Semiotics is relatively known as the study of signs and their function in social interaction. A sign can be anything that signifies something to someone such as a cultural symbol or a hand gesture; when people speak or write they communicate in words which are signs for example. Semioticians explore the relationship between a sign, the concept it stands for and the people who can decipher the connection between the two.
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand De Saussure (1857-1913) is considered to be the founding father of the science that is Semiology and his work concentrated mainly on the principles associated with language. All language is composed of signs and Saussure aimed to explore how the formation of language came to convey meaning. Saussure’s understanding of language was that it contains a series of signs which express ideas. Saussure developed the theory that signs unite a sound, an image and a concept. He believed that a sign consists of two parts: a Signifier and a Signified.
The signifier is a sound or image and the signified is the concept or meaning behind the sign. However Saussure was certain that the relationship between the two parts was completely arbitrary, take for example the word cat, the arrangement of letters which form the word is the signifier and he believed that there is no underlying reason why this particular string of letters evokes the concept of a cat which is the signified.
The American philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was also renowned as being a pioneer of Semiotics as it was he himself that actually developed the term semiotics. Peirce focused on the logic behind semiotics and for him a sign consisted of three parts, the Representant which is the sign itself, the Object that the sign stood for and the Interpretant which is the individual that interprets the sign.
Peirce also made the distinction between different types of signs and formed three categories for division, a Symbol, an Icon and an Index. A symbolic sign refers to signs with a signifier and a signified where the relationship between the two has occurred purely by convention and cultural practice and is arbitrary, for example the linguistic sign. An iconic sign on the other hand is a sign which has some visual resemblance to the concept being communicated for example; the appearance of a road works sign is visually similar to the image of men at work. Finally, an indexical sign is a sign in which the signified causes the signifier, for example in case of a fire, the fire itself is the signified which causes smoke which is the signifier. We see the smoke and as the saying goes “no smoke without fire”, so therefore we become instantly aware of the presence of fire without it being visually present.
Bibliography
http://www.suite101.com/content/ferdinand-de-saussure-on-structuralism-linguistics-and-semiotics-a248131#
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