Meaning Of Semiotics

We wake up every morning to the constant projection of signs. These signs become an integrated part of our everyday life, which in some regard govern our daily lives. Although this interaction occurs daily, we hold no significance to it. The significance behind these signs have no fixed or unambiguous meaning, the individual is tasked to establish an unconscious or conscious interpretation of the signs. Our actions and thoughts, are governed by a complex set of cultural, economical, and political messages and conventions, which are dependent upon our ability to interpret them instantly and instinctively. When approaching this subject in terms of a qualitative research topic, we establish the task to analyze the meaning behind signs. The analyzation

Semiotics or semiology is the meticulous theory, science or analysis of philosophical signs. (Chandler 1994) Semiotics also includes the study of signs and sign processes, such as indications, designation, an likeness, an analogy, metaphors, similes and symbolism. In other words, semiotics is the investigation into how meaning is created from the signs and how it is communicated to others. (Chandler 1994) The process of communicating the meanings of such signs, involves a cycle of interpretations. (Chandler 1994) The individual who encodes the meaning first is considered the author, while the one who decodes the meaning after is the reader. The semiotic cycle is never ending simply since once the reader interprets the author’s meaning, he will code his own significant meaning, which by definition makes him an author, who will share his meaning through communication. This process never ends since there will never be to two authors with identical meanings of

Pierce defines that these three subjects are the basic elements to semiotics. The sign can be simply defined as anything that can be interpretable. Signs are categorized into the three distinct types: icon, index, and symbols. Every types are defined by specific characteristics, which define their significance to the sign. An icon is a sign that is linked to an entity by means of qualitative characteristics, such as look, sound, feel, taste, and smell. An example of an icon is a map, the map is an icon since it shares the same qualities of the land being represented by the map. An index is the denotation of an entity which is physically linked or affected by a sign. An example of an index is smoke signals, smoke signals are a direct indication of fire, concluding smoke is a physical outcome of fire. The final type is the symbol, a symbol is a sign with no qualitative or physical link to an entity. Words are symbols, they hold no direct qualitative or physical link to the entity it conveys. The sign types are key tool to ensure that intended meanings are unambiguously understood by both the author and then the reader. An object can be anything discussable about the subject matter of a sign, for example discussing what that “something” was said about that