Study Of Signs: The Essence Of Semiotics

The method I have covered in class and have chosen to discuss is Semiotics. In this essay, I discuss Semiotics and its definition, how it can be used, its historical background along with its strengths and weaknesses. I have used sources such as my textbook, online research and library books. I look at, in great detail, the main contributors to semiotics and the importance of it. The definitions of method section is where I look at famous philosophers and their influence and view on Semiotics. This is important in learning about Semiotics and its meaning. How it can be used is based on modern semioticians and how it can be used in marketing communications, importantly. In this section, I look at Multimodal analysis, also. Historical background is where I look at the history of semiotics and signs, its original meaning and the understanding of the word and concept. Strengths and weaknesses are next and I look at the positive and negative effects and aspects of semiotics overall.

Definitions of method

“Semiotics is the study of signs and how these make meaning. Signs include words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects. However, it can also be defined as Semiology. It was defined by Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of, ‘the life of the signs within society’” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998).

Ferdinand de Saussure worked alongside American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. He defined a sign as “something which stands to somebody for something” (Chandler, D.,2008). He categorized signs into 3 main types. These are known as an icon, an index and a symbol. An example of the meaning of signs can be described as, when we see the different colours of a traffic light, we automatically know how to react to them over experience endured with this. Through constantly having to react to the change and colours on a traffic light, we learn of their meaning and it is impossible to forget them. We do not need to think about this, but this is a sign that has been established by cultural convention over a period of time, which we learn, at the earliest, as children and it requires a great deal of unconscious cultural knowledge to understand its definition (Sign Salad, 2018, Semiotics Explained).

How it can be used

Modern semioticians have applied Peirce and Saussure’s principles to a wide variety of fields. These include areas such as the following: Aesthetics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, communications and semantics (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998). Charles Peirce analysed the notion of signs to reveal underlying components. Within the language system, ‘everything depends on relations’ (Saussure, 1974, Semiotics for Beginners).

Semiotics can be used in marketing communication. In marketing communication, semiotics can define if an endeavour has been a success or a failure, simply. Symbols involved include logos, rituals, cultural symbols, colours, iconic individuals, text, advertisements, websites, physical and other elements. Sending the wrong signal or signals in marketing may affect the effectiveness and quality of your brand, giving readers the wrong or false impressions. “It is crucial that when using a sign or signs in marketing that they are clear and concise, easy to understand and be interpreted as meant to be” (Lim, W. 2012, The Role of Semiotics in Marketing).

“Where there are many ways to use semiotics with many benefits, there are a few ways where semiotics can’t be used and what it can’t do or where it lets its methodology down. Semioticians do not always make explicit the limitations of their techniques, leading to semiotics to be uncritically presented as a general-purpose tool. This gives a poor outlook on semiotics as it can be viewed as unreliable and unnecessary to use” (Hansen, A. and Machin, D. 2013, Media and Communication Research Methods).

The multimodal analysis includes communication analysis. This is in the form of images regarding text. In picture books, you have pictures telling a textual story through imagery with or without colour. “It is interpreted by the reader through what they say, not what they read. Picture books are a highly aesthetic genre. It makes you use your creative imagination and appreciate the imagery rather than text. It is seen to be a more inventive, but childlike form of reading, due to its simplicity” (Wu, S., 2014). Multimodality refers to the fact that all texts combine and integrate diverse semiotic modalities. This multimodal perspective could be traced back to the pioneering work of scholars such as Gregory Bateson, Ray Birdwhitsell, E.T. Hall, A.E. Scheflen and others in the 1950’s and 1960’s (Wu, S., 2014, A Multimodal Analysis of image-text relations in picture books).

Historical Background

“A person who studies semiotics is a semiotician. The majority of concepts used by semioticians had been introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). Saussure defined a sign as any motion, gesture, image, pattern or event that conveys meaning. Semiotics is a key study thinking about the evolution of human consciousness. English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) tied the advancement of intelligence to three steps: Understanding the nature of things, understanding what to do to achieve and the ability to communicate these things to another. Locke’s terminology was that signs are dyadic. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) pointed out that signs only work if there is an intelligence capable of learning from experience” (Richard Nordguist, 2018). His conception of semiotics was triadic: Sign, meaning and interpreter. He religiously believed in a semiotic cognitive science. For Peirce, there should not be a different set of concepts used for studying minds and studying communications. ‘Semiotic classification must ultimately be regulated by a theory of the generation of semiotic relationships in which the homunculus of an interpreter is replaced by a process analysis. The necessity of this approach is implicit in Peirce’s introduction of the concept of an interpretant, his conception of a person or mind in purely semiotic terms, and his willingness to consider non-human and non-mental processes as semiotic.’ (Peirce, 1885).

Semiotics commenced as an academic investigation of the meaning of words and it then moved into the work of examining people’s behavioural patterns, following this it evolved to become an enquiry into culture and society, following that it moved onto assisting with analysis of cultural products. Finally and more recently it became a methodology for researching and analysing consumer behaviour and brand communications (Sign Salad, 2018).

The history of semiotics is growing as years pass by and the change involved may change the view of readers in years as they pass by, so there is significant importance being put on how the information continues to be taught and passed on. Interpretation and creativity is where the strength of the imagery and signs lie. ‘The history of semiotics dates back in ages and that cannot be lost or forgotten’ (Institute of Historical Research, 2007).

Strengths

A main strength of semiotics is its ability to understand meanings and get a grasp of it. Semiotics deneutralizes the meaning and it cannot be viewed transparently. It is simply construction. Semiotics puts emphasis on visual communication, with it being efficient, fast and appealing to the reader. Semiotics can raise new theoretical issues (Culler, 1985).

