Heart and Love. Small Introduction to Semiotics

The world we live in, talks to us through texts. As Branston and Stufford point out, “a text can be anything which is to be investigated- a haircut, hip-hop lyrics, a dance, a film” (p.11). In order to conduct such investigation, we found ourselves in need of a proper science. A science for the study of texts, meant as explained earlier, was necessary since texts are not just thought to be or to exist. They instead structure “the very realities which they seem to describe or stand for” (Brandston and Stufford, p.12). How, then, are meanings constructed in society? Semiotics was born with the aim to answer this precise question.

Semiotics can be described as a qualitative method of investigation which seeks to relate texts to their surrounding social order (Brandston and Stufford). Semiotics is also defined as the science that allows the study of signs, the production of meanings through their systems, or how things acquire significance. But what’s then a sign? The definitions are various and present little differences, but it is possible to wrap them up. Firstly, a sign is “the basic unit of semiotics” (Berger, p.3). A sign, like a text, can be anything from a written word to a material object and more. The first trying to provide a deeper knowledge regarding signs was the linguist Saussure. He thought of signs as being made of two parts: a signifier and a signified. The signifier is a word-object, what we can physically see, touch, hear, etc. The signified is immaterial, it’s the meaning and the content that the sign carries (Berger). This distinction explains why a sign is always said to stand for or refer to something else, precisely its meaning. Saussure went in more depth by saying that the relation between signifier and signified are “arbitrary and based on convention” (Berger, p. 5). Thus, a sign doesn’t have an intrinsic meaning, but it acquires it in relation with other signs, as all of them are members of a system (Berger).

An example for a sign can be the world ‘amore’ which is the Italian word for ‘love’. The sequence of written letters constitutes the sound-image, the signifier, but the concept the world carries is common to all languages of the world, and it is in this case what the word stands for. If there wasn’t a meaning to which the word ‘amore’ refers to by convention, the sequence of letters would mean nothing to us since it doesn’t have intrinsic value. Since there is no innate link between the sound-image ‘amore’ and the concept of love, the meaning of the signified can only be understood by opposition to what love does not mean.

Among signs in general, the logician Pierce, distinguishes then three different kinds: icons, indexes, and symbols. (Berger, p. 9). Their distinction depends according to Pierce on the relation between the sign and what it stands for (Brandston and Stufford, p. 13).

ICONS

Icons are those signs that “signify by resemblance” and they are strongly determined by the objects they stand for (Berger, p. 9-10). They can be for example a picture or a drawing which partake of the characters of the object. For example, the drawing of an anatomical heart can be an icon of the human heart. Some aspects of the drawing showed do indeed correspond to the signified (the human heart).

                              INDEXES

Indexes are those signs which are “really and in [their] individual existence connected with the individual object” (Berger, p.10). They are those signs in which there is a casual link between the index and that for which it stands for. For example, an index for the human heart could be the sound of the heart beating, which could not exist in absence of the heart itself.

SYMBOLS

Symbols are probably the more complex category of signs. That is because symbols mainly depend on interpretation. They need to be read because their relation to the signified is arbitrary. Therefore, they are understood thanks to habit and to confident knowledge of the historical and cultural discourse they appear in. The same word ‘amore’ previously seen, falls under the category of symbolic signs. Its signifier is not attached to its signified by resemblance or by connection in its real existence. Instead, we learned to decodify the word ‘amore’ or ‘love’ and to link it immediately with the concept of love. The image below pops up in google image search both when typing the word ‘love’ as well as when typing ‘heart’. That is because that precise shape, with its variation, has become a commonly recognised symbol to represent a heart, and the heart has become a commonly recognised symbol which stands for the concept of love. That is possible with symbols even though such shape has no whatsoever direct link to the concept of love.

Starting from a structuralist approach, according to which the elements in human culture are to be understood in structures, semiotics results to be a very important tool in trying to understand how do signs create meanings and shape realities (Brandston and Stufford). What is fundamental to semiotics is the idea that our understanding of reality is also shaped by the signs we use, and vice versa. According to Berger “semiotic theory offers an explanation of how people find meaning in their everyday lives” (p.11). Through the understanding of signs we could then have a deeper understanding of our behaviour, our society and in general our culture.

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