Signs and Language

8/13/2019 Signs and Language

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SIGNS AND LANGUAGEHuman beings recognize patterns of information and organize them togenerate meaning. Collections of these organized patterns form the languages

that humans use when they communicate. We use certain "signs" among ourselves that do not point to anything in our actual surroundings. Instead ofannouncers of things, they are reminders ... they take the place of things that we have perceived in the past, oreven things that we can merely imagine by combining memories, things that might be in the past or futureexperience. They serve to let us develop a characteristic attitude toward objects in absentia , which is called

"thinking of" or "referring to" what is not here. - -Suzzane Langer 1016

Human beings possess the ability to notice patterns in their environments. Whenthe perception of these patterns leads to the interpretation of new information in thecontext of previous knowledge, we might say that meaning occurs. The notion of

meaning, or the making sense out of one's information, is an important aspect ofhuman communication.

There is little agreement as to how the term "meaning" should be defined, nor isthere agreement as to how meaning is created, preserved and destroyed in the midstof the communication process. However, attempts to reconcile these disagreementshave led to the development of a number of differing points-of-view. Importantamong these are the following:

that meaning is contained in the patterns themselves, that meaning is created entirely in the minds of the individual senders and

receivers, that meaning arises from the social interactions of the communicators.

One widely used approach to the study of the relationships among patterns of perception and meaning is called semiotics . Central to semiotics is the notion ofthe sign .

Such a statement as "The word 'cat' stand for a certain small mammal" is not either true or false. Its truthdepends upon agreement between the speakers that it be true. In terms of such agreement they understand eachother; or where disagreement occurs they will meet with misunderstanding. - -Gregory Bateson

A sign is a pattern of data which, when perceived, brings to mind something otherthan itself.

Although this definition appears simple on the surface, it has compleximplications. Please pause to look at Figure 1 for a moment or two.
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Figure 1

Now, briefly, and to yourself describe the thoughts that Figure 1 brought to yourmind. It may help if you write these down.

...........waiting.............

... please look at the picture and form your

thoughts before you continue ...

..................................

This situation illustrates the three fundamental building blocks which, togetherwith the rules that describe how they relate to one another, will be used toconstruct the Semiotic Model of Communication.

The first of these building blocks is the data, or the perceived pattern ofdark-on-light, that to an observer "is" Figure 1. This will be called the sign .

The second building block is the real-world animal that Figure 1 resembles.This will be called the object . In the terminology of the semiotic model thesign is said to "refer to" its object -- similarly, the object is sometimes calledthe "referent" of the sign.

The third building block is the thought that forms in the mind of a reader ashe or she gazes at Figure 1. This will be called the concept .

These three elements relate to one another as a semiotic system.
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At the beginning of the exercise, did this sign: , bring to mind a large,African or Indian animal? Or memories of a trip to the zoo? Or images recalledfrom a favorite book read as a child, or a television show, or a movie...? Perhaps it

brings to mind an American political party; or perhaps the notion of memory (asin: "a large animal with a trunk and big ears that never forgets ..."). Notice thatwhatever the sign brings to mind, the concept is related to the reader's pastexperience with the object.

This is always the case with signs, and one of the advantages of the semiotic modellies in its ability to highlight relationships among the sign, the concepts the sign

brings to mind and the experience of the reader. The next picture illustrates thisrelationship.

ICON, INDEX AND SYMBOL

Why does a particular sign bring to mind a particular concept? For example, why

does bring to mind an animal, while does not? In this case,the connection lies in the resemblance of the sign to the object. 1004

It might be that one day during a trip to the zoo, the reader saw a large animal --

and so later when he or she sees a printed image that resembles the animal, thatearlier experience is brought to mind.

Connection-by-resemblance is one of the three fundamental ways that signs,concepts and experiences relate. This particular kind of sign is called an icon . If asign is a perception that refers to, or brings to mind, something other than itself, an

icon is a type of sign that resembles the thing that it refers to. Thus, is anicon because it resembles the animal that it brings to mind. 1020
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You may have noticed that in our discussion of , we have carefullyrefrained from using the word elephant. The reason for this is that the word

#elephant# is itself a sign, though a different kind of sign than .

Note: what do the #s mean in the last paragraph?

