A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie

— Umberto Eco
Semiotic derives from the Greek semesion, meaning sign, semainon which means signifier and
semainomenon meaning signified or indication. Generally, semiotic is the study of signs or an
epistemology about the existence or the actuality of sign in societal life. Many pioneers, researchers,
practitioners and authors of semiotic such as. Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Roland
Barthes, Roman Jakobsen, have agreed on the simple definition. For understanding and clearer
purpose, semiotic accounts for everything that can be seen or be interpreted as a sign as postulated
by Umberto Eco in his book entitled 'A Theory of Semiotics ' who indicated that ‘semiotics is
concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything which can be taken as
significantly substituting for something else’ (1979; 7). According to Umberto Eco, that ‘something
else’ does not necessarily exist exactly at the same time when the sign represent or replace its
position. Therefore, Umberto Eco often refers to it as theory of lie, or deception because it can be
used for misleading or deceiving others (1976, p. 6-7). Tracing the historical background and its
advent, especially during the development of the classical semiotic, the philosophy pertaining to the
significance of semiotic in the life of mankind has begun about more than two thousand years ago by
the Greek philosophers. However, the term ‘semiotic’ only appeared at the end of 18th century
when introduced and applied by a German philosopher, Lambert. In the development of the modern
semiotic history, there are two pioneers from western countries who have made big contributions
towards the respected field, namely Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a linguist from Switzerland
and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), a philosopher from America.Sassure was a swiss Linguistic
and he is primarily known tody for the book ‘Course in General Linguistics’. Which is basically a
collection of his lecture notes originally published in french by his students and his students made
these notes between 1906 and 1911. In a nutshell, Saussure’s theory of sign gives more emphasis to
internal structure devoted to cognitive thought process or activity of human minds in structuring the
physical (material) or intangible (abstract) signs of their environments or surroundings, and among
them is the structure of linguistic signs in the language system that allows them to function as
human beings and communicate with each other. Saussure’s theory is considered as the proponent
to the thought that "language does not reflect reality but rather constructs it" because we do not
only use language or give meaning to anything that exists in the world of reality, but also to anything
that does not exist in it” (Chandler, 2002, p. 28).

Charles Sanders Peirce is well-known as a pioneer of pragmatism doctrine who has provided the
basic in the general theory of signs through his writings, and texts that have been compiled 25 years
after his death in a single comprehensive piece of work entitled Oeuvres Completes (Zoest, 1991).
Unlike Saussure who has introduced the term ‘semiology’, Peirce proposed the term ‘semiotic’,
which according to him is synonymous with the concept of logic that focuses on the knowledge of
human thinking process as portrayed in his writing published in 1931/1958:

Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name for semiotic, the
quasinecessary, or formal doctrine of signs. By describing the doctrine as “quasi-necessary”,
or formal, I mean that we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and from such an
observation, by a process which I will not object to naming Abstraction, we are led to
statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means necessary, as to what
must be characters of all signs used by a “scientific” intelligence, that is to say by an
intelligence capable of learning by experience (LeedsHurwitz, 1993, p. 4).

The main principles containing Peirce’s theory are the human mind and sign boundaries, the
three-dimensional system (triadic/trichotomy) and the relativity regarding the three
typologies or taxonomies of signs (icon, index and symbol). Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-
 A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie
— Umberto Eco
1913) and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) lived during the same epoch but came from
two different continents, Europe and America. Saussure was born in Geneva, Switzerland
whereas Peirce was born in Massachussets, United States of America (USA). Although they
did not mutually recognized and knew each other’s studies, interestingly both were born
with the similar desire and thought which is to develop a field of signification, i.e to elucidate
and to search the meaning behind signs and symbols (Leeds-Hurwitz 1993). The thoughts
and approaches of these two leading and renowned scholars in semiotic have pioneered and
inspired other followers and scholars. Consequently, several well-known scholars in the field
of semiotic have arised, among them were Louis Hjemslev (1899-1965), Charles Morris
(1901-1979), Max Bense (1910 – 1990) Roman Jakobsen (1896- 1982), Roland Barthes (1915-
1980) and Umberto Eco (1932-).Terminologically, Saussure proposed the word semiology
whereas Peirce employed the word semiotic. Conceptually, the principal concept of
Saussure’s theory initiated from the thought of a dichotomy or duality basis in which
according to him, a sign consists of two focal components, namely signifier-the sound
pattern (markersound image) and signified-the concept (the outcome/the
interpretation/conception of the signifier). . Signifier refers to something that is in a material
form (physical), explicitly exist and can be distinguished by human senses. On the other
hand, signified denotes to something literally and physically does not exist, which is in
abstract basis ((Eco, 1976; Zoest, 1996; Leeds-Hurwitz, 1993; Chandler, 2001; Masinambau,
2001) Meanwhile, the relationship between the signifier and signified is refered to as the
signification system. Saussure asserted that both concepts have a very close relationship and
have mutual need and complement each other. Besides signifier and signified, Saussure’s
concept of dichotomy also refers to form and content, langue and parole, synchronic and
diachronic, as well as syntagmatic and paradigmatic/associative. In contrast to the binary
concept of Saussure’s theory, Peirce’s theory of sign focuses on three-dimensional or triadic
and trichotomy system. Peirce classifies sign into three aspects, namely i) sign or
representatum or ground, ii) object which is also referred to as referent, and iii) interpretant.
The first aspect is synonymous with Saussure’s concept termed as signifier which means
physical signs (explicitly exist) (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1993) but does not have to be material in
nature (Chandler, 2002). On the contrary, Saussure’s concept of signified, is divided by
Peirce into two components, namely object and interpretant. Object refers to something
that is represented or exemplified by the sign (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1993), which owns both
properties of concrete and abstract in nature (Masinambow, 2001). On the other hand,
interpretant means any meanings conveyed by the represantatum about the object which
was previously unknown (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1993), and abstract in nature (implicitly exist) and
does not exist in human perception (Masinambaw, 2001). The interactional relationship
between those three concepts is denoted by Peirce as semiosis (Chandler, 2002). Another
difference is in terms of sign limitation. a sign for Saussure is something delivered by
someone with a purpose and specific meaning intentionally, i.e a process or a phenomenon
that does not occur coincidentally or by chance. This means that according to Saussure,
nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign. Implicitly, Saussure was trying to explain
that not all things neither in human’s life nor their environments can be considered as signs.
It suggests that a sign has a certain limitation, subject to a system of conventional, which
means something that is mutually or commonly agreed by all those involved in the particular
culture. For example, the alphabet and writing system, the traffic signals and so on. Thus, in
Saussure’s theory of sign, language is a sign system because language has been
conventionally used to allow humans to communicate among them. In spite of that,
 A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie
— Umberto Eco
Saussure argued that even though a sign is subject to a mutual agreement or conventional
system, a sign also possesses an arbitrary characteristic which means that a sign can produce
a variety of different meanings depending on different interpretations as Saussure stated
that “there is nothing at all to prevent the association of whatsoever with any sequences of
sounds whatsoever....the process which selects one particular sound-sequence to
correspond to one particular idea is arbitrary” ” (Chandler, 2002, p. 26). In the words of
Peirce, people think through the signs, which enable them to communicate with each other
and give meaning to anything that exist in their environment (Zoest, 1991). The basic
principle of Peirce’s theory is that everything can be a sign, as long as it has the ability to
represent something according to the individual’s interpretation and thought. In contrast to
Saussure’s view, Peirce did not confine the existence of sign as something that is purposely
conveyed. By this understanding, a sign can exist coincidentally when someone has
interpreted something as sign, even though it was not purposely meant or communicated to
him. Peirce’s ideology of sign encompasses everything whether it is created by human or not
as long as it can be grasped and acknowledged by their minds (Eco, 1991). Succinctly, the
difference between Peirce and Saussure’s orientations lie on the aspect of reality as well as
the discipline of epistemology. For Peirce, the reality lies outside the internal structure of
human and is not related to each other while for Saussure, reality has a bond with our
physical or human minds. As for discipline, Peirce is in the field of philosophy, that queries
the association between reality in total with the nature and the existence of the sign while
Saussure is in the field of linguistics, that focusses on giving a review of the association
between a sign which is considered as an aspect of word construction (Masinambow &
Rahayu 2001).

