Semiotics，Symbols，and Cultural Perspectives

• Main Author: Unher, Mike
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 岩手大学教育学部英語教育科 2011
• Subjects: North Pole; Roland
• Online Access: https://iwate-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/10611/files/beeiu-v13p81-92.pdf

What do we think of when we think of 'New Years', or 'summer,' 'home', or 'tea cup'? Whenever we happen to think of such seemingly commonplace events, places or things, we are inundated, internally, with a wide landscape of images and feelings at a very personal level. These reactions are, to a great extent, comprised of symbols of the particular time/event or thing to which our thoughts are pointing. This system of interpreting signs and symbols within our culture is called semiotics, and it is a way for us to understand how we communicate within our own linguistic domain, and how interpretation of signs and symbols is practiced in other cultures. As such, semiotics may be regarded through a variety of disciplines: linguistics, anthropology, art history, philosophy, and language education. We may see the word 'north,' for example, and one may call to mind an image of 'snow,' as in Hokkaido in winter or the North Pole. We can say that these images are being pointed to, as symbols of 'north.' In this case, the word 'north' is the sign or signifier, and the symbols we have for it-a field of white snow, polar bears, etc.-are the signified. Indeed, we are only able to know things and speak about them with the aid of signs, replacing them with signs that we hope are understood by others. In fact, according to Charles Peirce, considered the father of semiotics, "we think only in signs" (Peirce, 1931). The Swiss pioneer linguist Ferdinand de Saussure considered that the sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure, 1974). Both Peirce and Saussure endeavored to understand how we think and, then, communicate our thoughts to others, and along with the work of Roland Barthes, the field of semiotics was established as a linguistic as well as philosophical discipline. Barthes sought to explain the concepts of semiotics in textuality, or how words are arranged in sentences, in paragraphs, and ultimately as a presentation of a story through the medium of text. He believed ...