Semiotics The Basics - Daniel Chandler-2
Semiotics The Basics - Daniel Chandler-2
Semiotics The Basics - Daniel Chandler-2
DOI: 10.4324/9781003155744-1
2 I N T R OD UC T I O N
DEFINITIONS
In semiotics, a sign is traditionally defined as something which ‘stands
for’ (or represents) something else. It can take any form – a word, an
image, a sound, an odour, a flavour, an action, an event, an object,
or whatever. Anything has the potential to be interpretable, but noth-
ing has an intrinsic meaning; for human beings, something becomes
a sign when it is interpreted as signifying something. Conventional
‘symbols’ are obvious examples (such as when a flag is used to ‘stand
for’ a particular country), but we also recognize ‘natural signs’, such as
when we infer that dark clouds are a ‘sign of’ rain. We experience the
world as meaningful. As a species we are above all meaning-makers
(Homo significans), driven to ‘find’ meanings ‘in’ things. The under-
lying metaphor that things are ‘containers’ of meanings exemplifies
the subtle potency of our foremost semiotic system – the language
that we speak. We have no direct, unmediated access to ‘things in
themselves’. We dwell in a symbolic world of human meanings; our
everyday reality is a web of signs. As we will see, communication,
culture, community, and cognition depend upon them.
Semiotics is concerned with how meanings are made and how
reality is represented (and indeed constructed) through signs, sign
systems, and processes of signification. Theories of signs (or sym-
bols) appear throughout the history of philosophy from ancient times
onwards. The early medieval theologian and philosopher Augustine
of Hippo (354–430 ce) is widely regarded as the founder of medieval
semiotics, but it wasn’t until 1690 that the English philosopher John
Locke (1632–1704) coined the term ‘semiotics’ to describe a field of
study that had yet to emerge.
The two primary traditions in contemporary semiotics stem respec-
tively from the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913)
and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced
‘purse’) (1839–1914). They are widely regarded as the co-founders
of what is now generally known as semiotics – despite the fact that
neither of them actually wrote a book on the subject. The first edition
of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously
in 1916, contains the declaration that he could envisage, and staked
a claim for, ‘a science that studies the life of signs within society’,
which he called semiology, from the Greek sēmeîon, ‘sign’ (CLG
33/16: i.e. Cours de linguistique générale, page 33/Course in General
IN T RO D U C T I ON 3
Linguistics, page 16). His use of the term sémiologie dates originally
from a manuscript of 1894. Although Saussure was a linguist, he saw
linguistics as a branch of the ‘general science’ of semiology, which
was in turn an offshoot of (social) psychology. Across the Atlantic,
to the philosopher Charles Peirce the field of study which he calls
‘semeiotic’ (or ‘semiotic’) is the ‘formal doctrine of signs’ that is
closely related to logic (2.227). Working quite independently from
Saussure, Peirce borrowed his term from Locke. Saussure’s term
‘semiology’ is sometimes used to refer to the Saussurean tradition,
while the term ‘semiotics’ sometimes refers to the Peircean tradition
(see Figure 0.1; for a useful discussion, see Daylight 2014). However,
nowadays the term ‘semiotics’ is widely used as an umbrella term
to embrace the whole field (Nöth 1990, 14). We will outline and dis-
cuss both the Saussurean and Peircean models of the sign in the next
chapter.
Some commentators adopt a definition of semiotics by the American
philosopher Charles W. Morris (1901–79) as ‘the science of signs’
(1938, 1–2). The term ‘science’ (used also by Saussure) is misleading.
Semiotics is perhaps best thought of as a way of looking at the produc-
tion of meaning from a particular critical perspective. Its scope and
general principles are still a site of struggle, but semiotics continues to
expand into new areas. The Association Internationale de Sémiotique
(International Association of Semiotics) was founded in Paris in 1969,
and its journal Semiotica first appeared in the same year. The first
world congress of IASS (the International Association for Semiotic
Studies) was held in Milan in 1974. Semiotics is now served by mul-
tiple journals and regular conferences at national and international
F I G U RE 0 .1 Semiotic traditions
Source: © 2021 Daniel Chandler
4 I N T R OD UC T I O N
STRUCTURALISM
The development of the European tradition of semiology is closely
associated with structuralism – a transdisciplinary academic perspec-
tive that arose in the late 1920s and reached its zenith in the late 1960s
(when it began to transform into poststructuralism). Inspired primar-
ily by Ferdinand de Saussure’s conception of languages as systems of
6 I N T R OD UC T I O N
He adds (ibid., 698) that semiotics ‘deals with those general princi-
ples which underlie the structure of all signs whatever’. Structuralists
search for ‘deep structures’ underlying the ‘surface features’ of sign
systems: Claude Lévi-Strauss in myth, kinship rules and totemism;
Jacques Lacan in the unconscious; Roland Barthes and Algirdas
Greimas in the ‘grammar’ of narrative. Julia Kristeva (1973, 1249)
declares that ‘what semiotics has discovered … is that the law govern-
ing or, if one prefers, the major constraint affecting any social practice
lies in the fact that it signifies; i.e. that it is articulated like a language’.
