Semiology

Semiology or semiotics (from the ancient Greek σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikós) is the study of symbols and signs, and the way in which humans create them. A sign is anything that communicates a message, which must be interpreted by the receiver. It is a branch of philosophy that deals with communication systems within human societies, studying the general properties of sign systems, as a basis for understanding all human activity. Here, a sign is understood as a present object or event that is in place of another absent object or event, by virtue of a certain code.

Semiotics means systematic study of signs and is applied to a particular field of study, occurs with the French philosopher Saussure. Although semiotics is combined with the term structuralist, the latter may or may not be considered as a system of signs, while semiotics applies structuralist methods.

Charles Sanders Peirce, was the American founder of semiotics and distinguished between three classes of signs: Iconic (where the sign resembles what it represents), Indexetic (where the sign is somehow associated with that of which is a sign) and Symbolic (where the sign is just an arbitrary link). There are many more classifications such as denotation (what the sign means), connotation (other signs associated with it), Pragmatic (signs among which one can represent the other) and Syntagmatic (where the signs are linked to form a chain)..(Eagleton, 1994)

Semiotics distinguishes between denotation and connotation; between keys or codes and the messages they transmit, as well as between the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic (Eagleton, 1994).

These dimensions give rise to homonymous disciplines that govern the relationships between sign and designated thing: semantics; relations between signs: the syntax; and between signs and their conditions of use: the pragmatics. From the dimensions, the phenomena, objects and systems of signification, languages and discourses in different languages are analyzed as processes associated with them (production and interpretation). All production and interpretation of meaning constitutes a significant practice, a process of semiosis that is conveyed through signs and materializes in texts.

Discipline

The phenomenon of semiosis is the instance where "something means something to someone" and is therefore a carrier of meaning. It should be clarified that signification is realized as a condition of the semiosis from which Morris (1938) distinguishes: vehículo signico (sign), designatum (what is designated); interpretants (interpreter considerations) and the interpreter itself. These three (or four elements if we consider the latter) within the framework of a system called language, which according to Morris is "every set of signs plus a set of rules"; indicates the dimensions that constitute a language.

Some authors tend to indicate a distinction between semiotics and semiology as postulating different fields of study, a problem overcome in Umberto Eco's Treatise on General Semiotics, where this author minimizes the issue since all signs are constructed of a social nature, although not all are. ^{[citation needed]} It is also possible to separate them from the so-called information theory and from communicology or the science that studies communication systems within human societies and hermeneutics or the discipline responsible for the interpretation of the texts. The peculiarity of the semiological approach responds to the following question: "Why and how in a certain society does something —an image, a set of words, a gesture, an object, a behavior, etc.— mean?".

The later called semiotics, as a disciplinary field, emerged as one of the sciences integrated into Linguistics. Its systematic development began in the sixties, but its glimpses were already found in the General Linguistics Course of the Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure, published posthumously by his disciples in 1913, within an epistemological current called Saussure-Hjelmslevian structuralism that obtained a strong imprint of this linguistic discipline because its fundamental authors were philologists and linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Louis Hjelmslev, Roman Jakobson and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In Saussure's words, semiotics is a science that studies the life of existing signs within society; It shows what constitutes the signs and what laws govern them. Derived from the Greek semeion, meaning "sign". This science serves to know how to interpret and read the signs on a day-to-day basis, to be able to decipher the world and receive more information from said interpretations. Likewise, the perception of the semiotician Roland Barthes on semiotics consists of the conclusions that we deduce from others and from the environment when looking at and receiving stimuli. He defends that most of the signs that we find cannot be interpreted in isolation, but that each sign has associated ideas and can give us additional information if we look for its second meaning.

Eagleton (1994) sees structuralism as a research method that can be applied to a whole range of objects, from football matches to economic production systems, while semiotics refers more to a field of study, that of the systems that in some way ordinarily would be considered signs: poems, bird songs, traffic light signals, medical symptoms, etc. However, both terms converge, since structuralism studies what cannot be considered a system of signs, while semiotics commonly applies structuralist methods. Similarly, a structuralist analysis must seek to isolate the set of underlying rules by which signs combine and form meanings (Eagleton, 1994).

