Definition of Sign

In semiotics, a sign is "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity". It may be understood as a discrete unit of meaning, and includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning mind to another.

And unless icons (iconic signs), which signify their close resemblances to things they refer to, all other signs in most part, are in a sense arbitraries and the onomatopoeia is symbolic (i.e. sound symbolism whose pronunciation suggests it meaning). Thus it is said to be that all the communication forms like sounds, gestures, icons, symbols, etc. must signify their signs to denote their referents.

The nature of signs has long been discussed in philosophy. Initially, within linguistics and later semiotics, there were two general schools of thought: those who proposed that signs are ‘dyadic’ (i.e. having two parts), and those who proposed that signs are interpreted in a recursive pattern of triadic (i.e. three-part) relationships.

Dyadic Signs

According to Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a sign is composed of the signifier (signifiant), and the signified (signifié). These cannot be conceptualized as separate entities but rather as a mapping from significant differences in sound to potential (correct) differential denotation. The Saussurean sign exists only at the level of the synchronic system, in which signs are defined by their relative and hierarchical privileges of co-occurrence. It is thus a common misreading of Saussure to take signifiers to be anything one could speak, and signifieds as things in the world. In fact, the relationship of language to parole (or speech-in-context) is and always has been a theoretical problem for linguistics.

He is also important in emphasizing that the relationship between a sign and the real-world thing it denotes is an arbitrary one. There is not a natural relationship between a word and the object it refers to, nor is there a causal relationship between the inherent properties of the object and the nature of the sign used to denote it. For example, there is nothing about the physical quality of paper that requires denotation by the phonological sequence ‘paper’. There is, however, what Saussure called ‘relative motivation’: the possibilities of signification of a signifier are constrained by the compositionality of elements in the linguistic system. In other words, a word is only available to acquire a new meaning if it is identifiably different from all the other words in the language and it has no existing meaning. Structuralism was later based on this idea that it is only within a given system that one can define the distinction between the levels of system and use, or the semantic "value" of a sign.

Triadic Signs

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) proposed a different theory. Unlike Saussure who approached the conceptual question from a study of linguistics and phonology, Peirce was a Kantian philosopher who distinguished "sign" from "word" as only a particular kind of sign, and characterized the sign as the means to understanding. The setting of Peirce's study of signs is philosophical logic, which he defined as the formal branch of semiotic. The result is not a theory of language, but a theory for the production of meaning that rejects the idea of a stable relationship between a signifier and its signified. Rather, Peirce believed that signs establish meaning through recursive relationships that arise in sets of three. The three main semiotic elements that he identifies are:

• Representamen: the sign, that which represents the denoted object (cf. Saussure's "signifier").

• Object: that which the sign represents (or as some put it, encodes). It can be anything thinkable, a law, a fact, a possibility, or even fictional like Hamlet; those are partial objects; the total object is the universe of discourse. The object may be:

• immediate, the object as represented in the sign, or

• dynamic, the object as it really is.

• Interpretant: the meaning formed into a further sign by interpreting (or, as some put it, decoding) a sign. The interpretant may be:

• immediate, i.e. the meaning already in the sign, a kind of possibility or a quality of feeling; for instance, a word's usual meaning;

• dynamical, i.e. the meaning as formed into an actual effect, for example a translation or a state of agitation, or

• final, i.e. the ultimate meaning that would be reached if investigation were to be pushed far enough. It is a kind of norm or ideal end, with which an actual interpretant may, at most, coincide.

Peirce explained that signs mediate the relationship between their objects and their interpretants in a triadic mental or mind-like process. Firstness is a universal category of phenomena and is associated with a vague state of mind in which there is awareness of the environment, a prevailing emotion, and a sense of the possibilities. This is the mind in neutral, waiting to formulate thought. Secondness is a category associated with moving from possibility to greater certainty shown by action, reaction, causality, or reality. Here the mind identifies what message is to be communicated. Thirdness is the category associated with signs, generality, representation, continuity, and purpose. The signs thought most likely to convey the intended meaning are selected and the communication process is initiated. This can involve interpersonal behaviour using nonverbal systems to supplement verbal meaning through intonation, facial expression, or gesture. It can involve, as in the exercise of producing this page, the writing and iterative editing process to arrive at the final selection of words now appearing.

This process is reversed in the receiver. The neutral mind acquires the sign. It recovers from memory the object normally associated with the sign and this produces the interpretant. This is the experience of intelligibility or the result of an act of signification (not necessarily as the signified in the sense intended by Saussure). When the second sign is considered, the initial interpretant may be confirmed, or new possible meanings may be identified. As each new sign is addressed, more interpretants may emerge. It can involve a mind's reading of nature, its icons (signs which are signs by resemblance to their objects) and its indices (signs by factual connection to their objects) as well as symbols (signs which represent by interpretive habit independent of resemblance or factual connection to their objects).

Peirce also refers to the “ground” of a sign. The ground is the pure abstraction of a quality. This is the respect in which the sign represents its object, e.g. as in literal and figurative language. For example, an icon presents a characteristic or quality attributed to an object, while a symbol imputes to an object a characteristic either presented by an icon or symbolized so as to evoke a mental icon.

Even when a sign represents by a resemblance or factual connection independent of interpretation, the sign is a sign only insofar as it is at least potentially interpretable. A sign depends on its object in a way which enables (and, in a sense, determines) interpretation which, in turn, depends on the object as the sign depends on the object and is thus a further sign, enabling and determining still further interpretation. The process is logically structured to perpetuate itself and is what defines sign, object, and interpretant.

According to Gilles-Gaston Granger, Peirce's representamen is, "...a thing which is connected in a certain way to a second sign, its 'object', in such a way that it brings a third sign, its 'interpretant,' into a relationship with the same 'object,' and this in such a way that it brings a fourth sign into a relationship with this same 'object,' and so on ad infinitum" [1, p. 114].

According to Nattiez, writing with Jean Molino, this tripartite definition is based on the "trace" or neutral level, Saussure's "sound-image" (or "signified", thus Peirce's "representamen"). Thus, "a symbolic form...is not some 'intermediary' in a process of 'communication' that transmits the meaning intended by the author to the audience; it is instead the result of a complex process of creation (the poietic process) that has to do with the form as well as the content of the work; it is also the point of departure for a complex process of reception (the esthesic process that reconstructs a 'message'") [4, p. 17].