Semiotics
Semiotics
is the study of signs, symbols and the way we interpret them. The way one thing
has the ability to stand for something else. The way we communicate visually
and verbally. How we make sense of the visual world around us.
Ferdinand
De Saussure is known as the founder of modern linguistics and the father of
semiotics, or semiology as he called it. He broke up his idea of this into
three key terms, the signifier, the signified and the sign. The signifier
refers to the label of something, the spoken or written word. The signified is
the thing to which the signifier refers to, the idea or image we think of in correspondence
to the spoken or written signifier. Then finally the sign is both the signifier
and the signified brought together.
Charles
Sander Pierce also created his own theory of semiotics which corresponds to
that of Ferdinand De Saussure. Pierce’s sign vehicle is like Saussure’s
signifier. Referent like the signified and interpretant like the sign.
The Treachery
of Images, a painting by René Magritte in 1929, is an excellent
example of semiotics. It is a painting of a pipe with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas
une pipe’ ‘this is not a pipe’ written below it. This makes the observer question
the painting. Ultimately Magritte is trying to make the audience realise it is
not a pipe itself, it is merely the drawing of a pipe. The idea of a pipe or
the signified, rather than the sign, according to Ferdinand De Saussure’s idea
of semiology.
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