Reflections on the lecture

This week’s lecture is about theory and symbolism behind a message.

Brief introduction to semiotics

Put simply semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. Several factors control how a sign communicates its meaning; such as the context or medium, who or what is sending the message, the intent of the sender, and the acknowledgement of the receiver.

Semiotics of language

The study of semiotics was founded by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who in 1918 published his book ‘semiotics a course in general linguistics.’ Saussure believed that if meaning could be found in language, then the origins of language could present the nature of thought itself.

Sign / Signified / Signifier

Semiotics proposes that anything that conveys a direct meaning is called a sign. To successfully convey meaning the sign must compose of two further elements, the signifier and the signified. The signifier is ‘the thing itself’, the item, object, the word or image that carries the message. Secondly there is the signified, which is the concept conveyed. Only by interacting together do they both engage to form the sign. For example, the red light in a set of traffic lights. The signifier is the red light itself as it is the thing that conveys the meaning. While the meaning is the signified, in this example it is the concept that you cannot continue to drive your car any further. Therefore the sign is the combined element of what the light stands for (the signified) and the red light (the signifier.) Signs can be made up of language, pictures, body language, artefacts, objects. Simply, it can be anything that conveys a meaning or a message.

Icon, Index and Symbol

Signs can be broken down into three further categories: icon, index and symbol.

Icon - An icon sign is a sign that resembles something, it’s anything with a direct physical link to the concept it is trying to evoke. A photograph is a good example of an icon, as it has a direct physical link to the object it is representing (the signified.). In terms of user interfaces, the symbol for a document, printer, calendar or calculator can all be classed as icons, as they are direct representations of their functions.

Index - An index shows evidence of what is being represented. For example, smoke suggests fire, rain puddles suggest rain, tyre marks suggest a fast car. The icon for a paint bucket tool is an example of an index, because it suggests evidence of what happens when you use it, filling something in. An index is highly dependent on the context, along with the person receiving the message making a correlation between the signifier and the signified.

Symbol - A symbol is something that has no resemblance between the signifier and the signified. For example, with numbers or alphabets, there is no relationship between the number 5 and what it represents – this concept must be culturally learned. Another example is a red light at a traffic light; there is no relationship between the colour red and the concept of stopping – we have developed this association over time

The Treachery of Images

René Magritte is a Belgian surrealist painter who very famously commented on the relationship between the signifier and the signified in his painting ‘The Treachery of Images.’ The painting depicts an image of a pipe and the subtitle underneath reads ‘Ceci n’est une pipe’ or ‘This is not a pipe'.’ Magritte calls into the question the relationship we have with objects. This is not a pipe, it is simply the signifier for a pipe and not the pipe itself.