In
semiotics, a
sign is
"something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity"
It may be understood as a discrete unit of
meaning, and includes words, images,
gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all
of the ways in which
information can be
communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning mind to
another.
And unless icons (iconic signs), which signify their close
resemblances to things they refer to, all other signs in most part,
are in a sense arbitraries and the onomatopoeia is symbolic (i.e.
sound symbolism whose pronunciation suggests it meaning). Thus it
is said to be that all the communication forms like sounds,
gestures, icons, symbols, etc. must signify their signs to denote
their referents.
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.
Dyadic signs
According to
Saussure
(1857-1913), a
sign is composed of the
signifierMardy S. Ireland defines a signifier as:
A unit of something (i.e., a word, gesture) that can carry
ambiguous/multiple meanings (e.g., as U.S. President
Bill Clinton once said, "It depends on what the
meaning of the word 'is', is")
p. 13. (
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.).
He is also important in emphasizing that the relationship between a
sign and the real-world thing it denotes is an arbitrary one. There
is not a natural relationship between a word and the object it
refers to, nor is there a causal relationship between the inherent
properties of the object and the nature of the sign used to denote
it. For example, there is nothing about the physical quality of
paper that requires denotation by the phonological sequence
‘paper’. There is, however, what Saussure called ‘relative
motivation’: the possibilities of signification of a signifier are
constrained by the
compositionality
of elements in the linguistic system (cf.
Emile Benveniste's paper on the
arbitrariness of the sign in the first volume of his papers on
general linguistics). In other words, a word is only available to
acquire a new meaning if it is identifiably
different from
all the other words in the language and it has no existing meaning.
Structuralism was later based on this
idea that it is only within a given system that one can define the
distinction between the levels of system and use, or the semantic
"value" of a sign.
Triadic signs
Charles Sanders Peirce
(1839-1914) proposed a different theory. Unlike Saussure who
approached the conceptual question from a study of
linguistics and
phonology, Peirce was a
Kantian philosopher who distinguished "sign" from
"word" as only a particular kind of sign, and characterized the
sign as the means to
understanding.
The setting of Peirce's study of signs is philosophical logic,
which he defined as the formal branch of semiotic. The result is
not a theory of language, but a theory for the production of
meaning that rejects the idea of a stable relationship between a
signifier and its signified. Rather, Peirce believed that signs
establish meaning through recursive relationships that arise in
sets of three. The three main
semiotic
elements that he identifies are:
- Representamen: the sign, that which represents the
denoted object (cf. Saussure's "signifier").
- Object: that which the sign represents (or as some put
it, encodes). It can be anything
thinkable, a law, a fact, a possibility, or even fictional like
Hamlet; those are partial objects; the total object is the universe
of discourse. The object may be
- immediate, the object as represented in the sign,
or
- dynamic, the object as it really is.
- Interpretant: the meaning formed into a further sign
by interpreting (or, as some put it, decoding) a sign. The interpretant may
be:
- immediate, i.e. the meaning already in the sign, a
kind of possibility or a quality of feeling; for instance, a word's
usual meaning;
- dynamical, i.e. the meaning as formed into an actual
effect, for example a translation or a state of agitation, or
- final, i.e. the ultimate meaning that would
be reached if investigation were to be pushed far enough. It is a
kind of norm or ideal end, with which an actual interpretant may,
at most, coincide.
Peirce explained that signs mediate the relationship between their
objects and their interpretants in a triadic mental or mind-like
process.
Firstness is a universal
category of phenomena and is associated
with a vague state of mind in which there is awareness of the
environment, a prevailing emotion, and a sense of the
possibilities. This is the mind in neutral, waiting to formulate
thought.
Secondness is a category associated with moving
from possibility to greater certainty shown by action, reaction,
causality, or reality. Here the mind identifies what message is to
be communicated.
Thirdness is the category associated with
signs, generality, representation, continuity, and purpose. The
signs thought most likely to convey the intended meaning are
selected and the communication process is initiated. This can
involve interpersonal behaviour using nonverbal systems to
supplement verbal meaning through intonation, facial expression, or
gesture. It can involve, as in the exercise of producing this page,
the writing and iterative editing process to arrive at the final
selection of words now appearing.
This process is reversed in the receiver. The neutral mind acquires
the sign. It recovers from memory the object normally associated
with the sign and this produces the
interpretant. This is
the experience of intelligibility or the result of an act of
signification (not necessarily as the
signified in the
sense intended by Saussure). When the second sign is considered,
the initial interpretant may be confirmed, or new possible meanings
may be identified. As each new sign is addressed, more
interpretants may emerge. It can involve a mind's reading of
nature, its icons (signs which are signs by resemblance to their
objects) and its indices (signs by factual connection to their
objects) as well as symbols (signs which represent by interpretive
habit independent of resemblance or factual connection to their
objects).
Peirce also refers to the “ground” of a sign. The ground is the
pure abstraction of a quality. This is the
respect in
which the sign represents its object, e.g. as in
literal and figurative
language. For example, an icon
presents a
characteristic or quality attributed to an object, while a symbol
imputes to an object a characteristic either presented by
an icon or symbolized so as to evoke a mental icon.
