind and become indistinguishable from one another.
Value determines the sign as a whole, not just meaning. Sound is also an indeterminate nebulous. The arbitrary nature of the sign and the flexibility of sound means that an agreed upon contrast is required. For example, "zena" is useful because it stands in contrast to "zenb" within an agreed upon system. Without the distinction, "zena" could be used for absolutely anything, or indeed nothing, making communication an impossibility.
It is only the sign as a whole that has value. Linguistic structure simultaneously unites sound with thought and decomposes "thought-sound" into linguistic units, or signs, consisting of a signifier and a signified (sound-pattern and concept, respectively). When analysed in isolation, the sound-pattern or concept are pure differences, emerging from series of sound-patterns or concepts that they themselves are dependent upon. But in isolation, they are mere abstractions, because neither can exist without the connection between the two. It is the sign as a whole, then, that is the concrete entity of structural linguistics, which is not a pure difference, a negative term, but a pure value, a positive term that is merely in opposition or resistance to all the other signs in the system.
Drawing from the original definition proposed by Saussure (1857–1913), a sign has two parts:
This emphasises that the sign is merely a symbol for the class of object referred to. Hence, the lexical word or noun "box" evokes a range of possibility from cheap card to gold-encrusted container. The reader or audience may not be able to see the particular box referred to but will be aware of its likely form from the other signs accompanying the use of the particular word.
However, there is no necessary connection between the signifier and the signified. There is nothing inherently boxy about the component sounds or letters that comprise the noun "box"—the scope of onomatopoeia is limited when forming a language. All that is necessary is that the relevant group of people should decide to use that word to denote the object. Evidence that this is the correct view comes from the fact that each language can encode signifiers with whichever signified they wish to communicate. Hence, for example, the letters comprising "air" signify what humans breathe in English, and what fish breathe in Malay, i.e. water.
This makes a system of signs a very flexible mechanism for communicating meaning, but one which is conditioned by history and culture, i.e. once a sign acquires a commonly accepted meaning in each language, it cannot arbitrarily be changed by any one person, but it is able to change diachronically.
Further, Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) proposes that when a group of signs is used, there is an emotive function that reflects the speaker's attitude to the topic of his or her discourse. Language and the other coding systems are the means whereby one self-aware individual communicates with another. By selecting particular signs and placing them in a context, the addresser is making a cognitive use of the sign system to refer to his or her own social, moral, ethical, political or other values.
Because signs may have multiple meanings, a sign can only be interpreted in its context. Saussure believed that any one sign takes its value from its position and relations with other signs within the linguistic system. Modern semiotics draws its inspiration from the work of, inter alios, Roland Barthes (1915–1980), who argued that semiotics should expand its scope and concern: "...any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification" (1967, 9).
In the system to be interrogated, the relations will be both weak and strong, positive and negative, qualitative and quantitative, etc. In this, a sign cannot be attributed a value outside its context (although what is signified may have connotative meaning(s) that resonate outside the context), and what is not present can be just as significant as what is present.
In a slightly different context of critique through the archaeological and genealogical methods for the study of knowledge, Michel Foucault (1926–1984) used the idea of discontinuity as a means to revalorise elements of knowledge. In this, he considered the silences and lacunae within a text to be as significant as express statements. In both systems, the specific processes of analysis examine these gaps to reveal whose interests are served by the omissions. Such analysis is particularly useful to identify which questions are left unasked.
The commutation test can be used to identify which signifiers are significant. The test depends on substitution: a particular signifier is chosen, then the effect of substituting alternatives is considered to determine the extent to which the value of the sign is changed. This both illuminates the meaning of the original choice and identifies the paradigms and code to which the signifiers used belong.
