Aneesa

Introduction

Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or (in the Saussurean) semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes (semoises), indication, designation, likeness, analogy,metaphor,symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field oflinguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Semiotics is often divided into three branches:
y y y

Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning. Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them

Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropologicaldimensions; for example, Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication. However, some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science. They examine areas belonging also to thenayural science such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world. In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis. Syntactics is the branch of semiotics that deals with the formal properties of signs and symbols. More precisely, syntactics deals with the "rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences." Charles Morris adds that semantics deals with the relation of signs to their designata and the objects which they may or do denote; and, pragmatics deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, that is, with all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the functioning of signs. Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted. This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be the individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. To coin a word to refer to a thing, the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their language. But that word can transmit that meaning only within the language's grammatical structures and codes. Codes also represent the values of the culture, and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life. Semiosis or semeiosis is the process that forms meaning from any organism's apprehension of the world through signs.

To explain the relationship between semiotics and communication studies, communication is defined as the process of transferring data from a source to a receiver. Hence, communication theorists construct models based on codes, media, and contexts to explain the biology,

Aneesa

psychology, and mechanics involved. Both disciplines also recognize that the technical process cannot be separated from the fact that the receiver must decode the data, i.e., be able to distinguish the data as salient and make meaning out of it. This implies that there is a necessary overlap between semiotics and communication. Indeed, many of the concepts are shared, although in each field the emphasis is different. In Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics, Marcel Danesi (1994) suggested that semioticians' priorities were to study signification first and communication second. A more extreme view is offered by Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1987; trans. 1990: 16), who, as a musicologist, considered the theoretical study of communication irrelevant to his application of semiotics. Semiotics differs from linguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense. Peirce's definition of the term "semiotic" as the study of necessary features of signs also has the effect of distinguishing the discipline from linguistics as the study of contingent features that the world's languages happen to have acquired in the course of human evolution. Perhaps more difficult is the distinction between semiotics and the philosophy of language. In a sense, the difference lies between separate traditions rather than subjects. Different authors have called themselves "philosopher of language" or "semiotician". This difference does not match the separation between analytic and continental philosophy. On a closer look, there may be found some differences regarding subjects. Philosophy of language pays more attention to natural languages or to languages in general, while semiotics is deeply concerned about non-linguistic signification. Philosophy of language also bears a stronger connection to linguistics, while semiotics is closer to some of the humanities (including literary theory) and to cultural anthropology.

1. Basic Sign Structure

Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of: 1.a 'signifier' (signifiant) - the form which the sign takes; and 2.the 'signified' (signifi) - the concept it represents.

The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure 1983, 67; Saussure 1974, 67). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as 'signification', and this is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the arrows. The

Aneesa
horizontal line marking the two elements of the sign is referred to as 'the ba
In one of his many definitions of a sign, Peirce writes: I define a sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant, that the later is thereby mediately determined by the former. (EP2, 478).

What we see here is Peirce's basic claim that signs consist of three inter-related parts: a sign, an object, and an interpretant. For the sake of simplicity, we can think of the sign as the signifier, for example, a written word, an utterance, smoke as a sign for fire etc. The object, on the other hand, is best thought of as whatever is signified, for example, the object to which the written or uttered word attaches, or the fire signified by the smoke. The interpretant, the most innovative and distinctive feature of Peirce's account, is best thought of as the understanding that we have of the sign/object relation. The importance of the interpretant for Peirce is that signification is not a simple dyadic relationship between sign and object: a sign signifies only in being interpreted. This makes the interpretant central to the content of the sign, in that, the meaning of a sign is manifest in the interpretation that it generates in sign users. Things are, however, slightly more complex than this and we shall look at these three elements in more detail. In the everyday use of languages and signs, we combine several kinds of physical media in communicating and making meaning--from voice and printed texts to mass media images, music, movies, computer Web content, and digital multimedia. The various material means of conveying meaning (sometimes called communication "modalities") often overlap and pass on or interpret meaning from other concurrent media in our culture. We can talk or write about a movie, watch TV news that interprets an event, watch a TV mass media genre like a sit-com that requires knowledge of the codes for this genre, and listen to music, write email, and read over multimedia Web pages all at the same time. We are constantly sending, receiving, and making meaning in various kinds of media, often conveying and interpreting meaning from one medium to another. This practice points to the existence of our larger contemporary and inherited semiotic system, or what some have termed a semiosphere, the whole universe of available and possible meanings in a cultural system. Social Semiotics takes the meaning-making process, "semiosis", to be more fundamental than the system of meaning-relations among signs themselves, which are considered only the resources to be deployed in making meaning. Social semiotics examines semiotic practices, specific to a culture and community, for the making of various kinds of texts and meanings in various situational contexts and contexts of culturally meaningful activity.

Aneesa

Work Cited
Chandler, Daniel. (2001/2007). Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics Media Theory and Semiotics: Key Terms and Concepts http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Theory-KeyTerms.html Peirce's Theory of Signs First published Fri Oct 13, 2006; substantive revision Mon Nov 15, 2010 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/