Looking For The Semiotic Layperson

In searching for kindred spirits out there, I found a number of individual posts which I thought I could use to elucidate some of my own opinions. The following are mini-quotes from some of the people I’ve noticed online who appear to be thinking about symbols, meaning and communication in some fashion. I know there are lots of others, these just struck me as particularly interesting.

kristof28 has the same idea that I do about how symbols work:

Semiotics deals with the production of meaning. A perfectly sensible view of meaning would say that as I am the writer of this sentence so I put the meaning into it and that you, the reader, are the receiver so you take the meaning out. Semiotics is the science of understanding how signs work and how meaning emerges from the relationship between the sender and receiver.

What I would add to their basic statement is that the meaning that the receiver takes out of the message may not be exactly the same as the meaning that the sender put in. The more closely the two communicators share a common context, the more closely aligned will be their understanding. The less sharing before the message, the more likely that the message received will be different than intended.

cjc89 focuses on semiotics as the study of a larger societal process:

it is important to keep in mind that the key to semiotics is an attempt to define how meaning is socially produced (and not individually created). In this light, it will always be subject to power relations and struggles. Furthermore, meaning is always negotiated – it is never static.

In my mind, what “society” does with a symbol is to reinforce it, repeat it, and in this way amplify it. The most commonly shared concepts packaged in the most commonly recognized symbols will tend to get the most use and hence will tend toward relatively more people receiving the same message. But “society” is really a set of individual people. So it is through the popularity among a large set of people that certain symbols and concepts hold sway. I know I’m nit-picking a little here.

iheartunswjourno seems to share a worry about the power of the media:

Choosing to suppress or engage certain arbitrary relations that exist between the signifier and the signified, effectively oppressing or supporting the political agendas of their society. It is quite a scary reality to realize that the media is subtly constructing how we perceive the world.

While I agree that the bombardment of the majority conception of meaning through mass-produced symbols can be hard to counteract, I actually hold out the hope that we as individuals do have power to create meaning, at least within a sphere of influence.

 (The “semiotic” term for this would be “semiosphere“, apparently)

I don’t believe in the existence of “meaning” living outside of the individual. I recognize the volume of symbollic detritous – the notion of our being surrounded by other people’s messages – certainly. And, yes, I recognize that the most powerful will control what is said in the most official channels, but none of us have to merely succomb and accept the message.

The notion of meaning being negotiated is spot on. That’s how it works between two people, and that’s how it works within a society. The miracle of it is that we humans are able to shift between points of view (contexts) with such ease that we don’t often notice ourselves that we have done so.  So while we might disagree with the consensus opinion of our countrymen, we are able to reach common ground with our next door neighbors.

And that’s just the thing that gets the larger process moving, talking with your neighbors and coming to agreement on some aspect of reality.

Every individual can choose to accept or reject the overwhelming flow, or to create their own discourse.  And that is part of our heritage as human beings.