ABSTRACT
Semiotics or semiology is a vital part of the tool kit of Communication Studies (and a number of other disciplines as well). Semiotic terms appear as a matter of course in all manner of textual analyses and one sometimes gets the suspicion that certain semiotic signifiers have drifted too far away from their signified moorings. In that spirit let’s look at an extract from Pierre Guiraud’s work Semiology. It was originally written in French for a series of texts produced for the general reader eager to be informed about a range of topics of contemporary interest.
Semiology is the science which studies sign systems: languages, codes, sets of signals, etc. According to this definition, language is a part of semiology. However, it is generally accepted that language has a privileged and autonomous status, and this allows semiology to be defined as the study of non-linguistic sign systems, which is the definition we shall adopt here.1
Semiology was conceived by F. de Saussure as the science which studies the life of signs in society. Here is the much-quoted text (Cours de linguistique général, p.33):
Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas, and is therefore comparable to writing, to the deaf-mute alphabet, to symbolic rites, to codes of good manners, to military signals, etc. It is simply the most important of these systems. A science that studies the life of signs in society is therefore conceivable: it would be a part of general psychology; we shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeion, ‘sign’). Semiology would teach us what signs are made of and what laws govern their behaviour. Since this science does not yet exist, no one can say quite what it will be like, but it has a right to exist and it has a place staked out in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology: the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will therefore find itself linked to a well-defined area within the totality of facts in the human sciences.
At roughly the same time, the American C. S. Peirce also conceived of a general theory of signs which he called semiotics (from Philosophical Writings of Peirce, p. 98):
I hope to have shown that logic in its general acceptation is merely another word for semiotics, a quasi-necessary or formal doctrine of signs. In describing the doctrine as ‘quasi-necessary’, or formal, I have in mind the fact that we observe the nature of such signs as best we can, and, on the basis of fine observations, by a process which I do not hesitate to call Abstraction, we are led to eminently necessary judgments concerning what must be the nature of the signs used by the scientific intellect.
Saussure emphasizes the social function of the sign, Peirce its logical function. But the two aspects are closely correlated and today the words semiology and semiotics refer to the same discipline; Europeans using the former term, Anglo-Saxons the latter. 1 Thus, as early as the beginning of this century, a general theory of signs was conceived.
(Guiraud 1975: 1–3) What's Next?Find out more about Saussure and Peirce. What contributions did they make to the study of signs in society?
