In the previous post, we talked about semiotics and named some of its main actors. At this moment the object of study of semiotics can still be a bit confusing, so today we will talk about what the sign is and through this information, we will link what we have been talking about, for this I will resort to the same resource I use Umberto Eco in his book the sign, I mean to use examples and everyday situations with which the reader can identify and understand more easily the concepts that we are going to deal with.
The starting point is the way in which the human being is aware of that which surrounds him, this he does through the stimuli that his 5 senses perceive. We could say that 80% of this information is received by sight and the remaining 20% comes from the sense of taste, smell, touch, and hearing.
I hope everything is clear so far. But what happens when we want to communicate something of what we perceive ?, An example of this is the sensations or feelings, the person who feels it may want to communicate it to someone else, but the other person may not understand it. This is one of the reasons why semiotics is so linked to linguistics.
The other important point is what implies what we communicate, beyond what we see, hear or feel there is additional information anchored to these stimuli, an example may be the clouds on the horizon. Its height or coloration can indicate that it is going to rain, another example is the leaves that fall from the trees in some places of the world indicating that there is a change of season. The words and situations can provide similar examples to provide us with additional information, another example to take into account are the addresses, as these refer us to a specific position in a specific place.
At this moment we are moving from the exercise of perception to that of interpretation. For example, the doctor interprets symptoms as if they were signs, the people who drive a vehicle also do it with traffic signs, directional lights and road signs, even the passer-by in the shopping center is guided by the signage.
As we see, we live surrounded by a complex system of signs, all of them developed throughout human history to facilitate social interaction. This is where we come to another of the fundamental elements of semiotics, the society in which we live teaches us to read these signs that alone do not tell us anything, as Umberto Eco says, "signs communicate something to us because we live in society. "
Finally, a question that can be asked at this time by readers is the apparent distinction between philosophical or linguistic approaches. Thinking about the human being as a symbolic animal or thinking about the reasons why it is communicated can be a philosophical approach, but explaining the way it does it and the mechanics of this communication is already part of linguistics. As you can see there is no concrete approach for a phenomenon that crosses all forms of human interaction in a horizontal way, what we have are different tools and approaches to analyze the different faces of this phenomenon.
In the next publication I will show you some of these approaches and while we do it, I will introduce some more concepts that are important in semiotics, I hope you enjoyed this article and are aware of the following.
