Semiotics: The Basics

Daniel Chandler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367726546
• eBook ISBN: 9781000562941
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This fourth edition of the bestselling textbook, now available in print, eBook, and audiobook, has been fully updated, continuing to provide a concise introduction to the key concepts of semiotics in accessible and jargon-free language.

Demystifying what is a complex, highly interdisciplinary field, key questions covered include: what are signs and codes? What can semiotics teach us about representation and reality? What tools does it offer for analysing texts and cultural practices? The fourth edition of Semiotics: The Basics focuses in particular on its application to communication and cultural studies. It has been extensively revised and extended, with an entirely new section on cognitive semiotics, many more illustrations, and a new glossary.

With updates to theory, further examples, and suggestions for review and further reading, this must-have resource is both the ideal introductory text and an essential reference guide for students at all levels of language and communication, media, and cultural studies.

1 Models

DOI: 10.4324/9781003155744-2

Signs are commonly defined in terms of a relation between form and meaning. However, this simplistic formulation raises the issue of ‘the meaning of meaning’. Formal models of the sign often distinguish between two kinds of meaning: conceptual meaning (sense or designation) and referential meaning (reference or denotation). The ­reference of a sign is what it refers to beyond the sign system (known as a ­referent or an object). Referents can include things, beings, or events (real or imaginary) but also more abstract categories. The term sense is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘meaning’, but it is often used more specifically to refer to the distinctions made within a language. Dictionaries define the various linguistic senses of individual words (many of which have no reference to things to which we can point in the world). If we ask what is meant by the word ‘semiotician’, its sense is ‘someone who studies signs’ (as distinct from say, ‘someone who paints signs’), while its reference could be to any of its practitioners in the world. If someone asks what you do and you reply (rashly), ‘I am a semiotician’, you have provided a reference but they will probably be none the wiser; the next thing they will expect (optimistically) is some sense.

The traditional definition of a sign as ‘something that stands for something else’ is a medieval one (in the scholastic Latin formula, aliquid stat pro aliquo). The distinction between signs and what they are signs of is fundamental in semiotics (as we will see in Chapter 2, ‘the sign is not the thing’), and the traditional formulation foregrounds the relation between a sign vehicle and its referent. Such a referential relation is a common feature in models of the sign, but it cannot constitute a viable model in which this is the only relation. ‘The object of a sign is one thing; its meaning is another’ (Peirce CP 5.6). A purely referential model reduces meaning to reference (as if meaning resides ‘in’ the world). Indicating what we are talking about (for instance, by pointing to something) is obviously important, but (to the frustration of monolingual travellers) it is insufficient for establishing meaning. Equating what a sign means with what it stands for is unhelpfully circular.

However, such a dyadic model is implicitly triadic insofar as it presupposes an interpreter (for whom the sign is meaningful). The ­meaning of a sign is not ‘contained’ within it, but arises in its interpretation. The ‘standing for’ sign–object relation requires interpretation by a conscious being. ‘ “Being a sign of” is a three-term relation’ (Price 1969, 92). A sign stands for (or is a sign of) something, to someone. We can hardly discuss human meaning-making without reference to the mind. Augustine’s model (397 ce) is primarily referential (Nöth 1990, 85), but he does acknowledge this third dimension: ‘a sign is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind’ (On Christian Doctrine II.1.i).

Although Augustine acknowledges the role of the mind, he does not focus on the key distinction between sense and reference that characterizes the classical triadic model of the sign (Figure 1.1). This ­traditional semiotic triangle features both the relation of reference and that of signification (sometimes termed, respectively, the sign–object relation and the sign–mind relation). However, these dyadic relations are subordinated to the triadic process of mediation (interpretation being represented here with arrows): sense (or conceptual meaning) mediates the referent. The broken line at the base of the triangle signifies that there is not necessarily any direct relationship between the sign vehicle and the referent (Ogden and Richards 1923, 11). Both Aristotle (c. 350 bce) and the Stoic philosophers (c. 250 bce) developed variants of this triadic model, in which signs signify referents by means of mediating concepts. According to Aristotle, who has been described as ‘the first thinker to theorize in a systematic way about meaning and reference’ (Putnam 1988, 19), we understand the meaning of a sign (such as a word) when we associate it with a concept – a representation in the mind – that determines what it refers to. Aristotle’s model of meaning, advanced in On Interpretation (350 bce), dominated European thinking for over two millennia.