‘Although language is only one particular semiological system,’
Saussure sees it as the best example of a system based on the arbitrari-
ness of the sign – a principle we will explore shortly. He suggests that
linguistics has the potential to become ‘the master-pattern [le patron
general] for all branches of semiology’ (CLG 101/68). However,
Saussure does not limit all semiological systems to his model of the
language system [langue], as some of his critics claim (Thibault 1997,
21). Indeed, he subordinates linguistics to semiology as a discipline.
Subsequently, structuralist semiotics has drawn heavily on linguistic
concepts – partly because of his influence and also because linguistics
is a more established discipline than the study of other sign systems.
Jakobson (1970/1990, 455) insists that ‘language is the central and
most important among all human semiotic systems’, while Lévi-
Strauss notes that ‘language is the semiotic system par excellence; it
cannot but signify, and exists only through signification’ (1972, 48).
Furthermore, as the French linguist and semiotician Émile Benveniste
(1902–76) observes, ‘language is the interpreting system of all other
systems, linguistic and non-linguistic’ (1969, 239). Although sign sys-
tems can be non-verbal (as with signal flags, for instance), we cannot
read messages or specify meanings in such systems without recourse
to language (Chandler 2022).
As we have noted, Saussure saw linguistics as a branch of ‘semi-
ology’, subject to any general laws that might be discovered by the
new science that he envisaged. He consequently saw it as important
8 I N T R OD UC T I O N
MODELS
DOI: 10.4324/9781003155744-2
14 M OD E LS
language’s sign system. Within such a system, a sign has two aspects,
which Saussure termed a signifiant (usually rendered in English as
a ‘signifier’) and a signifié (a ‘signified’) (see Figure 1.2). Although
in contemporary discourse the term signified is often used to refer
generally to ‘meaning’, and in loose usage may involve reference,
Saussure makes it very clear that he is not dealing with the dimension
of reference: ‘The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but
a concept and an acoustic image’ (CLG 98/66). Thus, for Saussure,
words do not ‘stand for’ things, and his signifier and signified are not
to be understood dualistically as ‘sign’ (vehicle) and ‘referent’ – a
common misinterpretation.
Within the Saussurean linguistic model, the sign is the unified
whole that results from the association of a sound with a concept (ibid.,
99/67). This is a relationship in which the two layers are as inseparable
as the two sides of a piece of paper (157/113). A linguistic sign could
not consist of sound without sense or of sense without sound (144/102–
3). Although the signifier and the signified can be distinguished for
analytical purposes, Saussure defines them as wholly interdepend-
ent, neither pre-existing the other. As we will see, this radical concept
proved challenging not only for his ‘deconstructionist’ critics but even
for his structuralist followers. In Saussure’s semiology, the semiotic
articulation or correlation of the signifier and the signified is a délimi-
tation réciproque: a reciprocal or mutual delimitation or definition
(156/112). The signifier and the signified exist in a symbiotic or bidi-
rectional relation within a relational sign system. The two arrows in
the diagram represent their interaction.
MO D E L S 17
Both the signifier and the signified are purely psychological, united
in the mind by an associative link. For Saussure, the ‘acoustic image’
is ‘not the material sound, a purely physical thing’ but the impres-
sion made on our senses or its ‘psychological imprint’ (CLG 98/65–6).
Neither of these are material ‘things’; both consist of non-material
form rather than substance. As we will see, this immateriality derives
from Saussure’s radical conception of language as a system of signs
(a network of pairings of sounds with concepts). Note that in post-
Saussurean semiotics (originally in Hjelmslev), the signifier is
commonly interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign –
it is something that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted – as
with Roman Jakobson’s signans, which he describes (more tradition-
ally) as the external and perceptible part of the sign (1963b/1990, 111;
1984, 98).
Saussure was a linguist, and his focus was understandably on lin-
guistic sign systems. As we have noted, he refers specifically to the
signifier as an ‘acoustic image’ (image acoustique). In the Cours,
writing is referred to as a separate, secondary, dependent, but com-
parable sign system (CLG 32/15, 46ff./24ff., 165–6/119–20). Within
the system of written signs, a signifier such as the written letter ‘t’
signifies a sound in the primary sign system of language (and thus
a written word would also signify a sound rather than a concept).
Jacques Derrida famously argues that, from this perspective, writing
relates to speech as signifier to signified and writing is ‘a sign of a
sign’ (1967a, 43).