This second type of sign is called a symbol . Symbols and the objects that they bring to mind are related in an arbitrary manner. This means that there is no knownreason why the symbol and the object are related. For example, there is no reasonwhy the large animal under discussion might not be tagged by a different word --#nordnet#, for example, or #frindlemat#, or perhaps #barracuda#. #Elephant# isused simply because over the years, it has come to be used -- no one knows why.

#Elephant# Used As A Symbol

arbitrary

A third kind of sign brings a concept to mind by means of a direct, physicalconnection between itself and its object. For example, if someone is walking downa street and suddenly encounters the smell of freshly baking bread, he or she mightfind the concept of a bakery coming to mind. This kind of sign is called an index .

The Smell of Baking Bread As An Index
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To summarize -- there are three basic types of signs: the icon, the index, and the

symbol. Each brings to mind concepts that are related to the perceiver's previousexperience with objects in the world. Each operates in a different way:

Icon -- a sign that resembles its object

If this brings to mind a kind of fruit, it is acting as an icon. 1006

Index -- a sign that is physically connected to its object

If the rain touching your face brings to mind the nearby storm, it is acting as anindex. 1005

Symbol -- a sign whose relationship to its object is arbitrary

If this brings to mind an interstate highway in the United States, it is acting as asymbol.

icon symbol index 1007 1008 1009 1019
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DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

For humans, data include any patterns in a medium that can be interpreted as relevant to some context. Data gainmeaning, they become information in the human sense, through interpretation. Information includes both dataand the relevance of data in some context. - -David Ritchie

Most signs have at least one normal, "common sense" meaning. This meaning,called the sign's denotation , is shared among many people and is the most widelyused meaning of the sign. But signs also may have many different "subjective"meanings that arise from each individual's personal experiences. These are calledtheconnotations of the sign. 1001 1003

For example, most people would agree that the symbol #frog# refers to a tail-less,web-footed amphibious animal -- this is its denotation and is the meaning that islisted for the term in the dictionary. On the other hand, the connotations of #frog#

depend on each person's individual experiences and might include such asmemories of a dissection experiment in biology class, or a story about a frog readas a young child, or just the rather vague concept "ugggh."

Where do denotations come from? Why does the string of letters #frog# denote anamphibian while the string #book# denotes a bound collection of printed papers?Why does this symbol, , denote a male human being, while this one, ,denotes a female? Why does this symbol, , denote the presence of money, whilethis one, , denotes a question?

If each person made up his or her own denotation for every sign, people would not be able to understand one another. Thus, while people do have their own personal,connotative meanings for many signs, most signs have at least one meaning that isshared in common. This notion of shared, denotational meaning is one of the keysto understanding human communication. 1024

Thus, the denotation of a sign represents a agreement among a group of people thatthey will share that meaning of the sign among themselves. Meanings of this typeare said to arise through social convention .

A sign may have more than one denotational meaning. In cases when a personmust choose one meaning from a number of options he or she looks tothe context of the sign to make the decision. For example, when seen alone thisicon usually denotes the human heart. But placed in this context: ,its denotation becomes that of "love" -- as in "I love you."

Conventional meanings change over time. In fact the conventional meanings ofsigns in a society are under continual renegotiation as new possible meanings arise,

are considered, and are accepted or rejected.
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Thus, each of the lines in the Semiotic Triangle

represents a two-way negotiation:

Perception -- the ongoing group of bodily processes by which human beingsreceive data about their environments,

Experience -- the memory of previous perceptions and concepts, which isconstantly being altered or "updated" by new experience,

Convention -- the constantly changing, social "rules of meaning" that unifygroups of people within their communication environments.

The semiotic model helps to explain how communication works as an interactive process. The following sections look more deeply into the complexities of semiotictheory.

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JAKSOBSON'S MODEL OF LANGUAGE FUNCTION

In 1950 Roman Jakobson introduced a theory that considers the way that spokenlanguage is put to use in human communication. This model of communication

function consists of two layers of description -- one that describes the variouselements of language use, and one that shows what humans do with the languagewhen they use it.

It is interesting to compare this model to the semiotic model. Although they both

focus on how human communication becomes meaningful, their approaches arevery different.
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PARADIGM AND SYNTAGM

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A paradigm is a unique collection of signs. With the application of the appropriaterules, compound signs, or syntagms , can be constructed from the paradigm. Thenotions of paradigm and syntagm underlie many of the semiotics methods that areused in the study of human communication.