FIGURE 1.1 The classical triadic model of the sign
Source: © 2021 Daniel Chandler

As will become apparent, a great deal hangs on how we define a sign. In the medieval ‘language of flowers’, the herb rosemary stands for ‘remembrance’, but it requires someone such as Shakespeare’s Ophelia to interpret it as such: rosemary growing in the kitchen herb garden has no such signification. However, just as meaning cannot be reduced to something ‘in the world’, neither can it be reduced to something ‘in the mind’. The Aristotelian cognitive model does not account for the social grounding of meaning. Rosemary cannot stand for remembrance in the absence of a socially shared code for the symbolism of flowers.

Our natural languages are our primary socially shared sign systems. We begin our exploration of the most influential contemporary sign models with a semiotic approach to language that involves a radical challenge to the traditional ‘standing for’ relation or ‘representational’ model, and to our common sense assumptions about the language–world relationship.

The Saussurean model

While the concept of ‘the sign’ is ancient, the notion of sign systems is a modern one. For the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, a leading contender for the title of ‘founder of modern linguistics’, language is a system of signs, and linguistic signs make sense only as part of a language’s sign system. Within such a system, a sign has two aspects, which Saussure termed a signifiant (usually rendered in English as a ‘signifier’) and a signifié (a ‘signified’) (see Figure 1.2). Although in contemporary discourse the term signified is often used to refer generally to ‘meaning’, and in loose usage may involve reference, Saussure makes it very clear that he is not dealing with the dimension of reference: ‘The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and an acoustic image’ (CLG 98/66). Thus, for Saussure, words do not ‘stand for’ things, and his signifier and signified are not to be understood dualistically as ‘sign’ (vehicle) and ‘referent’ – a common misinterpretation.

FIGURE 1.2 Saussure’s dyadic model of the linguistic sign
Source: Adapted from Saussure 1916/1995, 158

Within the Saussurean linguistic model, the sign is the unified whole that results from the association of a sound with a concept (ibid., 99/67). This is a relationship in which the two layers are as inseparable as the two sides of a piece of paper (157/113). A linguistic sign could not consist of sound without sense or of sense without sound (144/102–3). Although the signifier and the signified can be distinguished for analytical purposes, Saussure defines them as wholly interdependent, neither pre-existing the other. As we will see, this radical concept proved challenging not only for his ‘deconstructionist’ critics but even for his structuralist followers. In Saussure’s semiology, the semiotic articulation or correlation of the signifier and the signified is a délimitation réciproque: a reciprocal or mutual delimitation or definition (156/112). The signifier and the signified exist in a symbiotic or bidirectional relation within a relational sign system. The two arrows in the diagram represent their interaction.

Any individual sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified. For instance, the spoken word ‘duck’ is a sign consisting of:

• a signifier: a mental representation of a perceptible pattern of sound, and
• a signified: the relational concept of a species of waterbird – not a pictorial ‘mental image’ but a linguistic ‘value’ (a notion to be discussed shortly).

Both the signifier and the signified are purely psychological, united in the mind by an associative link. For Saussure, the ‘acoustic image’ is ‘not the material sound, a purely physical thing’ but the impression made on our senses or its ‘psychological imprint’ (CLG 98/65–6). Neither of these are material ‘things’; both consist of non-material form rather than substance. As we will see, this immateriality derives from Saussure’s radical conception of language as a system of signs (a network of pairings of sounds with concepts). Note that in post-Saussurean semiotics (originally in Hjelmslev), the signifier is ­commonly interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign – it is something that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted – as with Roman Jakobson’s signans, which he describes (more traditionally) as the external and perceptible part of the sign (1963b/1990, 111; 1984, 98).