Saussure’s signified is a concept in the mind – not a thing but the
notion of a thing. Some may wonder why his model of the sign refers
only to a concept and not to a thing (the ‘common sense’ view). The
18 M OD E LS
ARBITRARINESS
Traditionally, in the theory of signs (before and after Saussure), the
term ‘arbitrary’ refers to sign–object relations, where it is convention-
ally contrasted with ‘natural’ relations. In this context, the issue is
whether the form that the sign takes has some inherent connection
to a referent (as with a shadow) or whether the connection is purely
conventional (as with the word shadow). In Plato’s dialogue Cratylus,
set in the fifth century bce, the issue of ‘the correctness of names’
is debated. This debate produced the first known formulation of an
opposition between resemblance and conventionality as the basis of
signs. Although Cratylus defends the notion of a natural relationship
between words and what they represent, Hermogenes declares that ‘no
one is able to persuade me that the correctness of names is determined
20 M OD E LS
SIGN RELATIONS
In terms of a (‘referential’) relation between a sign vehicle and a
referent (the sign–object relation), the traditional dualistic distinc-
tion between ‘conventional signs’ (the names we give to people and
things) and ‘natural signs’ dates back to ancient Greece (Plato’s
Cratylus, 360 bce). Endorsing this distinction, Plato’s student Aristotle
regards words as the prototypical examples of conventional signs (De
Interpretatione, 350 bce). Writing in 397 ce, Augustine distinguishes
‘natural signs’ (signa naturalia) from conventional signs (signa data,
‘given signs’) on the basis that natural signs lack intentionality and
are interpreted as signs by virtue of an immediate link to what they
signified (he instances smoke indicating fire and footprints indicating
that an animal had passed by) (On Christian Doctrine, II.1). Both
‘natural’ and ‘conventional’ signs feature in Charles Peirce’s influential
tripartite classification (in which iconic signs straddle the traditional
dualistic distinction).
What Peirce regards as ‘the most fundamental’ division of signs
(first outlined in 1867) has been highly influential (2.275). Although it
is often misinterpreted as a classification of distinct ‘types of signs’,
it refers to differing interpretive relationships between a sign vehicle
and its referent. Whereas Saussurean ‘sign relations’ are between the
signifier and the signified (and internal to the language system), in the
Peircean model the concept is referential. Here then are the three dif-
ferent relations:
and (to a lesser extent) iconic signs require ‘decoding’ (as structural-
ists put it), indexical signs are not part of a system of signs and depend
primarily on inference, though Jakobson (1968b) notes that even the
interpretation of indices can involve learning conventional rules (as in
the case of medical symptoms). The overlaps between the three forms
of sign relations underline the fact that conventional, coded symbolism
cannot be tidily divorced from other modes of sign relations.
Before discussing these forms of sign relations in detail, three
British road signs will serve as examples that represent the rela-
tive dominance of each (see Figure 1.12). All three are official blue
informational signs with white borders. An example of the primacy
of symbolic relations is a round-cornered square with a bold white
letter P, signifying ‘Parking’ (viewers would need to understand the
convention in order to know what the ‘P’ stood for). A circular sign
with a generic bicycle shape is an example of iconic relations based on
perceived similarity and signifying a ‘recommended route for pedal
cycles’. A round-cornered square sign with generic crossed spoon and
fork shapes in white refers indexically to the associated concept of
‘eating place’ and indicates that there is a motorway café ahead. As
part of the sign system in the British Highway Code, all such road
signs also have a conventional symbolic dimension, and as individ-
ual objects in specific roadside contexts, they also have an indexical
dimension (connecting their intended meaning with their location).
SYMBOLIC RELATIONS
Language is a (predominantly) symbolic sign system and it is widely
seen as the pre-eminent symbolic form. Peirce declares that ‘All
words, sentences, books and other conventional signs are symbols’ (CP
MO D E L S 47
2.292), and we will follow his usage here. Saussure avoids referring to
linguistic signs as ‘symbols’ because of the danger of confusion with
popular usage, in which symbols are never wholly arbitrary, showing
the vestige of a ‘natural bond’ with what they signify (CLG 101/68,
106/73). For instance, if we joke that ‘a thing is a phallic symbol if it’s
longer than it’s wide’, this would allude to resemblance, making it at
least partly iconic – Jakobson (1968a, 702) suggests that such exam-
ples may be best classified as ‘symbolic icons’ (see also Figure 1.14
for hybrid signs). It is thus important to bear in mind that literary,
religious, mythical, and heraldic ‘symbols’ are not purely symbolic in
the semiotic sense.
