The simple definition for semiotics is that it is a study of signs. Signs can be anything from images, words, sounds, objects etc. The reality is a system of signs. We don’t get the meanings of signs through books, internet or radio etc; we generate it unknowingly in our minds through complex interchange of codes and conventions.“The word ‘semiotics’ comes from the Greek root, seme, as in semeiotikos, as interpreter of signs. Semiotics as a discipline is simply the analysis of signs or the study of the functioning of sign systems.” (Cobley, P and Jansz, L 1997: 4)
Semiotics began to become a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Roland Barthes. “One of the reasons Barthes is a famous and well-known intellectual figure is his skill in finding, manipulating and exploiting theories and concepts of how things come to mean well before anyone else. Barthes main interest was in semiology, the `science of signs'.”
There are three types of signs, icon, symbol and index. Iconic sign is when the signifier is supposed as imitating the signified. Whereas symbol is like the complete opposite and does not replicate he signified. Index is a sign that is not entirely random and in some way connects to the signified.One of the broadest definitions is that of Umberto Eco, who states that “semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign.”
References:
Cobley, P. and Jansz, L. (1997) Introducing Semiotics
Eco, U. (1976) A Theory of Semiotics
Available at: http://seacoast.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/culture/myth3.htm (Accessed: 16th May 2011)
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