EN190 Chapter 1-2:
Document Summary
About everything we do is guided by various ideas/theories such as what we believe is. The idea that the world is open to interpretation has a strong connection to right and wrong semiotics (the study of signs) The main idea of semiotics is that everything is a sign . Our culture has come to a common understanding of what certain signs mean. A sign is an object or a combination of objects that refers to something besides itself, and it depends on others to recognize that it"s a sign. Ex. we don"t treat a halt sign the same as a stop sign even though halt and stop are synonyms. A stop sign has meaning beyond the combination of words, colours and shapes it carries weight and force of history, law and ubiquity. Semioticians ( sign-readers) have a formal way to refer to signs. Ferdinand de saussure, a swiss linguist believed that signs contain a signifier and the signified.