Peirce notes that symbols (which he then called ‘tokens’) ‘are, for the
most part, conventional or arbitrary’ (CP 3.360). Arbitrariness refers
here, of course, to the sign–object relation. A symbol is a sign ‘whose
special significance or fitness to represent just what it does represent lies
in nothing but the very fact of there being a habit, disposition, or other
effective general rule that it will be so interpreted. Take, for example,
the word “man”. These three letters are not in the least like a man; nor is
the sound with which they are associated’ (4.447). Peirce adds elsewhere
that ‘a symbol … fulfils its function regardless of any similarity or anal-
ogy with its object and equally regardless of any factual connection
therewith’ (5.73). The lack of dependence on resemblance or direct con-
nection contributes to the power and flexibility of symbols in this sense.
‘The symbol,’ says Peirce, ‘is connected with its object by virtue of
the idea of the symbol-using mind, without which no such connection
would exist’ (CP 2.299). It ‘is constituted a sign merely or mainly by
the fact that it is used and understood as such’ (2.307). Symbolic signs
are usually understood to be intended to communicate something. Their
intended meanings are not intuitively obvious: understanding symbolic
signs depends wholly on our familiarity with the relevant conventions
(without which they may fail to signify or be misinterpreted). We inter-
pret symbols according to ‘a habitual connection’, ‘a rule’, or ‘a law,
usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the
symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object’ (2.292, 2.297, 1.369,
2.249). Consequently, the symbol needs to exist in ‘constant conjunctions
whereby it is linked to something other than itself’ (Price 1969, 213).
While arbitrariness is regarded as a key ‘design feature’ of lan-
guage, displacement is another key property that enables linguistic
signs to be used to represent objects in their physical absence,
48 M OD E LS
ICONIC RELATIONS
The traditional basis of iconic sign -object relations lies in resemblance.
In semiotics, icons are not necessarily visual but may involve any
sensory mode. However, pictures are widely cited as prime examples
of iconicity. It is a necessary feature of a representational picture
(such as a portrait) that it is perceived as looking sufficiently like
what it depicts for that object to be recognized. However, from Plato
onwards, philosophers have pointed out that everything resembles
everything else in various ways, having multiple properties in
common. Pictures can be seen as visually resembling their subjects
50 M OD E LS
INDEXICAL RELATIONS
Peirce’s category of indexical signs includes what have been rec-
ognized as ‘natural signs’ since ancient times. As already noted,
Augustine, who regards both words and pictures as conventional
signs, distinguishes from these as natural signs ‘those which,
apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead
to the knowledge of something else, as for example, smoke when it
indicates fire’ (2009, 32).
As the semiotician Winfried Nöth (1990, 86) points out, the case
of natural signs ‘raises the question whether it is still appropriate to
call this relation one of “standing for” ’. It has even been suggested
that ‘indices are not signs’ (e.g. Brandt 1999, 99; original italicized).
MO D E L S 53
The British philosopher Roger Scruton (1983, 122) argues that, strictly
speaking, ‘photography is not representation’, since ‘the camera is … not
being used to represent something but to point to it’ (ibid., 113). Since the
photographic image is an index of the effect of light, all unedited photo-
graphic and filmic images are indexical (although we should remember
that conventional practices are always involved in composition, focus-
ing, developing, and so on). Such images do of course ‘resemble’ visual
features of their subject, and some commentators suggest that the power
of the photographic and filmic image derives from the iconic character
of the medium (though a snapshot doesn’t necessarily guarantee ‘a good
likeness’). However, while digital imaging techniques have eroded the
indexicality of photographic images, it is the indexicality still routinely
attributed to the medium that is primarily responsible for interpreters
treating them as objective records of reality. Although a photograph
generally resembles its referent it no longer does so when the image is
dramatically over- or under-exposed.
As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1990a, 164) puts it, ‘Photography
is ordinarily seen as the most perfectly faithful reproduction of the
56 M OD E LS
‘cowboy’ ads for Marlboro cigarettes does not derive primarily from
their indexicality as images of particular individuals, but rather from
their symbolization of a stereotypical concept of masculinity (even to
the extent that we may need to remind ourselves that this is not ‘mascu-
linity’, because the form functions to suggest otherwise).
MIXED MODES
It is easy to slip into referring to Peirce’s three forms as ‘types of signs’,
but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive: a sign can have iconic,
symbolic, and indexical aspects (or any combination). For instance, a
map is indexical in pointing to the locations of things, iconic in rep-
resenting directional relations and distances between landmarks, and
symbolic in using conventional symbols (the significance of which
must be learned). We have already noted that Peirce did not regard a
portrait as a pure icon. A ‘stylized’ image might be more appropriately
regarded as a ‘symbolic icon’. Jakobson refers to such combined terms
as ‘transitional varieties’ (1968a, 700), though arguably these hybrid
forms actually represent the norm (see Figure 1.14).