Signs.

Concepts of signs
'Nothing is a sign unless it is
interpreted as a sign', declares
Peirce (Peirce 1931-58, 2.172).
We seem to be driven by a desire to make meanings:
objects and concepts become signs only when we invest
them with meaning. 'Nothing is a sign unless it is
interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce
(Peirce 1931-58, 2.172).

Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it

as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for
something other than itself. We interpret things as signs
largely unconsciously by relating them we are surely
Homo significans - meaning-makers.
Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation
and interpretation of 'signs'. Indeed, according to
Peirce, 'we think only in signs' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.302).
Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours,
flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no
intrinsic meaning to familiar systems of conventions. It
is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of
the concerns of semiotics.

The two dominant models of what constitutes a sign

are those of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the
philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. These will be
discussed in turn.
 Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the
sign. He defined a sign as being composed of:
a 'signifier' (signifiant) - the form which the sign takes;
the 'signified' (signifiй) - the concept it represents.
 The sign is the whole that results from the
association of the signifier with the signified.
The relationship between the signifier and the
signified is referred to as 'signification', and this
is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the
arrows.
The horizontal line marking the two
elements of the sign is referred to as 'the bar'.
 A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a
name, but between a concept and a sound pattern.
The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is
something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer's psychological
impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his
senses. This sound pattern may be called a 'material' element
only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions.
The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other
element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element
is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept.
 Together with the 'vertical' alignment of signifier and signified
within each individual sign (suggesting two structural 'levels'),
the emphasis on the relationship between signs defines what are
in effect two planes - that of the signifier and the signified. Later,
Louis Hjelmslev referred to the planes of 'expression' and
'content'
What Saussure refers to as the 'value' of a sign depends on its
relations with other signs within the system - a sign has no
'absolute' value independent of this context.
The Saussurean legacy of the arbitrariness of
signs leads semioticians to stress that the
relationship between the signifier and the
signified is conventional - dependent on social
and cultural conventions. This is particularly
clear in the case of the linguistic signs with
which Saussure was concerned: a word means
what it does to us only because we
collectively agree to let it do so.
Saussure felt that the main concern of semiotics
should be 'the whole group of systems grounded
in the arbitrariness of the sign'. He argued that:
'signs which are entirely arbitrary convey better
than others the ideal semiological process.
That is why, the most complex and the most
widespread of all systems of expression, which is
the one we find in human languages, is also the
most characteristic of all. In this sense, linguistics
serves as a model for the whole of semiology,
even though languages represent only one type
of semiological system‘.
 Saussure did not in fact offer many examples of sign systems other than
spoken language and writing, mentioning only: the deaf-and-dumb alphabet;
social customs; etiquette; religious and other symbolic rites; legal procedures;
military signals and nautical flags
In contrast to Saussure's model of the sign in the form of a 'self-contained dyad', Peirce
offered a triadic model:
The Representamen: the form which the sign takes
(not necessarily material);
An Interpretant: not an interpreter but rather the sense made of the sign;
An Object: to which the sign refers.
Variants of Peirce's triad are often presented as
'the semiotic triangle'
Sign vehicle: the form of the sign;
Sense: the sense made of the sign;
Referent: what the sign 'stands for'.
Employing the Saussurian model Daniel
Chandler gives the three modes together
with some brief definitions of his own and
some illustrative examples:
1. Symbol
2. Icon
3. Index
Symbol/symbolic: a mode in which the signifier does
not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally
arbitrary or purely conventional - so that the
relationship must be learnt: e.g. language in general
(plus specific languages, alphabetical letters,
punctuation marks, words, phrases and sentences),
numbers, morse code, traffic lights, national flags;
 Icon/iconic: a mode in which the signifier is perceived as
