What is SEMIOTICS?

semiotics (se-mi-ot-iks) , noun: The study of signs & symbols and their use or interpretation.

That hasn’t really made anything clearer; we almost need a definition for the definition. John Locke, the philosopher who coined the term, described semiotics in this passage from his book, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “All that can fall within the compass of human understanding… first, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness: or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts.” The man loved his commas; almost as much as I love my semi-colons. Of course, semiotics is that third science that he’s talking about, but it’s too broad and too general to be terribly enlightening and quite frankly, it’s a little wanky; Considering Locke was writing in 1609, we can forgive him. Sadly, a lot of today’s writing on semiotics suffers from the same syndrome. But at its core, semiotics (or ‘semiology’ as it is often known) is simply about how we find meaning in the world. About how we make mind from matter.

Thankfully, Roland Barthes (the ‘Death of the Author’ guy for anyone familiar with literary theory) came along to make semiotics fun, turning it into more of an art than a science. In his 1957 book, Mythologies, Barthes describes a “reconciliation between reality and men, between description and explanation, between object and knowledge” and goes on to analyse a series of pop-culture symbols, including Soap-Powders and Detergents, Plastic & 'The Brain of Einstein'. The fact that I prefer to use the term ‘Metaphor’ instead of ‘Myth’ is relatively irrelevant, and if Roland Barthes weren’t dead, he’d laugh and say that everything always comes down to Semantics anyway. Speaking of semantics, it was Ferdinand de Saussure who first to split the concept of the ‘sign’ (any kind of symbol) into the ‘signifier’ (the word or label for the given object) and the ‘signified’ (the nameless object itself). Saussure was primarily a linguist, talking primarily about the sounds of spoken words or the shapes of written ones. Barthes took the concept a second step, saying it was possible to divide any myth, metaphor or object into a ‘tertium quid’- a concept of three made out of two. The Signifier & The Signified. The meaning and the mass. The Style and the Substance. One could categorise the whole world this way, and not only the objects in it. Consider the differences between Western and Eastern thought. The West is all mechanistic- what something does, how something works. The concept. Like the signifier. The East, on the other hand, is all about… well, I guess the point is that there isn’t a name for it. The aim of Zen enlightenment is to see the nameless nothingness in everything. Like the signified. Of course, being a purist for either side is a fallacy. Follow Western thought too closely and you’ll become a soulless robot. Spend a lifetime chasing Zen, and you’ll find enlightenment at the price of becoming a docile, lonely house plant. Ultimately then, the solution is to walk the fine line between the two extremes. The solution is to find the ‘meaningless meaning’ in objects. Their Art. Their Beauty. That essence in existents that inspires us to do nothing else but be inspired. In the immortal words of Oscar Wilde, “All art is quite useless”, and “The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us”.

Myths and metaphors have always been more common - or at least more apparent - in Art than they have been in Life. But there are exceptions. Through repeated use, or simply in life’s more intense moments, an object of the world can cross the bridge to art… can become both substance and style… can be matter with a message. Consider a simple bed, an object that’s been in the lives of humans for millennia. From a Zen standpoint, it’s a mere a collection of atoms, or energy in a solid form. From a Western standpoint, the purpose is easy: a bed is meant to be slept on. But what a bed means is different to what it is meant for. Yes, we can use a bed for sleep, but we can also have sex in it, which is essentially the very opposite action. Most of us will have been conceived in a bed, and going full circle from the cradle to the grave, most of us will die in one. Such contradictions – paradoxes if the concepts coexist simultaneously – transcend the mechanics of a bed’s springs and down. Such thoughts, such connotations, are artistic ones. Some of our most human of moments have reached such paradoxical levels of artistic meaning that they have blended with their practical meaning. Consider the fact that we can only fly (and therefore feel most alive) when asleep in a dream, and look dead to the rest of the world. Or consider the joy that fills a parent when they hear their newborn cry in pain as it draws its first breaths. As much as semiotics can be applied to so many facets of our life, we must draw a line somewhere. The more metaphors we see in the world, the less meaningful each metaphor becomes. As Roland Barthes says, our myths “transform history into nature”, and just as time and history are human inventions, we must realise that we have invented our metaphors, not discovered them.