The Science of Signs

Abstract

The Greek root for semiology and for semiotics—the two terms used for the sciences that deal with signs—is sēmeîon, which means sign. These sciences have a long history, dating back more than two thousand years. The “father of medicine,” Hippocrates (460–377 BC) was interested in signs and their relation to medical symptoms; philosophers and scholars after him, such as Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, and Locke, also dealt with signs in their writings.

Everything we do sends messages about us in a variety of codes, semiologists contend. We are also on the receiving end of innumerable messages encoded in music, gestures, foods, rituals, books, movies, or advertisements. Yet we seldom realize that we have received such messages and would have trouble explaining the rules under which they operate.

Maya Pines, “How They Know What You Really Mean,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 13, 1982

The basic unit of semiotics is the sign, defined conceptually as something that stands for something else, and, more technically, as a spoken or written word, a drawn figure, or a material object unified in the mind with a particular cultural concept. The sign is this unity of word-object, known as a signifier with a corresponding, culturally prescribed content or meaning, known as a signified. Thus our minds attach the word “dog,” or the drawn figure of a “dog,” as a signifier to the idea of a “dog,” that is, a domesticated canine species possessing certain behavioral characteristics. If we came from a culture that did not possess dogs in daily life, however unlikely, we would not know what the signifier “dog” means … When dealing with objects that are signifiers of certain concepts, cultural meanings, or ideologies of belief, we can consider them not only as “signs,” but also as sign vehicles. Signifying objects carry meanings with them….

Mark Gottdiener, The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and Commercial Spaces