resembling or imitating the signified (recognizably looking,
sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it) - being similar in
possessing some of its qualities: e.g. a portrait, a cartoon, a
scale-model, onomatopoeia, metaphors, 'realistic' sounds in
'programme music', sound effects in radio drama, a dubbed film
soundtrack, imitative gestures;
 Index/indexical: a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is
directly connected in some way (physically or causally) to the signified -
this link can be observed or inferred: e.g. 'natural signs' (smoke, thunder,
footprints, echoes, non-synthetic odours and flavours), medical
symptoms (pain, a rash, pulse-rate), measuring instruments
(weathercock, thermometer, clock, spirit-level), 'signals' (a knock on a
door, a phone ringing), pointers (a pointing 'index' finger, a directional
signpost), recordings (a photograph, a film, video or television shot, an
audio-recorded voice), personal 'trademarks' (handwriting, catchphrase)
and indexical words ('that', 'this', 'here', 'there').
The three forms are listed here in decreasing order
of conventionality. Symbolic signs such as language
are (at least) highly conventional; iconic signs
always involve some degree of conventionality;
indexical signs 'direct the attention to their objects
by blind compulsion' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.306).
Indexical and iconic signifiers can be seen as more
constrained by referential signifieds whereas in the
more conventional symbolic signs the signified can
be seen as being defined to a greater extent by the
signifier. Within each form signs also vary in their
degree of conventionality.
Whilst nowadays most theorists would refer to language
as a symbolic sign system, Peirce and Saussure used the
term 'symbol‘ differently from each other.
Saussure avoided referring to linguistic signs as 'symbols',
since the ordinary everyday use of this term refers to
examples such as a pair of scales (signifying justice), and he
insisted that such signs are 'never wholly arbitrary. They
are not empty configurations'.
For Peirce, a symbol is 'a sign which refers to the object
that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of
general ideas, which operates to cause the symbol to be
interpreted as referring to that object'
 Eco lists three kinds of sign vehicles, and it is notable that the
distinction relates in part at least to material form:
signs in which there may be any number of tokens (replicas) of
the same type (e.g. a printed word, or exactly the same model of
car in the same colour);
'signs whose tokens, even though produced according to a type,
possess a certain quality of material uniqueness'
(e.g. a word which someone speaks or which is handwritten);
'signs whose token is their type, or signs in which type and token
are identical'
(e.g. a unique original oil-painting or Princess Diana's wedding
dress).
 Whilst Saussure chose to ignore the materiality of the
linguistic sign, most subsequent theorists who have
adopted his model have chosen to reclaim the
materiality of the sign (or more strictly of the signifier).
Semioticians must take seriously any factors to which
sign-users ascribe significance, and the material form of
a sign does sometimes make a difference.
Contemporary theorists tend to acknowledge that the
material form of the sign may generate connotations of
its own.
Guy Cook asks whether the iconic sign on the door of
a public lavatory for men actually looks more like a
man than like a woman. 'For a sign to be truly iconic,
it would have to be transparent to someone who had
never seen it before - and it seems unlikely that this is
as much the case as is sometimes supposed. We see
the resemblance when we already know the
meaning' (Cook 1992, 70). Thus, even a 'realistic'
picture is symbolic as well as iconic.
The origins of alphabetical writing lie in symbols previously
made out of elemental shapes that were used as image-
making objects - much like the moulds that figurine and
coin-makers use today. Only later did they take on more
abstract qualities. Some of the letters in the Greek and Latin
alphabets, of course, derive from iconic signs in Egyptian
hieroglyphs. The early scripts of the Mediterranean
civilizations used pictographs, ideographs and hieroglyphs.
Many of these were iconic signs resembling the objects and
actions to which they referred either directly or
metaphorically. Over time, picture writing became more
symbolic and less iconic; in general, symbols are semiotically
more flexible and efficient.
The Italian semiotician Umberto Eco has criticized the apparent
equation of the terms 'arbitrary', 'conventional' and 'digital' by
some commentators. He notes the way in which the following
widespread pairings misleadingly suggest that the terms
vertically aligned here are synonymous (Eco 1976, 190). He
observes, for instance, that a photograph may be both
'motivated' and 'digital'. Nor is 'conventionality' (dependence on
social and cultural conventions) equivalent to 'arbitrariness' (the
lack of any intrinsic connection between the signifier and the
signified).
YET IT IS EASY TO SLIP INTO TREATING SUCH TERMS AS EQUIVALENT - THE CURRENT TEXT FAR
FROM IMMUNE TO THIS.

digital vs analogical
arbitrary vs motivated
conventional vs natural