Tag: Linguistics

Semiotics:a sign has two parts

http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/sem02.html

A sign consists of the  signified and the signifier

If what is signified is love,the signifier may vary … it can be a  “x “.a bunch of flowers,a poem.

Of course it may be misunderstood if two people come from different cultures/countries  or even different parts of the same country with maybe a different form of Christianity,with an atheisitic family etc

Some people tend to see a meaning in an act or word that was not intended…if carried too far it can lead to paranoia…I can imagine writing a funny play based on such confusion

More from Wikipedia

Signifier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 

Ferdinand de Saussure theorizes that a “sign“[clarification needed] has two parts: signifier and signified. The signifier is the form that the sign will take, whether it be a sound or image and the signified is the meaning that is conveyed.

Example

Signifier: the word ‘tree’ = Signified: the mental image of a tree.

Charles Sanders Pierce analyzed sign systems and came up with the following: An Icon signifies by resemblance. An Indexical sign signifies by causal connection and finally, a Symbol signifies by learned convention.

See also

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The larger part is silence

Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?
Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say? (Photo credit: Sol S.)
2548 George Steiner
2548 George Steiner (Photo credit: Rexburg Historical Society)

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.”
― George Steiner, Language & Silence: Essays on Language, Literature & the Inhuman

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