Signifier and Signified
Saussure's
'theory of the sign' defined a sign as being made up of the matched pair of
signifier and signified.
Signifier
The
signifier is the pointing finger, the word, the sound-image.
A
word is simply a jumble of letters. The pointing finger is not the star. It is
in the interpretation of the signifier that meaning is created.
Signified
The
signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. It
need not be a 'real object' but is some referent to which the signifier
refers.
The
thing signified is created in the perceiver and is internal to them. Whilst we
share concepts, we do so via signifiers.
Whilst
the signifier is more stable, the signified varies between people and contexts.
The
signified does stabilize with habit, as the signifier cues thoughts and images.
The
signifier and signified, whilst superficially simple, form a core element of semiotics.
Saussure's
ideas are contrary to Plato's notion of ideas being eternally stable. Plato saw
ideas as the root concept that was implemented in individual instances. A
signifier without signified has no meaning, and the signified changes with
person and context. For Saussure, even the root concept is malleable.
The
relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (Saussure
called this 'unmotivated'). A real object need not actually exist 'out there'.
Whilst the letters 'c-a-t' spell cat, they do not embody 'catness'. The French
'chat' is not identical to the English 'cat' in the signified that it creates
(to the French, 'chat' has differences of meaning). In French, 'mouton' means
both 'mutton' and a living 'sheep', whilst the English does not differentiate.
Saussure
inverts the usual reflectionist view that the signifier reflects the signified:
the signifier creates the signified in terms of the meaning it triggers
for us. The meaning of a sign needs both the signifier and the signified as
created by an interpreter. A signifier without a signified is noise. A
signified without a signifier is impossible.
Language
is a series of 'negative' values in that each sign marks a divergence of
meaning betweens signs. Words have meaning in the difference and relationships
with other words.
The
language forms a 'conceptual grid', as defined by structural anthropologist
Edmund Leach, which we impose on the world in order to make sense.
Lacan
defined the unconscious as being structured like language and dealing with a
shifting set of signifiers. When we think in words and images, these still
signify: they are not the final signified, which appears as a more abstract
sensation. In that we can never know the Real,
the external signified can neither be truly known.
Jaques
Derrida criticized the neat simplicity of signs. The signifier-signified is
stable only if one term is final and incapable of referring beyond itself,
which is not true. Meaning is deferred as you slide between signs.
Saussure actually saw the division of the sign into
sound image and concept as a bit ambiguous. So he refined the idea by saying it
might make things clearer if we referred to the concept as the signified
(signifié) and the sound image as the signifier (signifiant)
- this idea is shown in the graphic, which attempts to show how the signifier
and signified coalesce into what we call a sign.
It's
worth taking a little time to consider the graphic so that you get it into your
head. It's worth asking yourself as well whether you think it makes good sense
and whether it's very useful.
Signifier<>signified
relationship
Same
sound image - different concepts?
You might think that the distinction between sound
image (signifier) and concept (signified) doesn't get us very far forward in
trying to figure out what we mean by 'meaning'. You're probably right. After
all, it's no easier to say what the concept of 'the' or 'of' is than to say
what thing those words correspond to. And, of course, I don't know if the
concepts 'city', 'woman', 'man' in your head are the same as those in mine. As
the British linguist, David Crystal, puts it:
Some
words do have meanings which are relatively easy to conceptualise, but we
certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say.
Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use
the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might
bring to mind.
While that's quite correct, the fact remains
that it also explains why Saussure's ideas took things forward. His notion of
the sign places the emphasis on our individual 'concepts' corresponding to the
sound images. Your mental picture of a car (indeed, for all I know, not only a
mental picture, but also a mental smell, mental noise or whatever) will not be
the same as mine, for a variety of reasons. (For a discussion of some of those
reasons, see the section on Meaning).
Saussure shifted the emphasis from the notion
that there is some kind of 'real world' out there to which we all refer in
words which mean the same to all of us. Fairly obviously, we in our language
community have much of this real world in common, otherwise we couldn't
communicate, but, for various reasons, the 'real world' which we articulate
through our signs will be different for every one of us. (It is for this reason
that Saussure saw semiology as a branch of social psychology.)
Saussure stressed the arbitrariness of the
sign as the first principle of semiology.
When we say something is 'arbitrary', we mean that there's
no good reason for it. If you make an 'arbitrary choice' between two things,
then you choose for no good reason; you probably don't care which one you
choose. By saying that signs are arbitrary, Saussure was saying that there is
no good reason why we use the sequence of sounds 'sister' to mean a female
sibling. We could just as well use 'soeur', 'Schwester', 'ukht'. For that
matter, we could just as well use the sequence of sounds: 'brother'. Of course,
as he pointed out, we don't have any choice in the matter. If we want to talk
about female siblings in the English language, we can talk about 'female
siblings' or 'sisters' - and that's all; there are no more options. You can't
do a Humpty Dumpty.
Saussure saw language as being an ordered
system of signs whose meanings are arrived at arbitrarily by a cultural
convention. There is no necessary reason why a pig should be called a pig.
It doesn't look sound or smell any more like the sequence of sounds 'p-i-g'
than a banana looks, smells, tastes or feels like the sequence of sounds
'banana'. It is only because we in our language group agree that it is called a
'pig' that that sequence of sounds refers to the animal in the real world. You
and your circle of friends could agree always to refer to pigs as 'squerdlishes'
if you want. As long as there is general agreement, that's no problem - until
you start talking about squerdlishes to people who don't share the same
convention.
Saussure freely admits that when he is
stressing the arbitrariness of the sign, he is stressing something which is actually fairly obvious. As he
sees it, though, the problem is that people haven't paid enough attention to
the implications of the fact that sign-systems are arbitrary.
Since it is the case that the codes
(see Code)
we use are the result of conventions arrived at by the users of those codes,
then it is reasonable to suppose that the values of the users will in
some way be incorporated into those codes. They will, for example, have
developed signs for those things they agree to be important, they will probably
have developed a whole array of signs to draw the distinctions between those
things which are of particular significance in their culture.
In
other words, you might reasonably expect that the ideologies
prevalent in those cultures will have been incorporated into the codes used:
...'reality' is always encoded, or
rather the only way we can perceive and make sense of reality is by the codes
of our culture. There may be an objective, empiricist reality out there, but
there is no universal, objective way of perceiving and making sense of it. What
passes for reality in any culture is the product of the culture's codes, so
'reality' is always already encoded, it is never 'raw'.
Semiologists
generally prefer the term 'reader' to 'receiver' (even of a painting, photograph
or film) and often use the term 'text' to 'message'. This implies that
receiving a message (i.e. 'reading a text') is an active process of
decoding and that that process is socially and culturally conditioned.
