3 types of signs: Symbol, Icon, Index

What is a ‘symbol’? Many theorists may say that language is a symbolic sign system. But Saussure prefers not to refer to language as ‘symbols’. He feels other things like the scales of justice are symbols, because the signifier has some connection with the signified. It is not wholly arbitrary. Some others argue that symbols become so only because we associate that idea with them constantly. For example the word ‘house’ do not look anything like a house, but has come to signify ‘house’.
Is written music a system of symbols? What about mathematics?

An ‘icon’ represents mainly by it similarity. Icons have qualities that resemble the object they signify. A picture is actually a symbol, not a duplicate of what it represents, no matter how realistically it has been rendered. Because pictures resemble what they represent only in some respects, you will rarely mistake a picture for the real thing!

Icons are influenced by the cultural conventions of the place where they originate. For example, we all understand what the iconic representation of the man for a public lavatory means, but if it shown to someone outside our culture, a tribal from remote Africa, he is unlikely to understand that it represents a public lavatory. We already know the meaning so we see the resemblance and feel it looks like a man. For an icon to be truly transparent, it should be understood across any culture.

As graphic designers we know how difficult it can be to create something of this nature. To create an icon that would be understood across the length and breadth of India seems an impossible task, let alone across the globe. Icons are influenced by the culture in which they operate. To create an icon for ‘drinking water’ in India would be a challenge, across the country people may be drinking from a glass, a tap, a lota, a jug, a matka, a water pot, and numerous other local devices.

Kent Grayson observes: ‘Because we can see the object in the sign, we are often left with a sense that the icon has brought us closer to the truth than if we had instead seen an index or a symbol’ (Grayson 1998, 36). We all think that Shakespeare actually looks like the picture we have seen of him, or even Christ or Krishna. We will never have proof whether they actually looked liked that, but that is their identity now.

An index is connected with the object in a very real way. For example a sun-dial, or clock indicates the time of day, and nothing else. An index is like a fragment torn away from the object. Anything that focuses the attention is an indexical sign. Photographs are iconic and indexical especially when they are candid. For this reason photographs and video are often used as ‘evidence’. Photographs and film footage may also be symbolic when it is posed, rehearsed, and standing for something else.

A sign can be a symbol, an icon, an index, or a combination of the three. What are we? You as person would be an index if you are there in person, or are in a photograph. A photo may also be a symbol, as would be your signature, your voice, or your portrait, which would be more iconic if there was a reasonably good resemblance. Generally one category would have dominance.

Early writing was highly iconic, such as the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Slowly writing evolved a more symbolic character. I wonder how writing is going to evolve further from the present day. With the dominance of the digital media it may become more and more symbolic. Maybe there will be a day when writing is mathematics.

It is interesting for graphic designers to understand how these three operate. A lock can communicate a lot more than just a lock. its security, strength, closed/open, metal, safe, hard, stubborn.. and much more.

Basic understanding of Semiotics 1

Semiotics is a system of signs. ‘Signs’ could mean body language, a spoken language, almost anything can be taken as a ‘sign’. Anything which stands for something else is a sign. So even gestures, images, paintings, sounds may come under signs.

Semantics is a branch of linguistic studies, and there is a common area of semantics and semiotics. Semantics focuses on ‘what’ words mean, while semiotics focuses on ‘how’ they mean. (John Sturrock) Semiotics studies how we make meaning out of things, and how we understand or interpret the meaning. We are not passive receivers of signs, but also consciously or un-consciously affect how the signs are transmitted or interpreted. That is how different ‘mediums’ are built. Some ‘mediums’ such as language are highly ‘transparent’, we are barely even conscious of language as a system of signs. This also makes the medium highly effective.  Every medium is constrained in its own way, for example language, though having countless words, still sometimes does not suffice to explain something, and similarly paintings, or television, have their own limitations due to their nature. Because of this nature of the medium, you can never say exactly the same thing in two different mediums, because the very nature of the medium will affect the message. Some mediums such as radio or television are highly personal, especially television, as compared with the newspaper, a more impersonal medium. Some semiotics experts refer to television as a language as well.

For something to become a ‘sign’ it is necessary for a community to agree on what that thing denotes, and so a vocabulary is built up by those within the community, who mutually agree on the meaning of a sign. In this way languages and syntaxes are built up.  A sign consists of  the ‘signifier’, the form that the signs takes, and the ‘signified’, the concept that it represents.

We use language to say what is in our world as well as what isn’t, it is the language we speak that makes our world, rather than the world making the language.

Signs may be symbolic, such as punctuation marks, traffic lights, and national flags, in which the signifier does not resemble the signified. They may be iconic where they resemble some quality of the signified, like a portrait, cartoon, or metaphor. They may be indexical, that is directly connected, not arbitrary, examples of indexical are photographs, video, a pulse-rate, the words ‘this’ or ‘that’, or a pointing finger.