Deciphering the Signs of the Times

Abstract

Semiology is the science of signs, but this definition tells us very little. If anything which has meaning is a sign, then semiology might plausibly claim most of human knowledge as province. All human artifacts, be they texts, paintings, songs, buildings, or everyday utilitarian objects, have meaning, as do all those human actions which are usually studied by sociology, psychology, history, anthropology. In treating artifacts and actions as bearers of meaning, semiology would already have immense scope, but it would not have reached potential limits. The realm of semiology can also include natural objects, for they too function as signs: certain clouds mean rain to the meteorological eye, and a particular geological configuration may be a sign of oil, or at least tell of the region's history. If semiology studies everything which signifies, then it embraces a wide variety of disciplines with distinct objects and different methods. surprisingly, the first congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, which drew some seven hundred people to Milan in the summer of 1974, was something of a hotch-potch, with papers on literature, music, film, painting, architecture, advertising, animal communication, scientific languages, non-verbal communication, and psychopathology. How one can justify such imperialism (the word seems scarcely too strong)? Why should all these different things be brought together under the banner of semiology? What is the nature of semiology that it should seek to study in terms objects which are already treated by other disciplines? For the answers to these questions one should turn first to Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics, who in his seminal Course in General Linguistics (1917) first proclaimed the need for a general science of signs that would us what signs consist of and what laws govern them. Though he christened the discipline semiology, Saussure refused to speculate on precise nature, observing only that its place is assured in advance. His confidence doubtless came from the conviction that students of language would be compelled to think about signs: Is it not obvious that language is above all a system of signs and that therefore we must have recourse to the science of signs? he wrote. Studying signs of other sorts would teach the linguist what was typical and what was peculiar to language. And Saussure added: Not only will this procedure clarify the problems of linguistics, but rituals, customs, etc. will, we believe, appear in a new light if they are studied as signs, and one will come to see that they should be included in the domain of semiology and explained by laws.