Cultural Semiotics: Signs, Messages and Interpretations

The term semiotics which studies signs, symbols and their use or interpretation goes back to Hippocrates ( 460 – 377 BC ). At that time, it meant essentially medical diagnosis. The formal study of signs into philosophy was introduced by John Locke (1963) who anticipated that semiotics would allow philosophers to study the relation between concepts and reality. Its scientific study began the late nineteenth century by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913) and Charles S. Peirce (1839 – 1914) . The human species is consumed by a need to unravel the reason for its existence on this planet. This has led it to create “signs” and “sign systems,” such as languages, myths, art forms, sciences, and the like, to help it do exactly that. The study of these and the laws that govern them in cultures throughout the world comes under the rubric of semiotics. Since the middle part of the twentieth century, semiotics has grown into a truly enormous field of study, encompassing, among other endeavors, the study of body language, art forms, rhetorical discourse, visual communication, media, myths, narratives, language, artifacts, gesture, eye contact, clothing, advertising, cuisine, rituals-in a phrase, anything that is used, invented, or adopted by human beings to produce meaning. The purpose of this study is to sketch a general picture what semiotics can do on human culture and the way it can affect on human interpretation. To do so, the study uses semiosphere to refer culture as a system of signs – a concept used by Lotman (1922-1993). The first feature of culture as system is that it serves as a means of communication between people - a system that facilitates communication between two or more individuals. It is because of considering culture as system that people living in a given society are able to understand the same inherited culture.