Semiotics, Semiology, and Linguistic Signs
Semiotics vs. Semiology
The main differences between semiotics and semiology are:
- Semiotics: A system of thought that explicitly seeks to mediate between the natural environment and its perception in consciousness.
- Semiology: Limited to the intralinguistic and mental sphere, isolated from the experiential world by an idealized world of concepts.
Ferdinand de Saussure’s Contributions
Ferdinand de Saussure is best known as the founder of modern linguistics and semiology. He proposed that language use has two dimensions that are activated simultaneously:
- Paradigmatic choices: Selecting words from existing paradigms (e.g., synonyms).
- Syntagmatic relationships: Arranging words in meaningful relationships (e.g., noun and complement).
Family Resemblance
Family resemblance is the idea that a set of instances may form a category or give rise to a concept, even if there isn’t one single defining feature shared by all members.
Main Schools of Thought in Linguistics
The main schools of thought in linguistics include:
- Generativism
- Structuralism
- Cognitivism
The Linguistic Sign
A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is a psychological imprint of the sound, not the physical sound itself. It’s the minimal unit of semiotics and semiology.
Types of Signs
- Icon: Has a physical resemblance to the signified (e.g., a photograph). It’s a direct imitation.
- Index: Shows evidence of what’s being represented (e.g., smoke indicating fire). It describes a connection, not a direct resemblance.
- Symbol: Has no resemblance between the signifier and the signified. The connection is arbitrary and learned through convention (e.g., alphabets, numbers).
Semantic Categories
- Agent: Describes an animate being capable of acting with its own will.
- Action: Expresses the idea of movement, often (but not necessarily) verbs.
- Object: The opposite of an agent; includes beings or inanimate objects that are not alive and cannot act independently.
Polysemy, Homonymy, and Homographs
- Polysemy: A word is polysemous if it can be used to express different, but related, meanings.
- Homonymy: Two or more words are homonyms if they sound the same (homophones), have the same spelling (homographs), or both, but do not have related meanings.
- Homographs: Words that have different pronunciations but the same spelling (e.g., bow – with arrows; bow – curtsy).
Distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy often requires judgment, as there are no foolproof tests.
Reference, Denotation, and Connotation
- Reference: The relation between a language expression and its use in a particular situation. A sentence like, “We need another typist for our Seville office” is non-referring, while “We have hired another typist for our Seville office” is referring.
- Indefinite Reference:
- Specific: “Peter married a Spanish woman.”
- Specific: “Yesterday we visited some friends.”
- Non-specific: “Every week, my neighbor gives me a chocolate cake.”
- Denotation: The potential of a word to enter into language expressions.
- Connotation: The affective or emotional associations a word elicits.
Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive linguistics, similar to functional linguistics, posits an intimate relationship between the structure and function of language, and between language and general cognitive abilities. It suggests that concepts expressed in words mirror existing properties of the world, as perceived by the human brain.
Synecdoche and Synaesthesia
- Synecdoche: A type of metonymy where a part refers to the whole, or the whole refers to one of its parts (e.g., “The White House,” “the Pentagon”).
- Synaesthesia: A type of metaphor where one sensory domain is mapped onto another.
Conventionalized Metaphors
Other common types of conventionalized metaphors include:
- Concreting: Concrete source, abstract target (e.g., “the light of learning,” “a vicious circle”).
- Animistic: Animate source, inanimate target (e.g., “an angry sky,” “killing half an hour”).
- Humanizing: Human source, non-human target (e.g., “a charming river,” “a friendly city”).
Lexical Fields
A lexical field denotes a segment of reality symbolized by a set of related words. Words in a semantic field share a common semantic property. Fields are often defined by subject matter (e.g., body parts, landforms, diseases). They can be organized as:
- Hierarchy (e.g. royalty)
- Meronymy (e.g., body parts)
- Sequence (e.g. numbers)
- Cycle (e.g. days of the week)
Grouping into semantic fields considers meaning rather than topic, and they typically include synonyms and antonyms, although other relationships are possible (e.g., big, large, huge, enormous, tiny, small).
Deixis
Deictic expressions take some element of their meaning from the extralinguistic situation of the utterance. They require the extralinguistic context for interpretation.
Person Deixis
Concerns person, organized in a three-part division (first, second, and third person). Personal subject and object pronouns, as well as possessive pronouns, can convey person deixis.
Temporal Deixis
- Pure: Adverbs like *now*, *then*, *before*, *afterwards*.
- Impure: Shows interaction between deictic and non-deictic methods of time reckoning, i.e. the time unit is specified (*this afternoon*, *next year*).
Impure temporal deictic expressions may give way to ambiguity. For example, *next year* can refer to the following 365 days after the speech event, the calendar year or the academic year.
Spatial Deixis
- Pure: Adverbs like *here*, *there*, or prepositions like *over*, *under*, and the demonstrative pronouns.
- Impure: Shows interaction between deictic and non-deictic methods of space reckoning: *two miles away*, *this side of the box*, etc.
Discourse Deixis
Concerns the stretch of discourse/text. Examples:
- Discourse markers: *well* (indicates that more information is to come), and *that’s it* (indication to close a topic).
- In written discourse: chapter numbers, section numbers, page numbers.
- Some expressions of spatial or temporal deixis express discourse deixis in certain contexts.
Social Deixis
Concerns the social situation in which the speech event occurs. There is a high degree of interaction between person deixis and social deixis. Examples:
- The T/V (tu/vous) distinction.
- Honorific forms (Your Honor, Mr. President).
- Vocatives with different degrees of politeness (Your Highness, sir, madam).
- Informal and formal language (grammar, lexis, intonation). For example: *This is fucking nonsense!!* vs *The article is deficient in many respects.*