The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, at the beginning of the XX century, had conceived the possibility of the existence of a science that studied signs "within social life", which he called semiology. Subsequently, another linguist, the Danish Louis Hjelmslev, delved into this theory and elaborated its systematic formalization within the structural paradigm, which he named glossematics in his Prolegomena to a theory of language (1943), establishing a set of of principles that will serve as a theoretical and epistemological foundation for further developments of structuralist semiotics. To these authors they added his contributions; another famous linguist, the Russian Roman Jakobson, and the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein, the latter laid the foundations of linguistic pragmatics by declaring that "meaning is use".

Saussure considered language as a system of signs that should be studied synchronously and not diachronically. Each sign had to be considered as constituted by a signifier (a sound-image or its graphic equivalent), and a signified, that is, the concept or object it represented (Eagleton, 1994).

Independently of this European development, another line of semiotic research was developed based on the writings left by the American philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce, known as Anglo-Saxon semiotics, logical semiotics or semiotics to dry. Pierce's study has been defined as pragmatic, that is, he thinks giving priority to practical considerations. In his theoretical development, Peirce takes semiosis as the object of study, a process in which there was the cooperation of three instances (or subjects ):

• The representationor sign itself, that is, a material and perceptible manifestation that represents another object.
• The object, which is that represented, that is, that which the sign realizes.
• The interpreting, or sense that the sign produces and which is translated into another sign or represent.

Thus, the sign is for him the product of this dynamic of semiosis, which European semiology designated with another terminology, respectively, signifier, referent and signified, what was later called the Ogden and Richards triangle, a structure that integrates these three elements that make up any sign and that can be disfigured by phenomena such as synonymy, homonymy, polysemy, etc., so that the triangle can be transformed into a rhombus, a segment, etc.

Deepening into the classification of signs, Peirce came to the conviction that these could be classified by the relationship that these elements had with each other into three specific types:

• Iconics or icons, whose respective representative or significant maintains a similar relationship with its object or reference: maps, caricatures, chromatic...
• Evidence or indicators, whose representative or significant maintains a natural or cause-effect relationship with the object or reference: smoke as a sign of fire, weeping as a sign of intense emotion (Christ or joy).
• Symbols, those signs in which the relationship between representation or signifier and object or reference is not of likeness or natural or cause-effect, but arbitrary, conventional, agreed within a society: the national anthem, the flag, most of the vocablos of the natural languages except the sound onomatopeyas of the oral or visual language of the written language (caligrams, for example).

Fontanille would say in Semiotics of discourse that the research carried out, until the end of the nineties, around semiotics «has been developed from frequently divergent perspectives, sometimes even frankly controversial», however, there is a theoretical and methodological innovation that starts from structuralism, but unlike it, instead of stating as a principle that only discontinuous phenomena and oppositions called "discrete" they are pertinent, it takes into account the processes of emergence and installation of these phenomena and of these oppositions; This is how the different branches of semiotics have emerged.

History

The importance of signs has been recognized throughout much of the history of philosophy and psychology. The origin of this science is considered the V century BC. C., with the Presocratics. These create debate about the opposition between the naturalness and the conventionality of the sign: language as a mirror of reality (Heraclitus) and language as convention and imposition (Parmenides). In the III century B.C. C. Stoics speak of semainon and semainomenon to interpret appearance. The sophists also contributed to the study of signs by developing the art of rhetoric. Politics becomes important and there is a discussion about the use of the word, the linguistic sign, which was taken as a persuasive tool. Plato and Aristotle were the next to explore the relationship between signs and the world. His theories have had a lasting effect on Western philosophy, especially through scholastic philosophy. Galen, a Greek physician, surgeon, and philosopher in the Roman Empire, wrote books on medical semiotics and became a benchmark in medical studies. Galen speaks of semiotique, as the science that studies symptoms. The general study of signs that began in Latin with Augustine and culminated in John Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis in 1632. And began again, in modern times, with Charles Peirce's attempt to elaborate a "new list of categories", in 1867. It will be Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure who will develop this field of studies more broadly, considering themselves the fathers of semiology. John Locke and other thinkers of the time will be key to the birth of semiotics in the XX century.

More recently, Umberto Eco, in his work Semiotics and Philosophy of Language (1984), has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers..

Development

Diverse semiotic currents that belonged to structuralism arose in the sixties. These approaches differed in terms of which branch of this paradigm they ascribed to, the selection that operated on the field of study, the purposes that encouraged them, and the methodology they used.

The first outline is constituted by the Semiology of Communication, a current framed in the saussuro-functionalism that proposed to study the systems of non-verbal conventionalized signs, whose function was to communicate. That is, communication systems other than natural language.