All three make up the sign. The interaction between these three is semiosis. Language is the
effect of this interaction. For example, let us take a sign in a doctor's clinic: ‘Doctor is In’. This
is a sign that is inscribed as words and not as a picture. What semiosis occurs here?
Representamen is the text itself: ‘Doctor is In’. Object is the doctor referred to in the text.
Interpretant is the idea generated in our mind upon reading this sign—that the doctor is
inside and we must wait. The sign itself does not say: ‘please wait’. But the idea generated
by the sign asks us to do so. We can quickly detect the paradox here, a paradox that will
recall Saussure's own notion of referentiality. The sign generates another sign (the
interpretant) in our minds. So, if we want to use Saussure's concepts to understand Peirce, a
signifier generates yet another signifier in our mind. This process of signs giving rise to other
signs in our act of reading or listening is a feature of language (we already have Saussure's
idea that words do not refer to reality but to other words). We, therefore, have an unending
semiosis where the representamen/signifier generates more signs, which we then have to
interpret leading to more signs, and so on infinitely. Signifiers—we will opt for Saussure's
signifier as a term since it is more commonly used than representamen—are related to their
objects of referents in three modes.
 A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie
— Umberto Eco

Charles Sanders Peirce, one of the founders of semiotics,

categorized signs as being one of three types. More recently
professor Yvonne Rogers came up with four categories for iconic
representation and they fit nicely with Peirce’s three types.

Peirce said the

form a sign takes,
it’s signifier, can be
classified as one of
three types an icon,
an index, or a
symbol.
An Icon has a
physical
resemblance to the
signified, the thing
being represented.
A photograph is a
good example as it
certainly resembles
whatever it depicts.
Take a picture of a
tree and the
resulting image
will look like that
tree.

With icons there’s a

real connection
between the
 A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie
— Umberto Eco

signifier and the

signified.


 An Index shows
evidence of what’s
being represented.
A good example is
using an image of
smoke to indicate
fire. Dark clouds
are an index of
rain. A footprint is
an index of a foot.
In each case the
presence of the
former implies the
latter exists. an
index can be
known innately or
learned. A smile is
an index of being
happy and it’s
something I’d say
we all know
innately. On the
other hand a red
stop light is an
index for stop, but
it’s something that
we all needed to
learn.
 A Symbol has no
resemblance
 A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie
— Umberto Eco

between the
signifier and the
signified. The
connection
between them must
be culturally
learned. Numbers
and alphabets are
good examples.
There’s nothing
inherent in the
number 9 to
indicate what it
represents. It must
be culturally
learned.
Conventions and
standards help
make the
connection
between symbols
and what they
represent. An
example might one
day be
the hamburger icon.
There’s nothing
about three lines
that automatically
suggests menu, but
if designers
consistently use the
hamburger icon,
the connection will
 A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie
— Umberto Eco

eventually be
learned. An icon or
index can also
become a symbol
over time through
repetition. For
example the floppy
disk is still used to
represent saving a
digital file, even
though no one uses
floppy disks
anymore .
Semioticians, therefore, believe that reality is understood as a set of signs. Signs construct
our reality. It will be this particular notion of language and signs that poststructuralism will
build upon in the 1960s and later.