What is a Signifier?

What is a Signifier?
The signifier is the part of any sign which is directly in contact with our sensory organs and carries the convened meaning.

How it works?
Each signifier is designed to be captured by especial parts of the receptor designed for that function. For example, the eyes are designed to receive the light that revotes in the surfaces of things, which can be visual signs; speaking of robots or machines, they have sensors that register impulses that activate functions; if we refer to some animals each one has special organs created to detect chemical messages.

What is it for?
The function is similar to that of the communicative vehicle; the main difference is that the signifier is a much smaller particle and the latter one can be seen as a combination of signifiers. In other words the signifiers, subject to certain rules of the language, help make up the communication vehicles.

PIC:

Signifier: the one who holds the sign

We Recommend:

ED PLUTH, Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan's Theory of the Subject.

CHRISTIAN METZ, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.

What is the Signified?

What is the Signified?

It is also known as acoustic image if we resort to the terms used by semiology. It is the abstraction of reality or the idea that will be linked to a sign in any type of communication. In the words of Saussure, the meaning is the acoustic image produced in our minds that is not generated by the effect of movement of the mouth or lips or a sound emitted by the throat. In physical terms it is the product of neuronal activity in our brain allowing us to reconstruct parts of the reality.

How it works?

The meaning depends on the individual, since it is the result that comes from the process of knowing that we have described in previous articles. The human being stands in front reality and abstracts immediately what is before the eyes, cataloging, archiving and creating acoustic images of what seems important using its cognitive filters, its own experience, any physical limitations and cultural filters.

However, while every person endows with different shades or variations the meaning of things, conventionally they have the necessary elements to enhance an understanding among members of a society. That is, if I hear the word “elephant” I can imagine a good animal to help me to move wood and make a living or I can imagine a poor animal living in a circus where he is mistreated; at the end even though we can find two or more acceptations of the word elephant, most of the will keep in its mind the general convention of an elephant: a wild animal, with four legs, rough skin, a large trunk, with horns and that makes a peculiar sound.

What is it for?

As we have seen so far, the meaning is an abstraction of reality that is bond to a sign. Most often communication problems arise when there are problems in the convention of the meanings of words; e. g. Lets imagine “A” says to “B” the word “red”. If “A” understands differently the word “red” than the way “B” does, then even though the message is well structured, “A’s” central idea will never reach “B”. Therefore, the meaning will allow the success in the communication.

PICS:

Meaning

Friends vs Best Friends

We Recommend:

MICHAEL WILLIAMS, Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology.

JENNIFER LACKEY, Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge.

What is a signal?

What is a signal?

The signal is a kind of sign that has the specific purpose to inform or give specific directions to a general audience. They are positioned and designed so that 99% of people understand their meaning. The signal may use visible, audible, smell or tactile media. They are made with the intention to communicate. In example, although the presence of smoke can be released by some people as a SIGNAL of a fire, it really is a SIGN of a fire, since there is not intension to provoke the smoke in order to communicate the presence of a fire; if the smoke instead is manufactured specifically by human beings to communicate that there is a fire, only then the presence of smoke will be taken as a SIGNAL.

How it works?

As the main objective of a signal is to give notice to a general audience, regardless of profiles such as literacy, skin color, religious beliefs, culture of provenance, etc., the signal must be obvious and easily interpretable, so that its relation to reality should be as reliable and simple as possible. When designing a signal, it must be taken into account that the advice can be represented through a quick and simple sign. Thus, if we realize, a fire alarm is not precisely a symphony it goes straight to the point “there is fire, get out of here!”, and the red signal at traffic lights is not a Mondrain because it holds not other idea than to say “STOP”.

What is it for?

Signals allows to communicate advices and information with the aim that many recipients understand them quickly.

Pics:

Proper Signals

Not so proper Signals

We recommend:

ALAN PEASE, Signals: How To Use Body Language for Power, Success and Love.

ALAN V. OPPENHEIM, et. Al., Signals and Systems.

What is a symbol?

What is a symbol?

A symbol is a type of sign (and therefore contains all the features of it) but is more complex and contain a specific level of reality, also has directionality and tone defined by the culture and history of the particular community in which evokes feelings and values, representing abstract ideas in a metaphorical or allegorical way.

How it works?

The meaning of symbols is attributed mainly to the community traditions and the temporality in which they live. It is completely conventional, so that it will be hard to find symbols in communication between animals, plants or robots, since it has a strong connection with the intention and the will to endow a sign with features that go beyond what it would have by itself.

