Semiotics is the ‘science of signs’. It was introduce by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Its main purpose is the study of not only what we refer to as signs in everyday speech but of virtually anything that is used to express something else then its primary meaning.
Charles Sanders Peirce was an American philosopher and scientist. Peirce had a very good point when he said 'we think only in signs' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.302). Signs can take the form of virtually anything, words, sounds, flavours, objects etc. but even so they don’t have a meaning until one has been associated by the viewer. ‘Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign’ Peirce continues to tell us. The way signs are perceived is mostly unconsciously, we associate them with familiar settings, with social conventions and so on.
A sign is composed of two parts, after Saussure’s two-part model. The signifier is the form which the actual sign takes and the signified which represents the concept. The sign then results from the association of the two. The relationship between the two is the ‘signification’. A sign must have these two elements.
Accessed on March 10th 2011
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