In his analysis of the wonderful Russian tales (particularly the vilinas), which, over time, would give rise to the discipline called narratology, Vladimir Propp, classified within Russian formalism, found homologies and regularities that refer to a common archetypal structure expressed in variants. Among these regularities was his analysis of three types of evidence:

• Quantifying
• Decisive
• Glorifying

There was also a constant character or function, the hero (agonist or protagonist), who was asked for an object of value and, to achieve it, he had to first acquire the necessary competence. Propp called it the qualifying test. After being qualified, the hero was able to pass difficult tests ( decisive test ) that led to the recognition of him as a hero and the acquisition of the valuable item ( glorifying test ).

Another of the contributions made by Propp was the proposal of the controversial structure: next to the story of the hero, the antagonist or traitor appears, who, in the search for of the same object of value, generates a confrontation. And the contractual structure, which Propp represents as a contract in which a recipient agrees to perform a series of tests (or performances ) at the request or order of a manager or recipient. When the recipient's tests are complete, the sender will acknowledge and sanction the test result (sanction).

Other contributions to semiological theory are those made by Georges Dumézil and Claude Lévi-Strauss, the latter rather from the field of anthropology, who had proposed the existence of certain patterns or constants in the deep structures of their disciplines. Lévi-Strauss, in his structural analysis of the Oedipus myth, considered that there was an organization of contents that could be formulated by binary categories of oppositions, through a paradigmatic analysis. One can also cite the work of Yuri Lotman and his contribution in defining the concept of the semiosphere, where communication is defined as an act of translation, structured by culture.

Some authors have defined semiotics as the science that studies all sign systems in general, including human language. It is necessary to emphasize that human language is the most powerful and complex sign system that exists (at least for man) so that all other sign systems are translatable into it, but not the other way around, as far as is known. Therefore, the linguistic sign is understood as the most important association in human communication.

On the other hand, semiotics can also be understood, according to authors such as José Carlos Cano Zárate, as one of the social sciences that analyzes the behavior and functioning of thought and seeks an explanation of how human beings interpret the context and social environment and where you create knowledge and learning based on your experiences and share it from generation to generation.

The sign in semiotics

The sign, in its nuclear definition, is an element endowed with unity and information load, it has a diverse nature, since a sign is the letter, the gesture, the song of the bird, the smell, a sound...

The sign, heterogeneous and infinite, is inseparable from the knowing subject, understood within the framework of a preliminary approach to Semiotics, as a subject endowed with senses and intelligence. The five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) added to intelligence make up the framework or mechanism that allows the two great activities that underlie the function of the sign: reception activity and production activity. Nuclear and constant activities, the channel is always open, which, in sum and interrelation, give rise to the macro phenomenon denoted through the term "communication". A phenomenon that is possible because the signs, unitary by definition, establish combinatory relationships with other signs through more or less fixed rules, giving rise to structured codes or language.

Consequently, Semiotics, as a science that studies the sign, the seed of language and thought, is immediately related to Linguistics and Neuroscience, as well as, due to the prominence of the sign in the communicative macro phenomenon, semiotics is a metascience that, on the one hand, underlies all knowledge and all scientific activity and, on the other, is built on an interdisciplinary field of study whose scope is extensible without exception to any knowledge and human activity.

Semiotics as metascience

Charles Morris considered that semiotics had a double relationship with science, in such a way that it was one more science and an instrument to study the rest of the sciences; therefore a metascience. He considered that only through the study of the system of signs on which a science is based can it be systematized, purified and simplified, in order to free man from all the imperfections that the use of language entails.

Semiology versus semiotics

Semiology originates from linguistics insofar as it encompasses purely human sign systems, including verbal ones, but also non-verbal but equally human sign systems, such as gesture codes, clothing etc. that are typical of social life. One school of it, Russian semiology or Russian formalism, was applied to the analysis of arts and culture. Semiology (developed mainly in Europe and deeply rooted in Latin America) includes structuralism and formalisms as an approach, while semiotics (more developed in the United States) is more closely related to functionalism, studies the sign as a process, without the need for it to integrate a system. There lies a difference with semiology that studies sign systems.

