Semiotics is the theory of signs and how they create and represent meaning. The basic unit of semiotics is the sign which is commonly defined as something that stands for something else. The sign is this unity of word-object, known as a signifier with a corresponding culturally prescribed content or meaning, known as the signified (Berger, 2010).
Semiotic theory offers an explanation of how people find meaning in their everyday life, in the media they consume and the messages they receive from marketers and advertisers in contemporary commercial culture. A big part of being able to understand and interpret these things are codes which are in turn culturally specific rule books that we start to learn during childhood from parents and our surrounding society. The codes tell us how to make sense of the world and how to behave in different situation we might find ourselves in. Codes work as a framework for signs and they are taught to us via culture. They show us how to apply meaning to the world and develop as human beings. Semioticians decode various aspects of culture in order to understand the development of how codes shape us as individuals, as group members, societies, nations and cultures (Berger, 2010).
Two important contributors and theorists within semiotics are Ferdinande De Saussure and Charles Pierce. Saussure finds signifier and signified of utmost importance focusing extra on the arbitrary non-natural relationship based on convention between them. This means that the meaning of signs change over time (Berger, 2010).
As for a more thorough description of signs as a semiotic phenomenon, according to Saussure signs can be studied as they are at a certain time or as they have developed through time. No sign has a meaning on its own, meaning is always established in relationship to other signs, so basically what the sign is not makes its meaning. According to Pierce a “sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity”. Umberto Eco argues that a sign is anything that can be used as substitute for something else. A sign is everything that can be taken as substituting for something else (Berger, 2010). A traffic light is another example of an arbitrary sign since its meaning has been decided by society and green does not actually mean GO! It’s decided.
Following Pierce’s way of thinking there are different types if signs which he calls: icon, index and symbol. This is dependent on the relation between the sign and that for which it stands for (Branston & Stafford, 2003).
An icon signifies resemblance. They resemble the thing that they stand for, examples would be a photograph, film or painting of a flower. An iconic sign can also me motivated meaning that there is some aspect of the signifier which corresponds to the signified. An example of this is signs of male and female bathrooms, no language is required to understand this sign and therefor it is motivated since everyone regarding language can make the same assumptions and understand it in the same way.
A symbolic sign signifies by convention and must be learned, for example, the star of David for Jews, American flag for Americans and the cross for Christians. They are often things of important historical and cultural meaning; the symbols are tied to history and play important roles in all societies. Symbols help us makes sense of things and play a big role in shaping our behavior in many areas: religion (the cross), nationalism (flag) and status (the car we drive). We learn the meaning of symbols from growing up in a specific culture or subculture and the symbol’s importance is enhanced by important historical events and other happenings in said culture.
Indexical signs signify by providing us with a causal link between the sign and what it stands for. Smoke is the indexical sign of fire while a runny nose is the indexical sign of a cold, forensic scientists search for indexical signs of murder and how it might have occurred. (Branston & Stafford, 2003). In the picture the footprint is the indexical sign of a person or a foot.
According to Berger (2013) semiotics as a research method can be used to look at how for example semiotic codes affect consumer behavior. He provides us with the example of Acura cars who has a marketing strategy common to mass media which build coded meanings into representations which means that they fashion the product on the basis of hidden codes. Acura as in this example is meant to stand both for the Japanese culture and the Italian by referencing to both in the name creating the hidden presumption of advanced Japanese technology and the connotations that Italians carry of love, poetry, romantic and artistic. The company uses coded semiotics to force their own connotations on the public. Branston and Stafford (2003) also discusses the use of semiotics as a research method but more as a way to provide media researchers concerning how meanings are constructed by and in different languages and cultures.
References:
Berger, A. A. (2010). The objects of affection: semiotics and consumer culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Branston, G., & Stafford, R. (2003). The media student’s book. London/New York: Psychology Press.