ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses primarily about signs. A sign, by dictionary definition, is an object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. The sign is a combination of two elements: a signifier and a signified. Some semioticians refer to the concept of a commutation test which can be used in order to identify distinctive signifiers and to define their significance. To study how people make sense of their experience of the world and how cultures share and give currency to this understanding, one needs to adopt a semiotic approach. Charles Morris divides the subject of semiotics into three branches: Semantic, Syntactic and Pragmatic. Saussure defined two ways in which signs are organized into codes: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. A paradigm is a set of signs from which the one used is chosen. A syntagm is the linear arrangement into which the signs, which are chosen from paradigms, are combined.
