A Succinct Survey of Social Semiotics
This is the first article on a series on semiotics.
Semiotics as a field is a study of signs. Sign is a word with origin in the old French and Latin. It has originated as the expression of the “gesture or motion of the hand,” especially one meant to communicate something, from Old French signe “sign, mark,” from Latin signum “identifying mark, token, indication, symbol; proof; military standard, ensign; a signal, an omen; sign in the heavens, constellation.” It could be traced back to the old French word ‘enseigne’.
When we see the origins of the word ‘sign’ itself, we can see that it has a history of more than eight centuries. However all this history is not self evident when we encounter the four letter word ‘sign’ for the first time.
Just like this referrence to the word origins of ‘sign’, every sign that we encounter in the society, is a socially convergent and coherent code of convenience. We could extract the elements of a social consensus from the context of every symbol. Even this social consensus would be a contextual and contemporary event. There will be a long long sequence of coherence and convergence of meanings and purposes encoded in every sign.
When we look at a sign in a particular context, we are trying to position the sign in the immediate environment of signifiers and signified. It is an incomplete information system. Thus every sign appears arbitrary in the immediate surrounding. It may be worse if we look at an emergent behavior system. It may appear counter-intutive or counter-factual or divergent in an emergent or a context — less situation.
To Be Continued …
