Importance Of Semiotics

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Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use and interpretation. It has influence in those areas of sociology which deal with communication in any form, for it seeks to pro-vide a method for the analysis of messages, both verbal and non-verbal. The fundamental question in semiotics is how meaning are formed (Chandler 2017). In this assignment I will firstly define semiotics and I will identify some of the main aspects of semiotics. I will look how semiotics helps one understand communication and consump-tion. Secondly, I have selected two significant items in my life and subjected them to semiot-ic analysis. The first item is my Calvin Klein watch and the second item is the end of life care symbol. A semiotic analysis helps one…show more content…
A linguistic Ferdinand de Saussure who is credited with founding semiotics in the early 1900’s stated that ‘language is a system of signs that expresses ideas’ and that the sign itself is a relational entity. According to Saussure ‘the sign is the whole that results from the associa-tion of the signifier with the signified’ (Silverman 1983). Charles Sanders Pierce an American philosopher that also formulated a semiotic theory around the same time as Saussure. Pierce stated that semiotics is the relationship between a symbol, an index and an…show more content…
The symbol comprises of three interlocking spirals. Celts alleged that the important things in life came in threes such as birth, death, rebirth; body, mind, spirit; past, present, future; Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Some of the more contemporary interpretations of the triskele are that it is a symbol for the cycles of life, personal growth and spiritual ex-pansion. The triskele symbol has been adapted and deployed in my place of work as the end of life symbol. The end of life symbol aims to add respect and solemnity to items used prior to or following the death of a person. The meaning of the end of life symbol in the health ser-vice in Ireland is very a narrow cast code. However, in in other cultures the codes represent-ed by the triskele symbol is a broader cast code. From this analysis, I learned that symbols can have a range of different meanings in different cultures, it has provided me with a great awareness that symbols can have different meanings in different contexts and

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