A paradigm is a collection of signs. The next picture shows an example of a paradigm.

A Paradigm of Colored Lights

The elements of a paradigm do not necessarily have meaning in and of themselves.Most often they take on meaning as they are combined into more complex patternsof signs called syntagms. For example, here are three syntagms that might beformed from the paradigm of colored lights.

Syntagms Formed from the Paradigm

Syntagms can rather quickly become quite complex. In this example there are sixelements in the paradigm -- three colors of lights each of which is either on or off.The particular set of syntagms shown above is only one of many that could beconstructed from the paradigm. For example, here are three additional syntagms.
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More Syntagms Formed from the Same Paradigm

Many different types of rules can be used during the construction of a syntagm.Here the rules involve colors of light chosen (no more than one color is ever used),the positioning of the lights (in this case the lights are organized vertically), and thedisplay of the lights (no more than one light is ever turned on at the same time).

The rules that are used to construct a syntagm can only be applied to the elementsof a paradigm. Elements that are not in the paradigm cannot be used. For example,this syntagm could not be constructed from the paradigm shown above.

Illegal Syntagm

This symbol, , is not part of the paradigm. Therefore, this syntagm, , cannot be formed from the paradigm, and neither can the light shown in the previousillustration.

The concepts of paradigm and syntagm are central to semiotic theory. Variousapproaches to the analysis of communication texts by semiotic means begin byfirst identifying the paradigm and sytagms involved, and semiotic scholars studythe way syntagms are formed and used as an approach to understanding howmeaning arises during the communication process. paradigm and syntagm 1002 1031 1033

[sample paradigmatic analysis ]

NARRATIVE

No matter how strictly a case is argued - scientifically, philosophically, or legally - it will always be a story, aninterpretation of some aspect of the world that is historically and culturally grounded and shaped by human

personality. - Walter Fisher

Human beings have a remarkable ability to shape information into the form that isknown as the "story." Rather than organizing data in terms of facts and logicalrelationships, humans tend to organize their information in term of characters,

plots, motivations and actions. This type of organization is called narrative .

Perhaps no aspect of human language has been studied so diligently as narrative.These studies are much too extensive even to summarize adequately here, but mostreaders will have studied literature in high school, and so will have a basicunderstanding of narrative form.

The syntagmatic analysis that follows is an example of the study of narrative. Inthis case the analysis applies a theory of narrative structure that was developed by
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Russian scholar Vladimir Propp. Propp discovered that Russion folk tales all had asimilar structure. Today that structure is known as "Propp's Morphology."

[Propp's Morphology : a sample syntagmatic analysis] 1032
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ABSTRACTION

The amount of data that pours in through the human senses is so large that we areforced to ignore much of it. In addition, we must organize the data that we do

retain in ways that promote understanding at the expense of detail. In semioticterms, the process by which human beings sift and organize their perceptual data iscalled abstraction .

In some sense all signs are abstractions. Because a sign is not the object, but rather perceptual data that refers to the object, the perception of a sign does not provideall of the details that would have been provided by a perception of the object itself.

Some signs are especially abstract. For example, consider this map of the street onwhich I live.

If I send this map to my coworkers whom I've invited to dinner next week, I canreasonably expect that they will be able to find their way to my front door. In fact,in constructing this particular abstraction I have made a very specific choice ofdata based on my assessment of the information that would be needed by the

people I've invited. Notice that the map does not include the name of the town, orcompass markings. Because I know that everyone involved lives in town, I knowthat they do not need that information.

Context and convention are important when abstract signs are used incommunication. For example, as a reader, what did you take this syntagm to

mean ? That most people would interpret it as the street number of ahouse is an example of convention. Similarly, because the word #bank# is used ona map, and because it is enclosed within a rectangle, most readers would take it torefer to a kind of building rather than to the bank of a stream, a bank of lights, orother possible denotations of the term.

Next, suppose that I was to redraw the map to be used by my relatives who will be

driving into town, but who have never been here before. In this case I might choose
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a higher degree of abstraction -- that is, I might leave out even more details inorder to widen the scope of the map.

To have more abstraction means to have fewer details . In this case the area aroundmy house, which was shown in detail in the first map, has vanished. But this mapis more informative to my out-of-town relatives than the first map would have been

because the first map would not have showed them how my house is situatedrelative to the main highway.

