Semiotics derived from the Greek word 'sēmeiōtikos' for "observant of signs", is the study of signs, how meaning is made and how reality is represented, through words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, implicated two things that were involved in utilising semiotics- The Signifier, and the Signified. The signifier is the form within the 'sign'- what is actually there. The Signified is the idea behind the 'sign' in question. To be a sign, these words, images, sounds, gestures and objects must carry meaning.
From an early age, without being taught, we learn to decode and interpret meaning from these signs. We use logic everyday to understand these signs, we define the signifier (the material aspect ) and the signified (the intellectual aspect, using learnt through our society and culture) When we analyse and image we recognize the denotations (the object present) and using a varied number of worldly influences (age, religion, race) we can find the connotation.
“Logic, in its general sense, is…only another name for semiotic…we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and...by a process which I will not object to naming abstraction, we are led to statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means necessary, as to what must be the characters of all signs used by scientific intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience.”
Peirce, Collected Papers:Principles of Philosophy, 1931
From an early age, without being taught, we learn to decode and interpret meaning from these signs. We use logic everyday to understand these signs, we define the signifier (the material aspect ) and the signified (the intellectual aspect, using learnt through our society and culture) When we analyse and image we recognize the denotations (the object present) and using a varied number of worldly influences (age, religion, race) we can find the connotation.
“Logic, in its general sense, is…only another name for semiotic…we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and...by a process which I will not object to naming abstraction, we are led to statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means necessary, as to what must be the characters of all signs used by scientific intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience.”
Peirce, Collected Papers:Principles of Philosophy, 1931
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