That is, if you think about the figure of the circle, in a plain sense, it is only a geometric figure that has intrinsic properties. However, by turning it into a symbol, we add different features, such as eternity (actually almost all cultures relate to this concept, and this is when a symbol becomes the archetype), which has no direct relation to the properties or characteristics of the circle but will be completed in accordance with the ideology and philosophy of the society that does. Similarly, the cycle can mean in today's culture progress.

What is it for?

Since a symbol conveys more than a pure representation of reality, it becomes a very strong link between members of a specific community, representing not only the obvious relation with the world, but also part of their identity as the values, feelings and ideas of those who believe on it.

Somehow, this type of sign has a special encoding that no other human can decipher without something more than the common senses to abstract the plain meaning. A full understanding of the gist of a symbol will be very difficult to get unless it is been carried out an intense process of empathy with members of the culture which belongs the symbol, and to reach a full level of empathy is necessary to keep on an ideological, philosophical and epistemological procedure which requires to look at the member of society to which the symbol belongs as an equal being rather than a foreign entity.

Pics:

GOD's HAND

AIDS

We recommend:

UMBERTO ECO, Sign, Symbol and Code.

J. E. CIRLOT, A Dictionary of Symbols.

VIRGINIA KLENK, Understanding Symbolic Logic.

What is a sign?

What is a sign?

The concept of sign is given to the combination of signifier and the signified. The word "sign" cannot be replaced with another word, and it is necessary to set down two general principles of the sign, stated by the semiology rather than the semiotics: 1) Arbitrariness of the sign in which sign means an arbitrary association with a significant meaning and 2) Linear nature of meaning which can be perceived immediately when we represent the sign by means of writing, where the succession in time is replaced by the line space of graphic symbols. Even if we refer only to an image or a photograph, we would appreciate the linearity due to psychological studies that reveal that the human eye describes lines through the image in accordance with the importance of the items shown there.

How it works?

Based on the principles of the sign, the cultural and conventional elements of reality give specific names or symbols to things for its identification. If we talk about communication between machines or between animals, we could say that this convention comes, in the first case by the designer or engineer that programmed the robots, and in the second case is due to nature.

What is it for?

Complete ideas, information or references to reality stands within the signs, so that when in contact with the receiver the meaning or content can be placed in its mind. This allows communication to flow easily as the message’s content can be decoded rapidly as it is guided by a convention stated in signs.

Pics

Head

Vital Signs

We recommend:

MARÍA ÁNGELES RODRÍGUEZ GONZÁLEZ, Lenguaje de Signos.

DANIEL CHANDLER, Semiotic for Beginners.

UMBERTO ECO, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language.

What is semiotics?

What is semiotics?

It is the branch of the human sciences that deals with the study of the phenomenon that occurs between the signified and the signifier linked through a sign within the transmitter or receiver in the communication cycle. There are some authors who put semiotics on a plane of "science of sciences", competing strongly with epistemology, but this article does not delve in this sense.

The semiotics studies all sorts of symbols and signs, and especially the process by which man builds his life from them. With this understanding, semiotics premises that every object has a specific sense provided by the interpreter at any given time. Semiotics is also the name of the art of recognizing the signs of illness from the point of view of diagnosis, but this similarity relates directly to the general meaning of semiotics which, as we have said, concerns to the relationship between one symptom (sign) and what this means (meaning-significant).

How it works?

It was developed mainly by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who founded the pragmatic school which stands that the effects of practical significance that encloses the object of our conception, represents the whole concept of the object, which means that the meaning given to objects comes from the abstraction conducted by the human being itself.

What is it for?

Today semiotics is a science that allows knowing the process in which meaning is given to objects, signs, signals and symbols throughout a cultural convention so that it directly affects the communication of the community. The incidence of semiotics in human life is high as it is present in reality and abstraction, and knowledge of the human being. This is the reason that today we know many types of semiotics.

When talking about the semiotics of product, for example, it clearly speaks of the meaning that a specific community gives to a particular good or service. For example, when McDonald's introduced its burgers in Israel it was important to get into the semiotics of product and let know to the community that food had the kosher quality control.

In the same vein, we can define visual semiotics, which is responsible for the study of symbols and visual signals for the correct transmission of meanings according to the host communities; also we have the sound semiotics which will pay special attention to audible signs and symbols that enable the transmission of messages and so on.

ics:

Semiotics Model

Charles S. Peirce

We recommend:

PAUL LICATA, A Concise Introduction to Semiotics.

PETER LANG, Cognitive Semiotics.

JOHN DEELY, Basics of Semiotics.