‘Semiotics offers the promise of a systematic, comprehensive and coherent study of communications phenomena as a whole, not just instances of it’ (Hodge & Kress, 1988)

A strength of semiotics is that it makes us aware that cultural values with which we make sense of the world are tissue of conventions. (Schroeder, 1998).

When taking an image apart, semiotics is very helpful in examining it. It gives us guidelines of what to do in order to understand and interpret the meaning of the image. It is down to the reader to understand and interpret the image as you feel and semiotics may help to prevent you getting caught in a maze and being confused by certain images. Semiology insists on separating the signified and signifier. By questioning the meaning of each image through semiotics, you have a broader view on each image thanks to the understanding of the meaning. Semiotics involves a wide range of creative thinking and understanding. This is a positive and a strength of the method (Chandler, D., 2017).

Weaknesses

A major weakness of semiotics is that there is no set process. It heavily depends on the interpretation of the researcher only. Semiotics cannot and does not shed light on how or what audiences interpret signs as. Semiotics is known to be imperialistic, which is seen as a major weakness. Sometimes semioticians present their analysis as if they were purely objective ‘scientific’ accounts rather than subjective interpretations, which would be considered a weaker source of understanding. A weakness of semiotics is also the fact that its meaning comes down to the subjective interpretation of the reader and their intelligence based on their understanding of the sign and its meaning to them. Because of this, the interpretation of any object or topic varies down to each individual. In many cases, what is meant to be interpreted by the reader of a sign, is not due to many factors including their uniqueness? Because of this, people may be put off semiotics and how difficult it is to get your idea across to readers (Chandler, D., 2017).

Change is a pivotal factor in media life. Even the sign system can change, but signs meanings and messages are fixed and cannot be changed. This may make signs meanings fade with time and change. The rules of language do not control language users so change and people can break codes. A weakness of semiotics is the lack of understanding people have of it and the inability to understand the meaning of certain imagery and signs. People may not want to or have the capability to interpret a sign as meant to, so they may feel more inclined to stick with textual graphic rather than imagery. This is where the importance of interpreting comes into play and the intelligence of interpretation along with creativity (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Semiotics is a very popular method used in everyday life and has many positives to little negatives, in my opinion. Signs are used in aspects of marketing, media and other aspects of business. Semiotics has a rich history and background, with famous names such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Locke contributing to the evolution of it and its success. Throughout the essay, there were many different aspects of semiotics discussed and what they can and can’t do in terms of interpretation and importance. I found it difficult to find relevant and helpful sources from the internet, library and textbook. However, of the sources I did find, they contributed well to what I was looking for. For definitions of method, I used online sources, aswell as my textbook. Mainly I used notes and my recollection taken from slides and in-class discussions. I found this very interesting to revise over what I had learned and put it into the form of an essay where I could understand better the importance and role semiotics plays in imagery and signs. For how semiotics can be used, I referred to the main contributors towards semiotics, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure and John Locke, in discussing their theories and how semiotics works dating back to the 1700’s. The historical background of semiotics was not an easy topic to source. I found information on the history through online sources and from my textbook. It was important to make sure what I had written was with relevance to the history of semiotics with dated information featuring the theories that existed back at the beginning of semiotics. Finally, for the strengths and weaknesses of semiotics, I used sources mainly online, as I found a wide-range of information on many different sites. There were much more strengths to discuss, than weaknesses and it was very interesting to learn of these. Overall, I was pleased with how I completed this essay and the topic that I have chosen.

References

1. “Semiotics: Study of signs.” [online]. (1998). https://www.britannica.com/science/semiotics
2. Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past and the Institute of Historical Research. [online]. (2007). https://www.history.ac.uk/1807commemorated/media/methods/semiotics.html
3. Chandler, D. (2017). “Semiotics for beginners: Strengths.” [online]. http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem10.html
4. Charles Sander Peirce. [online]. (1998). https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Sanders-Peirce
5. Sign Salad: ‘What is Semiotics?’. [online]. (2018) https://signsalad.com/our-thoughts/what-is-semiotics/
6. Chandler, D. (2017) .”Semiotics for beginners: Criticisms.” [online]. http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem11.html
7. Hansen, A. and Machin, D. (2013) “Media and Communication Research Methods.” [textbook].
8. Lim, W. (2012) “The Role of Semiotics in Marketing.” [online]. https://coolerinsights.com/2012/05/the-role-of-semiotics-in-marketing/
9. Wu, S. (2014) “A Multimodal Analysis of Image-Text Relations in Picture Books.” [online]. http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/tpls/vol04/07/14.pdf
10. Thellefsen, T., Sorensen, B. and De Gruyter, Inc. (2014). “Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words : 100 Years of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition.” [textbook]. [online]. ProQuest Ebook Central, Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nuim/detail.actiondocID=1575470
11. “Strengths and Weaknesses of Semiotics.” (2016). [online]. Available at: https://victoria98blog.wordpress.com/strengths-and-weaknesses/The
12. Nordguist, R. (2018). “Definitions and Examples of Semiotics.” [online]. Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com>semiotics
13. Hodge and Kress. (1988) “Semiotics for Beginners.” [online]. Available at: https://www.visual-memory.co.uk/Daniel/Documents
14. Schroeder, E. (1998). “Semiotics for Beginners.” [online]. Available at: https://www.visual-memory.co.uk/Daniel/Documents
15. Chandler, Daniel. (2006). ‘Semiotics: The Basics.’ Routledge Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/semiotics-definition-1692082
16. Chandler, Daniel. (2008). “Semiotics: The Basics”. [book]. [online]. Available at: http://www.icosilune.com/2008/08/daniel-chandler-semiotics-the-basics/