Solomonick Abraham PhD (Israel)
SEMIOTICS IN QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
1. What is semiotics?
Semiotics is the science of signs.
What type of sciences does semiotics belong to?
Semiotics is one of the imprecise sciences. Unlike the exact sciences (mathematics,
chemistry, biology, etc.), semiotics has not yet built its own scientific paradigm, allowing
it to draw specific and unequivocal conclusions. It is simply still very young and there-
fore diverse. But it, like other similar sciences (history, literature, philosophy, etc.), is
moving towards clarifying its boundaries and capabilities, the limit for which are abso-
lutely concrete results, expressed quantitatively with formulas, using numbers and let-
ters. However, as in the case of other imprecise sciences, this ideal for semiotics is not
completely attainable.
2. What is the subject of study in semiotics?
Semiotics studies signs, sign systems and sign reality in general.
What is a sign?
The idea of “a sign” in its scientific format was treated for the first time, by John
Locke, who in his book "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690) called the
"doctrine of signs" as semiotics (σηµιωτική in Greek). In his view semiotics "must con-
sider the nature of the signs that the mind uses for understanding things or for transmit-
ting its knowledge to others."1 Locke also named three main properties of any sign:
a) the fact that the sign itself has material nature; b) that it is intended to designate
1
Armstrong Robert. John Locke's "Doctrine of Signs": A New Metaphysics.
At: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708387
1
, something; c) that this designation is associated with ideas that arise in human thinking.
Locke was especially interested in the ideas that a sign initiates in thoughts, also be-
cause he believed that our brain was a tabula rasa (literally "blank board" in Latin) – an
empty space that is filled with impressions from the outside. Signs are the carriers of
these impressions. These startling revelations were almost three centuries ahead of
their time, because scientists only really turned to the development of semiotics at the
end of the 19th century really.
Charles Pearce (1839 – 1914), an American scientist who also substantiated the
philosophy of pragmatism, is considered the founder of modern semiotics. He clearly
formulated the properties of a sign, touched upon by Locke: "A sign is something that is
indissolubly connected with its designated (referent), and also with the human brain in-
terpreting it."2 Peirce also gave a three-term classification of signs, dividing them into
index signs (indicating); into images (reproducing and to some extent similar to their
referents) and into signs of symbolic nature. This classification is still accepted today by
the majority of semiotics specialists.
The contribution of Charles Morris (1901 – 1979) was of great importance for devel-
oping semiotics as a science. He described three approaches considering semiotic
problems: semantics is a method of analyzing the relationship between a sign and its
referent(s); the syntactic approach is used to describe the interactions between signs for
the same cognitive problem; and pragmatics that analyzes the connections of the sign
with the people using it.
Gottlob Frege (1848 - 1945), the founder of mathematical logic, pointed out the need
to distinguish between the accepted sign meaning and its ability to refer it for the partic-
ular phenomenon we describe with its help. Thus, for example, in physics, the concepts
of the weight and of the mass differ by the fact that mass is an imminent quality of an
object, and weight is measured by the dimensions of gravitational indicators in each
specific measurement. According to this parameter, we should separate the sign’s
meaning from its sense in each concrete analysis, and they have to be applied different-
2
“In Peirce's theory of signs, a sign is something that stands in a well-defined kind of relation to two other
things, its object and its interpretant”.
At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_theory_of_Charles_Sanders_Peirce#Semiotic_elements
2
SEMIOTICS IN QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
1. What is semiotics?
Semiotics is the science of signs.
What type of sciences does semiotics belong to?
Semiotics is one of the imprecise sciences. Unlike the exact sciences (mathematics,
chemistry, biology, etc.), semiotics has not yet built its own scientific paradigm, allowing
it to draw specific and unequivocal conclusions. It is simply still very young and there-
fore diverse. But it, like other similar sciences (history, literature, philosophy, etc.), is
moving towards clarifying its boundaries and capabilities, the limit for which are abso-
lutely concrete results, expressed quantitatively with formulas, using numbers and let-
ters. However, as in the case of other imprecise sciences, this ideal for semiotics is not
completely attainable.
2. What is the subject of study in semiotics?
Semiotics studies signs, sign systems and sign reality in general.
What is a sign?
The idea of “a sign” in its scientific format was treated for the first time, by John
Locke, who in his book "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690) called the
"doctrine of signs" as semiotics (σηµιωτική in Greek). In his view semiotics "must con-
sider the nature of the signs that the mind uses for understanding things or for transmit-
ting its knowledge to others."1 Locke also named three main properties of any sign:
a) the fact that the sign itself has material nature; b) that it is intended to designate
1
Armstrong Robert. John Locke's "Doctrine of Signs": A New Metaphysics.
At: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708387
1
, something; c) that this designation is associated with ideas that arise in human thinking.
Locke was especially interested in the ideas that a sign initiates in thoughts, also be-
cause he believed that our brain was a tabula rasa (literally "blank board" in Latin) – an
empty space that is filled with impressions from the outside. Signs are the carriers of
these impressions. These startling revelations were almost three centuries ahead of
their time, because scientists only really turned to the development of semiotics at the
end of the 19th century really.
Charles Pearce (1839 – 1914), an American scientist who also substantiated the
philosophy of pragmatism, is considered the founder of modern semiotics. He clearly
formulated the properties of a sign, touched upon by Locke: "A sign is something that is
indissolubly connected with its designated (referent), and also with the human brain in-
terpreting it."2 Peirce also gave a three-term classification of signs, dividing them into
index signs (indicating); into images (reproducing and to some extent similar to their
referents) and into signs of symbolic nature. This classification is still accepted today by
the majority of semiotics specialists.
The contribution of Charles Morris (1901 – 1979) was of great importance for devel-
oping semiotics as a science. He described three approaches considering semiotic
problems: semantics is a method of analyzing the relationship between a sign and its
referent(s); the syntactic approach is used to describe the interactions between signs for
the same cognitive problem; and pragmatics that analyzes the connections of the sign
with the people using it.
Gottlob Frege (1848 - 1945), the founder of mathematical logic, pointed out the need
to distinguish between the accepted sign meaning and its ability to refer it for the partic-
ular phenomenon we describe with its help. Thus, for example, in physics, the concepts
of the weight and of the mass differ by the fact that mass is an imminent quality of an
object, and weight is measured by the dimensions of gravitational indicators in each
specific measurement. According to this parameter, we should separate the sign’s
meaning from its sense in each concrete analysis, and they have to be applied different-
2
“In Peirce's theory of signs, a sign is something that stands in a well-defined kind of relation to two other
things, its object and its interpretant”.
At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_theory_of_Charles_Sanders_Peirce#Semiotic_elements
2
