Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically.
The term, which was spelled semeiotics, derives from the Greek σημειωτικός, (sēmeiōtikos), "observant of signs"(from σημεον - sēmeion, "a sign, a mark").
The importance of signs and signification has been recognized throughout much of the history of philosophy, and in psychology as well. Plato and Aristotle both explored the relationship between signs and the world, and Augustine considered the nature of the sign within a conventional system. These theories have had a lasting effect in Western philosophy, especially through Scholastic philosophy. More recently, Umberto Eco, in his Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers.
The primary contributors to this body of knowledge include Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Roman Jacobson, Susanne Langer and more recently Umberto Eco and Jacques Derrida.
Saussure founded semiology by offering it as "a science that studies the life of signs within society". A society is made up of a multiplicity of language-like 'codes', in all media (speech, literature, architecture, clothes, vehicles, cooking, and so on), which establish objects such as texts, buildings, cars and so forth as 'signs' having cultural meaning over and above their constructions and functions." "First and foremost, an understanding of how signs are formed, transmitted and interpreted can help the designer to systematically analyze a communication problem and provide the basis for the development of a coherent solution."
The most important contribution from semiotics for the Web designer, is the idea of sign, signifier and signified offered by Saussure. A sign has two parts the signifier and the signified, Saussure purposely chose words that were similar for his explaination, however this leads to a confusion of meaning. Subsequent to his work being published in 1916 other academics in the field have refined the definitions and chosen different terms. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), a noted logician who founded philosophical pragmatism, offered the term "representament" instead of "sign" because sign is too closely tied to many other conceptual meanings. Nonetheless, the general framework still stands.
Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he sometimes spelled as "semeiotic") as the "quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs", which abstracts "what must be the characters of all signs used by...an intelligence capable of learning by experience", and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.
Pierce defined semiosis as an irreducibly triadic process wherein something, as an object, logically determines or influences something as a sign to determine or influence something as an interpretation or interpretant, itself a sign, thus leading to further interpretants. Semiosis is logically structured to perpetuate itself. The object can be quality, fact, rule, or even fictional (Hamlet), and can be (1) immediate to the sign, the object as represented in the sign, or (2) dynamic, the object as it really is, on which the immediate object is founded. The interpretant can be (1) immediate to the sign, all that the sign immediately expresses, such as a word's usual meaning; or (2) dynamic, such as a state of agitation; or (3) final or normal, the ultimate ramifications of the sign about its object, to which inquiry taken far enough would be destined and with which any actual interpretant can at most coincide. His semiotic covered not only artificial, linguistic, and symbolic signs, but also semblances such as kindred sensible qualities, and indices such as reactions. He came circa 1903 to classify any sign by three interdependent trichotomies, intersecting to form ten (rather than 27) classes of sign. Signs also enter into various kinds of meaningful combinations; Peirce covered both semantic and syntactical issues in his speculative grammar. He regarded formal semiotic as logic per se and part of philosophy; as also encompassing study of arguments (hypothetical, deductive, and inductive) and inquiry's methods including pragmatism; and as allied to but distinct from logic's pure mathematics.
Various terms can been used to express the concepts involved. In this instance Saussure's original terminology has been modified by Eco. In this example, the perception of an icon with a printer on it forms the signifier and the function of 'printer friendly version' is the signified.
The third element is the act of signification, which is context dependent: an experienced Web surfer may immediately understand that a printer friendly version makes a page easier to print, while an inexperience visitor may have not idea at all. Semiotics argue among themselves the validity of the semiotic triangle.

Semiotics is often divided into three branches:
• Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning
• Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
• Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them
Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions; for example, Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication. Umberto Eco (1932-present) made a wider audience aware of semiotics by various publications, most notably A Theory of Semiotics and his novel, The Name of the Rose, which includes applied semiotic operations. His most important contributions to the field bear on interpretation, encyclopedia, and model reader. He has also criticized in several works (A theory of semiotics, La struttura assente, Le signe, La production de signes) the "iconism" or "iconic signs" (taken from Peirce's most famous triadic relation, based on indexes, icons, and symbols), to which he purposes four modes of sign production: recognition, ostension, replica, and invention.
Semiotics differs from linguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense.

About Eco, the starting point of his theory is the fact that, in both industrialized and nature-based civilizations, human beings are evolving in a "system of systems of signs". Drawing much of his inspiration from the work of Peirce, he developed his theory of the sign in 1973, and went on to revise it in 1988. A distinguishing feature of Eco's theory is that in addition to words and language, it also addresses non-linguistic and even natural signs, which do signify, based on a code, or previous learning.
From the many meanings listed in the dictionaries for "sign", a comprehensive definition has been formulated: "The sign is used to transmit information; to say or to indicate a thing that someone knows and wants others to know as well". The sign fits into this simplified canonical model of communication:
source - sender - channel - message - receiver -
This model can be applied to most processes of communication. However, a message can pass through a channel from sender to receiver without ever signifying, if the sender and the receiver do not share a common code. Besides being an element in the process of communication, the sign is also an actor in the process of signification.
The code is found in Jakobson's communication model. It designates all of the conventions that make it possible for the sender's message to be understood by the receiver in an act of communication. The code may thus be a language, a system used in sports (the referee in baseball or the signs used for communication between the catcher and pitcher), kinesics (interpreting unconscious nonverbal language, such as tiny facial movements), etc.
The sender and receiver must share a common code, that is, "a series of rules that will allow one to attribute a signification to the sign" (translation of Eco, 1988, 28).
Since the word "sign" designates a multitude of different objects, Eco formulated an initial classification wherein he distinguishes artificial signs and natural signs. Afterwards, he refined this classification, and signs became sign-functions in his typology of the modes of sign production.
Artificial signs are divided into two classes: (1) signs intentionally produced in order to signify: They are produced consciously by someone, based on specific conventions, and with the aim of communicating something to someone; (2) signs intentionally produced as functions: objects such as architectural creations, clothing, furniture, modes of transportation.
Natural signs are divided into two classes: (1) signs identified with natural things or events: he position of the sun indicates what time it is; for example; an accumulation of grey clouds signifies an approaching storm, and so on; (2) signs unintentionally produced by a human agent: they are produced by a human, but not consciously or deliberately. For example, the doctor can decode the spots on his patient's skin and thereby conclude that the patient has a liver disease. The reverse is impossible: The patient cannot deliberately produce these signs (symptoms in this case) on his skin in order to signify the disease.
This class also includes psychological symptoms, behaviour, disposition, indices of race, class, and regional origin, etc.
Present research found that, as airline industry brandings grow and become more international, their logos become more symbolic and less iconic. The iconicity and symbolism of a sign depends on the cultural convention and are on that ground in relation with each other. If the cultural convention has greater influence on the sign, the signs get more symbolic value.
Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted. This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be the individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. To coin a word to refer to a thing, the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their language. But that word can transmit that meaning only within the language's grammatical structures and codes.