Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols (visual and linguistic) create meaning. Show
It is a way of seeing the world, and of understanding how the landscape and culture in which we live has a massive impact on all of us unconsciously. Our actions and thoughts – what we do automatically – are often governed by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions, and dependent upon our ability to interpret them instinctively and instantly. For instance, when we see the different colours of a traffic light, we automatically know how to react to them. We know this without even thinking about it. But this is a sign which has been established by cultural convention over a long period of time and which we learn as children, and requires a deal of unconscious cultural knowledge to understand its meaning. Viewing and interpreting (or decoding) this sign enables us to navigate the landscape of our streets and society.  Everyone is a semiotician, because everyone is constantly unconsciously interpreting the meaning of signs around them – from traffic lights to colours of flags, the shapes of cars, the architecture of buildings, and the design of cereal packaging. And signs don’t only need to be visual – they can be aural or sonic signs too, such as the sound of a police siren, usually heard before the vehicle is seen. We know for instance that the following sign in the West means everything is OK. This can be dated back to its alleged use by Roman emperors to signal whether a gladiator would live (hence be OK). Its reverse – thumbs down – signified death. But in scuba diving this sign means go up to the surface, and by the side of the road it means you want to hitch a ride. In other words, we need to understand the context in which a sign is communicated in order to comprehend its real meaning, and hence act appropriately. 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. Usually there are good reasons if someone doesn’t understand the real intention of a message and semiotics can help unravel that confusion, ensuring clarity of meaning. Semiotics started out as an academic investigation of the meaning of words (linguistics), it moved into examining people’s behaviour (anthropology and psychology), then evolved to become an enquiry into culture and society (sociology and philosophy), following that it moved onto assisting with analyses of cultural products (films, literature, art – critical theory), and finally and more recently became a methodology for researching and analysing consumer behaviour and brand communications. It is from this social science background that Sign Salad emerged. We apply the high-level thinking of semiotics to enable clients to understand the commercial implications of the culture around their brands and its impact upon consumers. Ultimately, we assist with the development of culturally relevant brand strategies and meaningful communication (packaging, comms and point of sale). Summary Read a brief summary of this topicsemantics, also called semiotics, semology, or semasiology, the philosophical and scientific study of meaning in natural and artificial languages. The term is one of a group of English words formed from the various derivatives of the Greek verb sēmainō (“to mean” or “to signify”). The noun semantics and the adjective semantic are derived from sēmantikos (“significant”); semiotics (adjective and noun) comes from sēmeiōtikos (“pertaining to signs”); semiology from sēma (“sign”) + logos (“account”); and semasiology from sēmasia (“signification”) + logos. It is difficult to formulate a distinct definition for each of these terms, because their use largely overlaps in the literature despite individual preferences. The word semantics has ultimately prevailed as a name for the doctrine of meaning, of linguistic meaning in particular. Semiotics is still used, however, to denote a broader field: the study of sign-using behaviour in general. Varieties of meaningThe notion of linguistic meaning, the special concern of philosophical and linguistic semantics, must be distinguished from other common notions with which it is sometimes confused. Among them are natural meaning, as in smoke means fire or those spots mean measles; conventional meaning, as in a red traffic light means stop or the skull and crossbones means danger; and intentional meaning, as in John means well or Frank means business. The notion of linguistic meaning, in contrast, is the one exemplified in the following sentences:
Linguistic meaning has been a topic of philosophical interest since ancient times. In the first decades of the 20th century, it became one of the central concerns of philosophy in the English-speaking world (see analytic philosophy). That development can be attributed to an interaction of several trends in various disciplines. From the middle of the 19th century onward, logic, the formal study of reasoning, underwent a period of growth unparalleled since the time of Aristotle (384–322 bce). Although the main motivation for the renewed interest in logic was a search for the epistemological foundations of mathematics, the chief protagonists of this effort—the German mathematician Gottlob Frege and the British philosopher Bertrand Russell—extended their inquiry into the domain of the natural languages, which are the original media of human reasoning. The influence of mathematical thinking, and of mathematical logic in particular, however, left a permanent mark on the subsequent study of semantics. Compositionality and referenceA characteristic feature of natural languages is what is known as their productivity, creativity, or unboundedness. In natural languages there is no upper limit to the length, complexity, or number of grammatical expressions. (There are limits to the length, complexity, and number of expressions that a speaker of a natural language can understand or produce, but that is a fact about the speaker’s memory or mortality, not about the language itself.) In English and other natural languages, grammatical expressions of increasing length and complexity can be created from simpler expressions by concatenation, relativization, complementization, and many other devices. Thus, just as a tomato is better than an apple and an apple is better than an orange are sentences, so too is a tomato is better than an apple and an apple is better than an orange. Just as the apple is rotten is a sentence, so too are the apple that fell on the man is rotten, the apple that fell on the man who sat under a tree is rotten, and the apple that fell on the man who sat under the tree that blocked the road is rotten. And just as the Earth moves is a sentence, so too are Galileo believes that the Earth moves, the pope suspects that Galileo believes that the Earth moves, Smith fears that the pope suspects that Galileo believes that the Earth moves, and so on, with no obvious end. The complex expressions generated by these devices are not only grammatical (assuming that their constituents are grammatical) but also meaningful (assuming that their constituents are meaningful). An adequate semantic theory, therefore, must account for this fact. In other words, it must explain how the meanings of complex expressions are determined by and predictable from the meanings of their simpler constituents. The fact that complex meanings are determined by the meanings of their constituents is often referred to as the compositionality of natural languages. A semantic theory that is capable of explaining compositionality is called compositional. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now In addition to compositionality, semantic theories must also account for the phenomenon of reference. Reference is a characteristic of many expressions whereby they seem to “reach out” into the world to pick out, name, designate, apply to, or denote different things. Although the appearance of connection between words and the world is familiar to anyone who speaks a language, it is also quite mysterious. The following survey will evaluate various semantic theories according to how well they explain compositionality, reference, and other important characteristics of natural languages. When in doubt about your message meaning people tend to believe the words spoken out loud?When messages are transmitted between two people during communication, verbal messages are likely to contradict or override nonverbal signals. When in doubt about your message meaning, people tend to believe words spoken. Nonverbal communication gives no room for misinterpretation of the cues used by different people.
What distance is typically reserved for family relationships?T/F: Intimate distance, which is typically reserved for family and intimate relationships, is usually 0-18 inches.
Is the practice of a message receiver giving back in his or her own words what he or she believes a sender said?Paraphrasing is a key element of two-way verbal communication. The practice of a message receiver giving back in his or her own words what he or she believes a sender said is called feedback.
Which of the following is an example of a negative nonverbal behavior?Types of negative body language include: Avoidance of eye contact. Staring. Crossed arms.
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The scientific study of relationships between signs, symbols, and words and their meaning is called
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