Semiotics

Synchronic (Saussure)

Refers to the study of signs at a given point in time, normally the present.

Dyachronic (Saussure)

The investigation of how signs change in form and meaning over time.

Icon

Is a sign that resembles its referent in some way.

Index

Is a sign that stands for, or points out, something in relation to something else.

Symbol

Is a sign that stands for something in an arbitrary convention based way.

Signifier

The physical part of the sign itself (e.g. the sounds that make up a word such as 'rabbit').

Signified

The referent to which it calls attention (a certain category of animal).

Signification

Its evocation of a meaning (what the referent entails psychologically and socially).

Nominalists

Who argued that 'truth' was a matter of subjective opinion and that signs captured, at best, only illusory and highly variable human versions of it.

A representamen

Literally 'something that does the representing'.

An object

Whatever the representamen calls attention to.

An interpretant

Whatever it means to someone in some context.

Semiotics

A discipline aiming to study sign-based behaviour.

Signifier (Saussure)

Commonly interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign – it is something which can be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted.

Sign (Saussure)

The whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified.

Signification

The relationship between the signifier and the signified.

Linguistic sign

Is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept [signified] and a sound pattern [signifier].

The signified (Umberto Eco)

It is somewhere between ‘a mental image, a concept and a psychological reality.

Saussure

First, linguistic signs are arbitrary and agreed by convention, and second that language is a system governed by rules, where each instance of speech or writing involves selecting signs and using them according to these rules.