Signifying Systems
(Alphabets, ASL, fashion, colours etc.)
Sign
Anything that refers to something else and can be recognized to do so
Semiotics
the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
Signified
The idea in your head (picture of a tree)
Signifier
The letters connected to the signified (the word ‘tree’)
Paradigmatic relations
Things within the same category (oak and maple tree)
Syntagmatic relations
The relations are determined by the positions (grammar)
Symbol
Arbitrary, have to be learned
Icon
Resembles the thing it’s representing (portraits)
Index
Has a relation to the thing it’s representing (when you see smoke but not fire but you automatically know smoke means there’s a fire somewhere)
Binary oppositions
Something can be either one or the other category, but nothing in between as they are taught as opposites
Denotation
What it actually is (tree)
Connotation
What it represents (nature, family tree)
Congealed ideology
Certain societal beliefs get congealed in symbols, icon or index, an object may be designed in such a way that it assumes you’re going to do a particular thing with it
Encoding
You convert a message in a manner to communicate something to someone else
Decoding
Unpacking the messages which may be different than what it was meant to be
Code-switching
Changing the way you’re expressing something to the context/community