Paradigmatic analysis compiles a list of the signifiers present in the text. This set comprises the paradigm. The analyst then compares and contrasts the set with absent signifiers, i.e. with other signifiers that might have been chosen. This reveals the significance of the choices made which might have been required because of technical production constraints or the limitations of the individual's own technique, or because of the tropes, generic conventions, style and rhetorical purpose of the work. The analysis of paradigmatic relations helps to define the ‘value’ of specific items in a system.
In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.
A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or medical symptoms a sign of disease. A conventional sign signifies by agreement, as a full stop signifies the end of a sentence; similarly the words and expressions of a language, as well as bodily gestures, can be regarded as signs, expressing particular meanings. The physical objects most commonly referred to as signs generally inform or instruct using written text, symbols, pictures or a combination of these.
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), which are any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste).
In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste.
Différance is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida. It is a central concept in Derrida's deconstruction, a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. The term différance means "difference and deferral of meaning."
"Logocentrism" is a term coined by the German philosopher Ludwig Klages in the early 1900s. It refers to the tradition of Western science and philosophy that regards words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality. It holds the logos as epistemologically superior and that there is an original, irreducible object which the logos represent. According to logocentrism, the logos is the ideal representation of the Platonic ideal.
In semiotics, syntagmatic analysis is analysis of syntax or surface structure as opposed to paradigms. This is often achieved using commutation tests.
Course in General Linguistics is a book compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from notes on lectures given by Ferdinand de Saussure at the University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911. It was published in 1916, after Saussure's death, and is generally regarded as the starting point of structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics that flourished in Europe and the United States in the first half of the 20th century. One of Saussure's translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the study of language in the following way:
Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. They are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. This typically twentieth-century view of language has profoundly influenced developments throughout the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology".
Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to linguistics, among functional linguistics, that considers language as a social semiotic system.
In semiotics, a modality is a particular way in which information is to be encoded for presentation to humans, i.e. to the type of sign and to the status of reality ascribed to or claimed by a sign, text, or genre. It is more closely associated with the semiotics of Charles Peirce (1839–1914) than Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) because meaning is conceived as an effect of a set of signs. In the Peircean model, a reference is made to an object when the sign is interpreted recursively by another sign, a conception of meaning that does in fact imply a classification of sign types.
In semiotics, the commutation test is used to analyze a signifying system. The test identifies signifiers as well as their signifieds, value and significance.
In semiotics, denotation is the surface or the literal meaning, the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary.
Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements. Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations.
Social semiotics is a branch of the field of semiotics which investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances, and which tries to explain meaning-making as a social practice. Semiotics, as originally defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, is "the science of the life of signs in society". Social semiotics expands on Saussure's founding insights by exploring the implications of the fact that the "codes" of language and communication are formed by social processes. The crucial implication here is that meanings and semiotic systems are shaped by relations of power, and that as power shifts in society, our languages and other systems of socially accepted meanings can and do change.
Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within the system. It is derived from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a dynamic system of interconnected units. Saussure is also known for introducing several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are still important today. Two of these are his key methods of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis, which define units syntactically and lexically, respectively, according to their contrast with the other units in the system.
Visual semiotics is a sub-domain of semiotics that analyses the way visual images communicate a message.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to semiotics:
Semiotics of Fashion is the study of fashion and how humans signify specific social and cultural positions through dress. Ferdinand de Saussure defined semiotics as "the science of the life of signs in society". Semiotics is the study of signs and just as we can interpret signs and construct meaning from text we can also construct meaning from visual images such as fashion. Fashion is a language of signs that non-verbally converse meanings about individuals and groups. It holds a symbolic and communicative role having the capacity to express one's unique style, identity, profession, social status, and gender or group affiliation.
Film semiotics is the study of sign process (semiosis), or any form of activity, conduct, or any process that involves signs, including the production of meaning, as these signs pertain to moving pictures.
Signified and signifier is a concept, most commonly related to semiotics, that can be described as "the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation." Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the two founders of semiotics, introduced these terms as the two main planes of a sign: signified pertains to the "plane of content," while signifier is the "plane of expression."