Semiotics

The study of signs and meaning. (The Bus 4.35)

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The Stop

Defined by one of its founders - the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure - as the study of the ‘life of signs within society’, semiotics is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to studying signs and sign-using behaviour. A key study into the evolution of human consciousness, in the 17th century the English philosopher John Locke used ‘semiotics’ to describe his ‘doctrine of signs,’ but it wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that it became a distinct field itself - largely as a result of the work of Saussure and the American scientist and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.¹

‘Signs and Symbols’/AI Generated

Peirce defined a sign as ‘something which stands to somebody for something,’ in other words anything that communicates ‘intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign’s interpreter’. He categorised signs into three primary types: an icon (a sign which resemble its referent, e.g., a road sign for falling rocks), an index (a sign associated with its referent, e.g., smoke is a sign for fire), and a symbol (a sign related to its referent only by convention, e.g., words or traffic signals). Despite these strict categories, Peirce recognised that it was impossible to attribute a definite meaning to a sign, as the fluid nature of human communication means they must be ‘continuously qualified’.

Saussure considered language a sign-system, and his contribution to semiotics was the development of various concepts and methods that semioticians would later apply to non-language sign-systems. One of his most important offerings was his distinction between the ‘two inseparable components of a sign’, the signifier (the sign itself) and the signified (the concept or idea behind the sign). Taking this relationship further, he made a clear distinction between what he termed parole (the actual sign or utterance, in the case of speech - the choices made by the speaker to communicate information) and langue (the ‘underlying system of conventions’ that makes signs and utterances ‘understandable’ - the structure or grammar of a language). It is langue that intrigues most semioticians, as this is where meaning - and changes in meaning - rests.

Modern semiotics studies signs and symbols as a significant part of communications, but includes - unlike the field of linguistics - non-linguistic sign systems. While ‘fundamental semiotic theories’ study signs or sign systems, ‘applied semiotics’ considers the way signs are used to create meaning in cultures as cultural artefacts. A broad field including studies of ‘indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism and signification’ under its umbrella, semiotics is also an important contributor to both anthropology and sociology, as some semioticians interpret ‘every cultural phenomenon as being able to be studied as communication’.

Today’s semioticians examine the ‘entire network of signs and symbols around us that mean different things in different contexts, even signs or symbols that are sounds.’ For example, if you hear an ambulance siren when driving, you think ‘someone is in trouble and we’re trying to help them, so pull over and let us by.’ Similarly, someone who is able to mimic James Earl Jones (as Darth Vader)’s deep baritone saying ‘Luke’ can instantly ‘transmit a raft of Star Wars images and sounds and meanings.’ The field of semiotics explains how this works, and in today’s world it’s good to know there are scholars who work to get communication right.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to Menagerie (4:25), a multi-award winning animated study of the ‘daily motions and mundane tasks of contemporary city life’. Through hundreds of ‘looping animated characters’, the film is an exploration into how quickly the ‘repetitive actions of our day-to-day lives … spiral into an endless kaleidoscope of abstraction’. The detail alone is worth the time.

Menagerie

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Shepherd’s Glossary of Graphic Signs and Symbols (1971). A bizarre - and very dated - collection of thousands of signs and symbols, the book is Walter Shepherd’s² attempt to classify taxonomically human ‘marks’ in over 110 subject areas, including botany, numismatics, phonetics, geology, hydrography and even Texas cattle-brands.

From the inside flap: Man’s use of graphic signs and symbols predates his use of written language by several millennia. Yet this book is probably the first formal classification of graphic signs and symbols to be published. The proliferation of signs and symbols in the present age is bewilderingly self-evident, but new signs constitute only the tip of a vast iceberg.

The total number of significant marks devised by man is prodigious, and Mr. Shepherd has had to be selective in deciding what marks to include in the Glossary. He has succeeded in covering an extremely wide variety of meaningful marks made in writing or in diagrams or by display devices. They include alphabets, accents, technical signs, insignia, standard types of shading, types of ornament, and even the tramps’ ‘smogger’, chalked on walls and pavements. In all, the Glossary contains some 5,000 distinct forms with upwards of 7,000 meanings. There are lists of internationally agreed standard signs, and many series of historical or social interest such as the American ‘shaped notes’. Even where a particular class of sign is too numerous to reproduce in its entirety it is nevertheless represented by typical examples.

in all serious reference works the arrangement of the contents and the methods of classification are vital factors. Walter Shepherd has had much experience in the compilation and presentation of factual material, and the method he has devised in this Glossary enables the reader to find the meaning of a sign from its form alone without prior knowledge even of the subject to which it relates. The range of meanings attributable to any single sign is seen at a glance, and the reader desiring to invent new signs can readily discover whether his ideas have already been exploited.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five sign-related tracks: ‘Vital Signs’ (Rush, 1981), ‘Sign of the Times’ (Prince, 1987), ‘Sign Your Name’ (Sananda Maitreya (formerly Terence Trent D’Arby), 1987), ‘Warning Sign’ (Talking Heads, 1978) and ‘Signs’ (Five Man Electrical Band, 1970). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from the Italian literary critic, novelist, and semiotician Umberto Eco (1932-2016):³

‘True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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Until the next Stop …

1. Peirce (1839-1914) (pronounced ‘purse’) is best known as the founder of pragmatism, the belief that theories are only valid if they are linked to experience or practice. For more about Peirce, see: Peirce (Britannica). For more about Saussure, see: Saussure (Britannica). I’ve found semiotics interesting ever since I first discovered it via reading Umberto Eco in university. It’s a large topic, and one a single Stop can’t cover in depth, but hopefully this quick introduction will whet some interest. Sources for today’s Stop include Semiotics (Britannica), Peirce's Theory of Signs (Stanford), Semiotics (Wikipedia) and Semiotics (Thoughtco).

2. I haven’t been able to find much biographical information on Shepherd - though I’ve only done a cursory search. Nevertheless, it appears Shepherd was a rather prolific popular science writer at least during the 1960s and 70s, and is also the author of Mazes and Labyrinths: A Book of Puzzles (1961). I learned of his Glossary during a talk by Simon Winchester at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in 2003; he remarked that it was a favourite read. Thinking it sounded interesting, I eventually found a copy. It’s a great book to just browse - and the relative quaintness of the signs and symbols from 50 years ago never ceases to impress.

3. Eco is most famous for his 1980 novel, The Name of the Rose, a complicated medieval detective mystery set in a very creepy monastery housing one of the best libraries of all time. It’s absolutely worth a read - but you need to be ready to inhabit a very dense world. For more about Eco, see: Umberto Eco (Britannica).