Commutation Test (semiotics) - Discussion

Discussion

The first stage of development in semiotics related to the spoken and/or written form of language. Later, it was expanded to cover all sign systems that have an informational content. As Umberto Eco says, "A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else." (1976)

Semiotics studies the relationship between the form of the sign (the signifier) and the meaning expressed (the signified), and thereby attempts to reveal the process of communicating understanding. In each case, a message is to be sent by an addresser to an addressee. For this to occur, the addresser and addressee must use a common code, Hence, language evolves dynamically. The community will identify a lexical thing that needs to be referred to in their language. By common agreement, a sign (sometimes called a signal) will be selected. Of the many possible shades of meanings that it can be used to convey, one or more will be selected and encoded, i.e. the chosen meaning(s) will be denoted or associated with the sign within the broader framework of syntactic and semantic systems available within the community. When the audience is exposed to the sign, the expectation is that they will be able to decode the meaning. As Roman Jakobson adds, there will also be an emotional element or value which represents the addresser's attitude towards the thing. This will either become a connotative meaning attached directly to the sign itself, or it will be communicated by the context in which the sign is used by the addresser.

In lexicography, the fact that a neologism is used marks its acceptance into the language. This will not be a difficult process so long as each sign has a limited and immediately useful meaning. The problem arises when several possible meanings or shades of meaning become associated with the sign. This is a shift from denotational to connotational meanings. Rules of interpretation are required to resolve uncertainty. Within the community, such rules are, for the most part, experiential and applied without conscious control. Members of a community have a shared memory of language patterns and norms which, for the most part, are stable over long periods of time. Individuals are therefore able to build up a cognitive framework which identifies the possible meanings from any grouping of signs and selects one considered the most appropriate from the context. This intuitive system is continuously tested through the audience's responses. If the responses are satisfying, intuition prevails. If the responses are obviously inappropriate, the audience will consciously review the thought process and decide whether to modify the framework. Semiotics has developed a more precise methodology for this interpretive process, seeking to expose the unstated habitual practices for interpreting signifiers.