Another differentiation could well be the one made in scholarly texts since they speak of semiology referring to the studies of interpretive semiology with Charles Sanders Peirce or Umberto Eco; and of semiotics relating to the structural or generative semiotics of Algirdas Julien Greimas, "school of Paris", which has its roots in linguistics and anthropology. be reduced to the etymology of both words, taking semiology (sêmeion [sign] and logos [study]) as the study of signs; and semiotics (-tikos [related to]) as what is related to signs; or something more plausible as explained by Professor Vicente Masip associating semiology (science that studies all modes of communication within social life) with signals (conventions in open systems), and semiotics (area of semiology of communication between closed systems) with signs (conventions in closed systems).

Function of semiology

Semiology is the science that studies sign systems: codes, languages, signals, among others. This definition encompasses all sign systems: deaf sign languages, traffic signals, codes, the Morse alphabet, etc.

Language is excepted from this definition due to its special character, and for this reason semiology can be defined as “the study of non-linguistic sign systems”. The study of signs is essential for our communication, for our need to express and interpret the complex messages of our environment. We live in a world of signs, which is why Semiology is essential to establish the difference between terms that are used interchangeably such as sign, index, icon, symbol, signal. When a person wants to communicate, they use some way to express themselves, taking as a reference the form of expression understandable by others, such as: making gestures, writing, speaking, drawing, etc., therefore, the sign, gesture, expression, that they want transmitting is called referent, while the interpretation of the person who receives the message is called representation.

Medical semiology, on the other hand, studies and classifies a typology of symptoms that helps to determine what disease is suffered.

Charles Peirce's semiotics or Peircian semiotics aims to develop a general theory of signs that classifies and identifies them.

Lastly, and to avoid so much terminological confusion, in 1969 the International Association of Semiology, meeting in Venezuela, agreed to include all of them in the name semiotics. Thus, confusing semiology with semiotics is as wrong as confusing symbol with icon.

Branches

Semiology has many fields, such as:

• Bionic (for the communication of living cells), etc.
• Biosemitic

• Cybernetics (for machine communication).
• Structuralism: In the work of Terry Eagleton, structuralism is analyzed, noting that one of the most important results of this branch of the semiotic, is the decentralization of the individual subject. The subject is no longer the one that matters within a literary work, but its relationship with the rest of the elements and its composition; but not its meaning, that is, structuralism pretends to be studied in literature as an exact science, without taking into account that what each individual understands is different. Faced with this truth, its desire is that every reader perceives the same through exact codes raised by the author, in order not to leave room for the imagination, thus obtaining “the ideal reader” according to this theory. The prostration of this theory provoked criticism due to the omission of the actual object and the human subject, which lacks meaning in analyzing literary works, as well as one of the series of literary theories that have failed. Eagleton explains that through the work of the school in Prague, the term structuralism comes to merge with the term semiotic, a word that literally means the systematic study of signs. [1]
• Poststructuralism
• Clinical Semiology (study of natural signs through which the disease is manifested).
• Musical Semiology
• Computer Semitic
• Cultural Semitic
• Semitic fun (ludosemitic)
• semiotic passions
• Semitic of love
• Semitic sports
• Semitic aesthetic
• Literary Semitic
• Semitic polar (in categories theory)
• Social semiotic
• Tensive semiotic
• Semitic urban
• Visual Semitic
• Zoosemitic (for animal communication).

Semiotics in the theater

Outstanding authors of semiotics by schools

• American School: Charles W. Morris - Rudolph Carnap - Thomas A. Sebeok - Umberto Eco

• European or French School: Eric Buyssens - Louis Hjelmslev - Luis Jorge Prieto - Roland Barthes - Algirdas J. Greimas - Jacques Fontanille
• School derived from the Theory of Communication and Information: Claude E. Shannon - Collin Cherry - Doede Nauta - Andrei N. Kolmogorov - Sebastian K. Saumjan

Bibliography (in Spanish and English)

• Barthes, Roland. ([1957] 1987). Mythologies. New York: Hill & Wang.
• Barthes, Roland ([1964] 1967). Elements of Semiology. (Translated by Annette Lavers & Colin Smith). London: Jonathan Cape.
• Bertrand, Denis. (2000). Précis de sémiotique littéraire. Paris: Nathan, col. «Fac. Linguistique». (translated to Italian by G. Marrone and A. Perri, Basi di semiotica letterariaRome, Meltemi, 271 p., 2002. Trad. al Portuguese, São Paulo, 2003)
• Castañares, Wenceslao. History of semiotic thought. Three volumes. Madrid: Trotta