We can define a sign as something which has meaning for someone, and which stands instead of, represents, something else. A sign is created when we invest meaning in something, when we decide that it stands instead of something else. Or, as Charles Sanders Peirce puts it, “nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign” (Peirce, 1931-58, vol. 2 p.172). The meaning of a sign is not contained within the sign. The sign does not determine, decide or force a specific meaning. The meaning arises in the interpretation, usually an interpretation that we have culturally agreed upon. It is not the Nazi swastika that has forced itself upon the Nazi ideology; it is the Nazis who invaded the swastika with their meaning.
There are two common models for the structure of a sign: the two-part sign described by Ferdinand de Saussure and the three-part sign described by Charles Peirce (Sebeok, 1999). I will primarily use the terminology of Peirce’s three-part sign since it is theoretically more complete and thus more useful, but I will
occasionally use Saussure’s two-part sign when the clarity of the discussion would benefit from a more simple terminology.
The two-part sign consists of the signifier and the signified. It is often
emphasized that the parts are inseparable (Silverman, 1998), as are the two sides of a coin. Barthes (1999b) even suggests that the sign is the relation between signifier and signifies. The signifier points to the signified, but the signified is not the thing that the sign represents; it is rather the concept of that object. Saussure described the signified as being purely psychological (Saussure, 1983). A word is a signifier, and the concept that the word evokes is the signified part of the sign (Barthes, 1999b; Silverman, 1985; Silverman, 1998). One advantage with Saussure’s two-part sign model is the easy to grasp structure (where this points to that) and how the two words signifier and signified are quite self-explanatory.
Peirce’s triadic sign is structured into the representamen, the object and the interpretant. The representamen is equivalent to the signifier. The object is the concept of the thing that is represented (equivalent to the signified), while the interpretant could be seen as the sign’s connection to all other signs, opening a door to language at large (Sebeok, 1999). The object is what the sign denotes, a quite (but not fully) fixed, literal meaning. The interpretant is the connotations, associative and transforming, and an area where ideologies surface (Hall, 1980). The difference between object and interpretant, denotation and connotation, is a matter of degree rather than a categorical separation. The denotation can be viewed as “the last of the connotations” (Barthes, 1975, p.9). The triadic sign has the
advantage of emphasizing that a sign can have both explicit and implicit meanings, opening up for a more complete discussion concerning the structure and meaning of the sign.
At a first glance it could be understood that the interpretant is the interpretation of the sign. However, it would be more correct to say that the interpretant is the result of the process of interpretation, the effect that the process of signification
inflicts on the mind.21 The interpretant is the ideas that the sign generates. These ideas can be regarded as new signs. Thus, any sign spawn additional signs, perhaps perpetually in what Umberto Eco has called an unlimited semiosis (Eco, 1976). Peirce wrote that “the meaning of a representation can be nothing but a
representation” (Peirce, 1931-58, p.171).
Semiotics describes language as a code, with combinational rules for how signs can be organized into different structures (Eco, 1976; Hall, 1980). New codes can, of course, appear. Eco describes this emergence of new codes as a dialectic process between sign production and sign consumption, an interaction between “rule- governed creativity” and “rule-changing creativity” (Eco, 1976, p.161). He continues by suggesting that a new code emerges within a very limited group of people and then spreads through our culture (ibid., p.272).
This new code is apparently spoken by only one speaker, and understood by a very restricted audience; it is a semiotic enclave which society cannot recognize as a social rule acceptable by everyone. Such a type of private code is usually called an ‘idiolect’.
When a particular code spreads, it becomes a sociolect, a code used by a particular social group. The new code is a convention that is established through repetition within a group of people communicating (Carravetta, 1998). This pattern is easily recognizable in popular media. For example, a particular aesthetic invention is used in a movie that achieves success and the sign is then copied, spreading. A well- spread sign can become a trope, a stylistic code, a successful “actualization of an aesthetic ideal” (Eco, 1982, p38).
Symbol, icon and index
There is yet another triad structure concerning the sign; the characteristics symbols, icons and indexes (Sebeok, 1999).
• A symbol is a sign in which the meaning is decided by a convention; it has been culturally agreed upon. Therefore the meaning of a symbolic sign must be learnt.
• An icon is a sign in which the meaning is decided by resemblance. The representamen shares some quality, some topological similarity, with the object. Images are to a large extent iconic, but other signs such as diagrams and sound effects should not be forgotten.
• An index is a sign in which the meaning is decided by some kind of physical and/or causal connection. Photographs are highly indexical since they have a direct connection to what they represent.