Even when a sign represents by a resemblance or factual connection
independent of interpretation, the sign is a sign only insofar as
it is at least potentially interpretable. A sign depends on its
object in a way which enables (and, in a sense, determines)
interpretation which, in turn, depends on the object
as the
sign depends on the object and is thus a further sign,
enabling and determining still further interpretation. The process
is logically structured to perpetuate itself and is what defines
sign, object, and interpretant. Hence, as phrased by
Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990: 7), "the
process of referring effected by the sign is
infinite."
According to Gilles-Gaston Granger (1968: 114), Peirce's
representamen is, "...a thing which is connected in a certain way
to a second sign, its 'object', in such a way that it brings a
third sign, its 'interpretant,' into a relationship with the same
'object,' and this in such a way that it brings a fourth sign into
a relationship with this same 'object,' and so on ad
infinitum."
According to Nattiez, writing with
Jean
Molino, this tripartite definition is based on the "
trace" or
neutral
level, Saussure's "sound-image" (or "signified", thus Peirce's
"representamen"). Thus, "a symbolic form...is not some
'intermediary' in a process of 'communication' that transmits the
meaning intended by the author to the audience; it is instead the
result of a complex
process of creation (the
poietic process) that has to do with the form as
well as the content of the work; it is also the point of departure
for a complex process of reception (the
esthesic process
that
reconstructs a 'message'").(ibid, p. 17)
Molino and Nattiez's diagram:
- {|
- ::(Nattiez 1990, p. 17)
Peirce's theory of the sign therefore offered a powerful analysis
of the signification system and its codes because the focus was
often on natural or cultural context rather than linguistics which
only analyses usage in slow-time whereas, in the real world, there
is an often chaotic blur of language and signal exchange during
human semiotic interaction. Nevertheless, the implication that
triadic relations are structured to perpetuate themselves leads to
a level of complexity not usually experienced in the routine of
message creation and interpretation. Hence, different ways of
expressing the idea have been developed.
Modern theories
It is now agreed that the effectiveness of the acts that may
convert the message into text (including speaking, writing,
drawing, music and physical movements) depends upon the knowledge
of the sender. If the sender is not familiar with the current
language, its codes and its culture then he or she will not be able
to say anything at all, whether as a visitor in a different
language area or because of a medical condition such as
aphasia(see
Roman
Jakobson).
Modern theories deny the Saussurian distinction between signifier
and signified , and look for meaning not in the individual signs,
but in their context and the framework of potential meanings that
could be applied. Such theories assert that language is a
collective memory or cultural history of all the different ways in
which meaning has been communicated and may, to that extent, be
constitutive of all life's experiences (see
Louis Hjelmslev).
This implies that speaking is simply one more form of behaviour and
changes the focus of attention from the text as language, to the
text as a
representationof
purpose, a functional version of the
author's intention. But, once the
message has been transmitted, the text exists independently.
Hence, although the writers who co-operated to produce this page
exist, they can only be represented by the signs actually selected
and presented here. The interpretation process in the receiver's
mind may attribute meanings completely different from those
intended by the senders. Why might this happen? Neither the sender
nor the receiver of a text has a perfect grasp of all language.
Each individual's relatively small
stockof knowledge is
the product of personal experience and their attitude to learning.
When the
audiencereceives the message,
there will always be an excess of connotational meanings available
to be applied to the particular signs in their context (no matter
how relatively complete or incomplete their knowledge, the
cognitiveprocess is the same).
The first stage in understanding the message is, therefore, to
suspend or defer judgement until more information becomes
available. At some point, the individual receiver decides which of
all the possible meanings represents the best possible "fit".
Sometimes, uncertainty may not be resolved so meaning is
indefinitely deferred, or a provisional or approximate meaning is
allocated. More often, the receiver's desire for closure (see
Gestalt psychology) leads to
simple meanings being attributed out of prejudices and without
reference to the sender's intentions.
See also
Notes
- Marcel
Danesi and Paul Perron, Analyzing Cultures.
- Peirce, C.S., 1902, Application to the Carnegie Institution,
Memoir 12, "On the Definition of Logic", Eprint. Note that by "logic" Peirce means a
part of philosophy, not the mathematics of logic. (See
Classification of the
sciences .
- For Peirce's definitions of the following terms, see the
Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms.
- Pronounced with the “a” long and stressed: . See wiktionary:representamen.
- Peirce, C.S. (1867), On a New List of
Categories.
References
- Granger, G. G. (1968). Essai d'une philosophie du
style. Paris: Colin.
- Jakobson, Roman. (1971). "Aphasia as a Linguistic Topic" in
Selected Writings, Vol. 2: Word and Language. The
Hague & Paris: Mouton.
- Jakobson, Roman & Halle, Morris. (1956). "Two Aspects of
Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances" in Fundamentals
of Language. The Hague & Paris: Mouton.
- Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1987), trans. Carolyn Abbate (1990).
Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music.
Princeton:
Princeton
University Press
.
- Peirce, Charles Sanders. (1960). Collected Papers of
Charles Sanders Peirce. Volumes I and II. Cambridge:
Harvard University
Press.
- Ferdinand de Saussure
(1922). Cours de linguistique générale. Actually written
by Bally and Séchehaye, compiled from notebooks of Saussure's
students 1907-1911.
External links
| Poietic Process |
| Esthesic Process |
|
| "Producer" |
| → |
| Trace |
| ← |
| Receiver |
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