What is going on around the sign is usually as important for us to know as the sign itself in order to interpret its meaning Semiotics is a key tool to ensure that intended meanings (of for instance a piece of communication or a new product) are unambiguously understood by the person on the receiving end

a linguistic sign (written or spoken word) that has a physical resemblance, rather than an arbitrary relation, to its referent Examples include onomatopoeic coinages, such as choo-choo (train), and the signs used in pictographic languages Compare arbitrary symbol

Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs, symbols, and signification Symbolic (arbitrary) signs: signs where the relation between signifier and signified is purely conventional and culturally specific, eg, most words Iconic signs: signs where the signifier resembles the signified, eg, a picture

Levels of Semiotic Rules Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols such as letters or numbers) Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and their users) Semantic (relationships between signs and symbols and what their meaning)

At one level, we all interpret signs every day of our lives, we negotiate the signage of human interactions, purchases, work, travel etc Semiotics can help determine what signs/messages should be used, what signs/messages should be avoided, and whether proposed options are likely to have the desired impact

While Semiotics is the study of signs & sign processes to signify or communicate, Ethnography deals with the systematic study of people and cultures Thus the combined study of both can be termed as Ethno-semiotics

Semiotics of Communication is an approach that understands communication as a semiotic problem, ie as an interactive process in a universe composed of open systems and subsystems organized through information flows, in which the action of signs, or semiosis, is the fundamental phenomenon

The relation between semantics and semiotics might seem straightforward: semantics is the study of the meaning and reference of linguistic expressions, while semiotics is the general study of signs of all kinds and in all their aspects

Semiotics, in both its countries of origin, emerged as a science If there is one thing that Saussure and Peirce have in common, science is it Of course, interpretation is to some degree creative and subjective

Audiences interpret information that is communicated to them from the stage, often subconsciously through the use of various signs and symbols – the process of reading and analysing these is called semiotics

Simply put, the signifier is the sound associated with or image of something (eg, a tree), the signified is the idea or concept of the thing (eg, the idea of a tree), and the sign is the object that combines the signifier and the signified into a meaningful unit

The Swiss linguist and founder of structuralism, Ferdinand de Saussure, describes the sign and its arbitrary relation to reality A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical

The arbitrary aspect of signs does help to account for the scope for their interpretation (and the importance of context) There is no one-to-one link between signifier and signified; signs have multiple rather than single meanings

In each case, the sign can be broken into two parts, the signifier and the signified