Peirce has emphasized that these are not mutually exclusive; “it would be difficult if not impossible to instance an absolutely pure index, or to find any sign absolutely
21 Roland Barthes (1981) elaborately illustrates this when he at length describes the Winter
Garden photograph of his now dead mother, and eventually concludes that he can never show the photograph he is seeing for us, because for anyone else it would not be the same sign. Thus
devoid of the indexical quality” (Peirce, 1931-58, p.306). A sign is all three types at the same time, but in different proportions. For example, a photograph is indexical because of the causality between the photograph and the photographed (Sebeok, 1999). Through the indexical sign, the object “will touch me like the delayed rays of a star” (Barthes, 1981, p.81). A photograph is also iconic since it resembles what it represents. It possesses some of the attributes of the object it signifies (Eco, 1982). An iconic sign has some similarities with the thing it represents, but more or less limited; a dog in a film “can bark but it cannot bite” (Hall, 1980, p.131). A
photograph also has a symbolical quality because we have agreed by convention that the photograph represents something, despite the fact that the photograph is a flat, thin piece of paper with colored patches on one side. At least part of the realism in photographs stems from symbolic conventions and not only the indexical and iconic nature of photography (Geimer, 2007). We have agreed to regard image artifacts such as motion blur and film grain as realistic aspects of a photograph, even if they do not resemble the scene that we see with our eyes. Super-sign structures
Saussure writes that “normally we do not express ourselves by using single
linguistic signs, but groups of signs, organized in complexes which themselves are signs” (Saussure, 1983, p.127). Barthes (1977) and Eco (1976) describe similar ideas, speaking about a “pyramid of functions” (p.103), super-signs that are built of sub-signs. Eco only provides fleeting descriptions of these super-signs, claiming that an image is a super-sign, and that super-signs are “signs whose content is not a content-unit but an entire proposition” and that they are “non-verbal sentences”
(p.231).22 An image is a text, a conglomerate of signs. In this text there is a
structure, with signs working together as words do in a sentence; these are super- signs formed by sub-signs. For example, a lens flare can be thought of as a
coherent sign, but it can also be split into its components: individual signs such as the color of the lens flare, its size, the number of iris reflections, and so on. The example of a lens flare is deludingly simple. A lens flare can easily be extracted from the rest of the image. We could even actually cut it out of the image if we had scissors and the image was a hard copy. But signs in images can just as well be on a more conceptual level, for example, related to the visual style of an image, and not any particular geometrical region of the image.
My approach to working with super-sign structures can be exemplified by investigating Figure 6, on the next page, a computer graphics visualization I made for a X-15 book project together with Michelle Evans. It shows a winged
spacecraft, a rocket plane, in space above the Earth. How do we know that? If [winged spacecraft in space above Earth] is seen as a super-sign, what are the sub-
22 In Articulations of the Cinematic Code (1985), Eco outline another model for hierarchical levels of
signs, calling these levels semes (equivalent to super-signs), signs and figures. According to Eco figures have no independent meaning, which makes them equivalent to what he earlier (1976) referred to as the structural properties of the sign.
signs?23 The NASA name logotype on the tail is obviously a sign, connoting space travel. The blue horizon haze, the black sky and the blue-white surface of the Earth are three signs that denote a position in space far above Earth. These four signs combine to form the sign [in space above the Earth]. Note how these sub-signs correlate to specific areas of the image – they could literally be outlined with a pencil – while the super-sign to which they belong is not directly correlated to specific parts of the image. The wings, the cockpit and the height above ground are signs that together form the super-sign [aircraft]. Note how the first two again correlate with specific image areas, while the latter does not. The latter also
connects to the [in space above the Earth] super-sign. Finally, the two super-signs [in space above the Earth] and [aircraft] form the top-level super-sign [winged spacecraft in space above Earth] (Figure 7). Note how this last combination changes the meaning so that the meaning becomes winged spacecraft rather than aircraft in space. This is, of course, my interpretation, which can be negotiated. Also, note that sub-signs are not just a matter of identifying image parts. Consider the details of the wings for example. I argue that the individual rivets and the shape of the wing are structural properties of the [wings] sign, and not sub-signs. Why? Because the sub-sign [wing] denotes aircraft both on its own and together with the other sub-signs, while each individual rivet does not denote aircraft; they could just as well have been rivets on a ship at sea.
Figure 6. Visualization of the spacecraft X-15, exemplifying a super-sign. Computer graphics by the author.
23 An uttering, such as the X-15 visualization discussed here, can also be viewed as a text, not a
super-sign. One of my points is to illustrate how a conglomerate of signs can be explored either as a text or a super-sign. I prefer to see it as a super-sign if the particular structure of signs is quite
Figure 7. The structure of the [winged spacecraft in space above Earth] super-sign.