Essay On Signs And Semiotics

In a post modern society, so great has been the increase in the number of signs in the media. Meaning has become destabilised to a point we are not sure what is real and not real. It reflects an instability of meaning which results when fictional and real become interwoven. Signs and semiotics are one of the main systems that cultural studies utilise to comprehend culture. Semiotics are merely the analysis of signs. Fundamentally semiotics is a way of recognising culture as if it occurred to be language. It is looking at images as if they were words. De Saussure, argued that language is made out of a structure which consists of signs. These signs are interconnected and attain their value of concurrent existence of alternative words. To expound a sign, one has to look at other signs. Essentially signs are not momentousness, the connection between the signs is what fabricates meaning. (Hall 1980:131). The

(Bignell 2002:2). Fundamentally the signifier is produced before it is even given any significance. Whereas the signified is the meaning that we give to things, these things are always present in our thoughts. The signifier and signified therefore according to de Saussure depicts the sign. Therefore in order for us to talk or write about anything we have to use words. But sometimes it becomes difficult to describe the signified and therefore meaning is certainly is not fixed. The relationship between the two will always change. (Bignell 2002:2). The system between one sign and the other is a complicated significance relation that occurs. According to de Saussure, signs are based in a specific time to produce text which signifies a mutual ‘contextualising’ connection the signs have surrounded by themselves. Frequently semiotics is used to examine text, but ‘text’ can occur in different mediums which includes all mass media. (Farrington