SIGNS

A sign is anything-a color, a gesture, a wink, an object, a mathematical equation, etc.-that stands for
something other than itself. The word red, as we saw, qualifies as a sign because it does not stand for
the sounds r-e-d that comprise it, but rather for a certain kind of color and other things.

Actually, the term serneiotics (spelled in this way) was coined by Hippocrates (460-377 BC), the founder
of Western medical science, as the science of symptoms. The symptom, Hippocrates claimed, was a
semeion-the Greek word for a physical “mark” or “sign.” Unraveling what a symptom

stands for, how it manifests itself physically, and why it is indicative of certain ailments or conditions is
the essence of medical diagnosis. Now, while the goal of semiotics today is to investigate something
quite different (a sign such as red), it nevertheless has retained the same basic method of inquiry. As a
case in point, observe the following figure:

What does it mean? The answer is “a bright idea.” How does it present this meaning? It does so by
showing a light bulb inside a bubble. Why is it indicative of this meaning? Answering this last question
entails unraveling the cultural roots of each component of the sign. The use of light in the sign is
consistent with the general view in our culture of light as an analogue for intellect and intelligence. This
can be seen, for instance, in such expressions as “to become enlightened,” “to shed Zight on
something,’’ and so on. The use of a “bubble” to enclose the light bulb (the source of light) is derived
from the comic book tradition of putting words and thoughts into bubbles. This simple example
illustrates the sum and substance of semiotic method. The same triad of questions is used to understand
everything from a simple visual figure (such as the one above) to a complex narrative or scientific
theory.

The thing to which a sign refers is known, logically, as the referent. There are two lunds of referents: (1)
a concrete referent, such as the animal designated by the word cat, and (2) an abstract referent, such as
the “bright idea” concept designated by the light bulb figure above. The former is something that can be
shown to exist in the real world--e.g., a “cat” can be indicated by simply pointing to one. The latter is
imaginary and cannot be indicated by simply pointing to it-how would you point to a “bright idea” inside
the brain? Signs allow us to refer to things and ideas, even though they might not be physically present
for our senses to perceive. When we say or hear the word cat the image of the animal in question comes
instantly to mind, even if the actual animal is not around for us to perceive with our senses.

The image itself is called a concept. There are three types of concepts. Consider the word cat again. If
one were to ask you what lund of animal it is, you might answer that it is a type of feline, as is a lion or a
tiger. If one were to ask you to specify the type of cat, you might say that it was a Siainese or a Persian
cat. The wordfeline encodes what is known today in psychology as a superordinate concept. Such a
concept has a general classificatory function. The word cat encodes instead a basic orprototypical
concept. Cats, lions, and tigers are examples of basic (feline) concepts. Finally, the word Siainese
encodes a subordinate concept. This is a subtype of cat. The three lunds of concepts can be shown in
relation to each other as follows:
feline (superordinate concept)

Siamese Persian etc. (subordinate concepts)

After determining what lund of concept a sign elicits, the semiotician then focuses on the concept itself,
attempting to unravel what it entails culturally and personally. In our own culture, the concept that cat
elicits is that of an animal that we have domesticated as a household companion. But in other cultures,
it may elicit instead the concept of a sacred animal, of a scavenger, or of edible meat.

From the foregoing discussion it can be seen that there are three dimensions to a sign: (1) a physical,
such as the sequence of sounds c-a-t, which (2) elicits a concept (“a type of feline”), which (3) is given
culturally conditioned form (“a household companion,” “a scared animal,” etc.). A sign can now be
defined, more precisely, as something that stands to somebody for soinething else in some respect or
capacity.

Incidentally, sign was a word slow to enter the English language. It came into usage in the thirteenth
century, referring at first to a gesture or motion, and by the end of the century to either the sign of the
cross or a figure on a banner or shield. As early as the 1390s English merchants were required to label
their premises with “signs.” By the sixteenth century, there emerged a tradition throughout Europe of
placing a sign over the door of a house bearing the owner’s name. Such “place signs” have since become
common.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS

A sign selects what is to be known and memorized from the infinite variety of things that are in the
world. Although we create new signs to help us gain new knowledge and modify previous knowledge-
that is what artists, scientists, writers, for instance, are always doing-by and large, we literally let our
culture “do the understanding” for us. We are born into an already-fixed semiosphere that will largely
determine how we view the world around us. Only if,

hypothetically, all our knowledge (which is maintained in the form of codes) were somehow erased from
the face of the earth would we need to rely once again on our instinctive meaning-making tendencies to
represent the world all over again.

As an example, consider the concept of health. Although this might at first appear to capture a
universally shared meaning, in actual fact what is considered to be “naturally healthy” in one culture
may not coincide with views of health in another. Health cannot be defined ahlstorically,aculturally, or
in purely absolute terms. This does not deny the existence of events and states in the body that will lead
to disease or illness. All organisms have a species-specific bodily warning system that alerts them to
dangerous changes in bodily states. But in the human species bodily states are interpreted in culture-
specific ways. This is why in American culture today a “healthy body” is considered to be one that is lean
and muscular. Conversely, in others it is one that Americans would consider too plump and rotund. A
“healthy lifestyle” might be seen by some cultures to inhere in rigorous physical activity, while in others
it might be envisaged as inhering in a more leisurely and sedentary lifestyle.

Moreover, as the writer Susan Sontag cogently argued in her compelling 1978 book Illness as Metaphor,
the semiosphere predisposes people to think of specific illnesses in certain ways. Using the example of
cancer, Sontag pointed out that in the not-too-distant past the very word cancer was said to have lulled
some patients who would not have necessarily succumbed to the malignancy from whch they suffered:
“As long as a particular disease is treated as an evil, invincible predator, not just a disease, most people
with cancer will indeed be demoralized by learning what disease they have” (Sontag 1978: 7). Sontag’s
point that people suffer more from interpreting their disease in cultural terms than from the disease
itself is, indeed, a well-taken and instructive one.

Medical practitioners too are not immune from the influence of cultural symbolism. The body, as we
shall see in chapter 4, is as much a source of symbolism as it is organic substance. Several decades ago,
Hudson (1972) showed how this affects medical practices. He found that medical specialists trained in
private British schools were more likely to achieve distinction and prominence by worlung on the head
as opposed to the lower part of the body, on the surface as opposed to the inside of the body, and on
the male as opposed to the female body. Hudson suggested that the only way to interpret such
behaviors was in cultural terms: that is, parts of the body, evidently, possessed

a symbolic significance that influenced the decisions taken by medical students: “students from an
upper-middle-class background are more likely than those from a lower-middle-class background to find
their way into specialties that are seen for symbolic reasons as desirable” (Hudson 1972: 25).