Concept in Definition ABC

Semiotics is the science o discipline who is interested in the study of the different types of symbols created by the human being in different and specific situations. This study is based on the analysis of the meanings that each type of symbol can have and how that meaning can vary over time or space.

You can consider semiotics (or also known as semiology) as a very important section of the anthropology since his work deals with the culture of the current human being and of other times. The term semiotics comes from the Greek Semeiotikos, which means 'sign interpreter'.

This implies that it will try to explain the way in which beings use signs to understand the world they surrounds them and of course also to communicate with other people, certainly an important action in life any

The study that formalizes semiotics regarding the attribution of meaning is used usefully in the scientific plane, context in which the way in which knowledge is generated turns out to be vital.

The sign refers to something and refers to a mental image of it

For semiotics, a sign always refers to something. Meanwhile, that sign will refer to something concrete in a person's mind. So the word table is a sign that will refer us mentally to the figure of this furniture normally of wood and used to eat.

One of the most complex and interesting elements of culture is the set of symbols and forms that human beings create for different situations or circumstances.

Each set of symbols is applied to a type of events or phenomena and therefore its meaning or its interpretation it is completely particular and specific. Symbols are more or less arbitrary or subjective representations of these phenomena and the their birth has to do with the need of the human being to integrate such phenomena into the language.

Semiotics will then be interested in analyze why these symbols can have a meaning in a moment or space and change, or be maintained over time if this were the case. This is the task of anthropologists, language specialists, archaeologists, and other scientists who work with questions of culture. Semiotics is considered to be born from the observations of different anthropologists and language specialists who noticed that different symbols (not only graphics but also language, of thought or emotional forms) were repeated in different spaces and had the same or different meanings according to each community.

People are constantly using signs and attributing meaning to each issue that is perceived. Given this presence, semiotics has a relevant place at the beginning of the knowledge process, and a profound approach to the sign, which is its object of study, is proposed, for example.

The fundamental contribution of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure

The Swiss-born linguist Ferdinand de Saussure made enormous contributions to semiotics. He taught courses on the linguistic sign and this subject was approached precisely from a perspective linguistics.

Saussure opposed the consideration of the sign as a unitary entity that comes to consider the language as a list of words that correspond to certain things. His proposition is that concepts precede signs and in this sense is that he proposes that unity Linguistics is composed of two elements, on the one hand a concept, and on the other hand an acoustic image of the.

The concept remains archived in the minds of the speakers of a certain language and thus the concept of table is manifests itself as a set made up of the following characteristics: furniture, wood, rectangular, square, used to eat. Meanwhile, the acoustic image is the imprint that this word leaves on our psyche.