Saussure was a linguist, and his focus was understandably on linguistic sign systems. As we have noted, he refers specifically to the signifier as an ‘acoustic image’ (image acoustique). In the Cours, writing is referred to as a separate, secondary, dependent, but comparable sign system (CLG 32/15, 46ff./24ff., 165–6/119–20). Within the system of written signs, a signifier such as the written letter ‘t’ signifies a sound in the primary sign system of language (and thus a written word would also signify a sound rather than a concept). Jacques Derrida famously argues that, from this perspective, writing relates to speech as signifier to signified and writing is ‘a sign of a sign’ (1967a, 43).

Saussure’s signified is a concept in the mind – not a thing but the notion of a thing. Some may wonder why his model of the sign refers only to a concept and not to a thing (the ‘common sense’ view). The philosopher Susanne Langer (1957, 60) notes that symbolic signs ‘are not proxy for their objects but are vehicles for the conception of objects’. Such signs perform the extraordinarily powerful function of enabling us to ‘call to mind’, and communicate about, things that are not materially present in the here and now.

For Saussure, linguistic signs are wholly immaterial (CLG 32/15). The immateriality of the Saussurean sign is a feature that tends to be neglected in many popular commentaries. If the notion seems strange, we need to remind ourselves that words have no value in themselves – that is their value. Saussure notes that it is not the metal in a coin that fixes its value (ibid., 164/118). Several reasons could be offered for this. For instance, if linguistic signs drew attention to their materiality this would hinder their communicative transparency. Furthermore, being immaterial, language is an extraordinarily economical medium, and words are always ready to hand. Nevertheless, a principled argument can be made for the revaluation of the materiality of the sign, as we will see in due course.

Jacques Derrida criticizes Saussure for his ‘psychologism’, dismissing the Saussurean model as simply replacing with a mental ­representation the referent associated with traditional dyadic models of the sign (1981, 22–3) – a wilful misrepresentation of Saussure’s radical conception. Saussure’s model of the linguistic sign (Figure 1.2) is indeed a psychological one. As such, it presupposes (although it does not incorporate) a ‘subject’ who interprets the sign. Acknowledging the interpretive role of the mind enables this ostensibly dyadic model to be decomposed into a binary structure with two pairs of relata (signifier–signified, sign–subject), and we may interpret it as implicitly triadic (see Langer 1957, 57–8).

However, the Saussurean model is not reducible to a matter of individual psychology. Saussure sees linguistics as closely related to social psychology (CLG 21/6). Language has both a ‘social side’ and an ‘individual side’ (ibid., 24/8). The linguistic sign system is socially grounded and functions as an intersubjective mediator between individuals in society (Figure 1.3; cf. Figure 6.2). It is reflected as a ­cognitive system in the minds of individuals, but it exists in its entirety only in the masse parlante – the community of speakers (30/14, 112/77). Language is a social institution that is ‘independent of the individual’ (37/18). It is a cooperative enterprise. Language in use presupposes a speech community (sharing a common language), and a social (and material) context in which meaning is negotiated. As Thibault puts it, ‘Meaning is always the social product of the language system’ (1997, 40). The psychosocial Saussurean model, in which meaning is socially grounded, is thus radically different from the purely cognitive Aristotelian model.

FIGURE 1.3 The linguistic sign and its interpreters
Source: © 2021 Daniel Chandler

Arbitrariness

Traditionally, in the theory of signs (before and after Saussure), the term ‘arbitrary’ refers to sign–object relations, where it is conventionally contrasted with ‘natural’ relations. In this context, the issue is whether the form that the sign takes has some inherent connection to a referent (as with a shadow) or whether the connection is purely conventional (as with the word shadow). In Plato’s dialogue Cratylus, set in the fifth century bce, the issue of ‘the cor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Models
• 2 Realities
• 3 Structures
• 4 Codes
• 5 Ways of meaning
• 6 Interactions
• 7 Perspectives
• Going further
• Glossary
• References
• Index