Finally, imagine that an air-conditioning service representative is coming to fix myheat-pump while I am away, and I need to send the company a map to show therepresentative how to find the machinery. In this case my map will be moredetailed and less abstract .

As I add detail, the map becomes less symbolic and more iconic -- that is it comes

more and more to be a picture instead of a set of symbols. In fact, many peoplemight not call this last drawing a map at all.

This ability to reduce or increase detail in order to arrive at a level of abstractionthat is appropriate to the information required is an essential characteristic ofhuman communication. The next three sections will present three specialcategories of abstraction: metaphor, metonymy and myth.

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METAPHOR

An interesting semiotic process occurs when two or more signs are perceivedsimultaneously and are in conflict with one another. For example, consider this

statement: "With the 'A+' on her math exam clutched in her hand, she flew acrossthe room to tell her friends."

But did she fly? Really?

In our experience, people don't fly, yet most readers will accept this sentence asmaking good sense. How does that come about? In semiotic terms, this situation isknown as metaphor , and it occurs when signs with conflicting concepts overlap ina way that lets the reader accept them as simultaneously true. In this case the stringof symbols that makes up the sentence invokes the concepts of women, of flyingand of rooms.

But what is the resulting final concept? Because the reader probably has had no prior experience with flying women (at least indoors), when his or her mind settleson a concept, it will be an imaginary one. In other words, the sign will beinterpreted as referring to an unreal object. Thus, in semiotic terms, it is metaphorthat opens up to humans the possibility of imagination.

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Metaphors work paradigmatically. That is, a metaphor consists of a set of signswhich point to objects that are not usually associated with one another. The personexperiencing the metaphor must create a syntagm that brings to mind a conceptcompatible with the individual's prior experience. It is this act of uncertaincreativity that gives the metaphor its imaginative power.

METONYMY
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A metonymic sign is one which, when perceived, brings to mind a conceptassociated with an object other than the one to which the sign refers. For example,in this sentence: "Today the White House announced that the President would soontake a trip to the Middle East," the sign #White House# would normally denote the

large, white, house in which the President of the United States resides. However,for a reader to accept the phrase "the White House announced" literally, he or shewould have to take it for granted that houses can talk, and most readers would findthis unacceptable.

Instead, most U.S. readers will interpret the sign #White House# in this context asreferring to the administrative apparatus of the United States government, andwould make the assumption that the announcement was delivered by anadministrative staff member speaking in the name of the President. Thus, the sign#White House# is taken to refer not to the house itself, but to the procedure bywhich official administrative announcements are made within the U.S.government.

Metonymy is particularly important in the semiotic study of mass communication.A television news show, for example, might present an image of new houses being

built in one location to stand for a wholesale improvement in the nationaleconomy. Or, a newspaper photograph of a traffic accident might be used torepresent the problem of "drunk driving."

When metonyms are used in this fashion, they act syntagmatically to produce anentire narrative from a single piece of the story. Confronted with an image of asmashed car, for example, the reader may construct the story of a driver whostopped at a bar after work for a drink, had too much to drink, failed to heed thewarnings of friends, strayed across the center line of the highway and struck anoncoming vehicle.

Of course, the story that the reader constructs may not be true to the particularaccident being reported, but it will probably be similar, and it will seem true to thereader. Thus, when metonym is used as a shorthand method for evoking anarrative, it becomes a valuable tool in the construction of mass communicationmessage s 1030
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MYTH

In the same sense that the term "connotation" refers refers to the personal meaningthat a person makes from his or her encounter with a sign, the term "myth" refers

to the unconscious, collective meaning that a society makes from a semiotic process. This definition of myth is credited to scholar Roland Barthes, is larger inscope than the common meaning of a myth as a widely know story.

The semiotic triangle shows the interaction among sign, concept and object as theyrelate to individuals.

In Barthes' approach a myth is a chain of semiotic events which are encountered bythe members of a society and which carry a meaning that, while shared, lies belowthe level of conscious understanding. Thus, the semiotic process itself becomes thesign in a "second order" process that operates simultaneously within the entire

group.

Myth as a Semiotic Process

As an example, consider the following signs that might be encountered whiledriving to work: a US interstate highway sign, a large tank truck with the Exxonlogo on its side, a sign above a Domino's pizza store, a US Postal Service mail box.


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Documents

Signs and Language